SALES IS ACTUALLY FUN A FEW QUESTIONS FIRST !
• You need to generate more new business because your current customers are spending less with you?
• Buyers are taking longer to say yes?
• More people and more senior people are being involved in the decision to buy?
• There’s a spotlight on costs and you need to prove your value for money?
• Are there days when that gets you or your sales people down?
The current economy may have made your sales targets feel a little overwhelming. How can you sell more when people don’t seem to be buying? When they are taking longer to buy? When they need more convincing to buy?
Here’s some steps to help you?
Get thinking
Sometimes we get bogged down in the day to day, and that’s when we need to step back and think about what’s working and what isn’t? What’s happening in your market place, right now? What kinds of businesses are buying, and which products are they buying? What are your competitors doing, especially around price?
The truth is that now is a good time to be involved in sales, because the fair-weather sales people will be looking for jobs elsewhere. If you are skilful, not afraid of hard work and resilient, now is the best time for you to be widening the gap between you and your competitors.
Get focused
Start to use your calling capacity and your sales and marketing activity wisely. Think about the calls you make, and where you can get most payoff from your activity.
How much time and resource should you be spending on growing the spend of your existing customers, defending against your competitors to retain your existing customers?
Are you looking to generate more new business because your existing customers are spending less with you?
Have you asked your existing customers for recommendations?
When was the last time you called your inactive / lapsed customer list?
Do you know how to generate new business cost effectively in your business? What would a sales machine that would capture and convert leads look like in your business? What activity would you need to do on a daily basis to feed your pipeline?
Get organised
The most successful sales people we work with are the most organised.
Some use diaries and notebooks, some use outlook, some have the advantages of a CRM system. What sets them apart is their systematic approach to follow up. Good contact with customers, at the right time, doing and saying the right things that cause them to buy. You can’t do that unless you have a plan, are clear which opportunities require your best attention. Start being business intelligent, focused and follow through. You’ll get those sales
Get selling
All the planning in the world wont get the sales in.
Thinking and talking don’t hit your targets, it’s when you start putting your focused plans into actions that you start to see results, the rewards, the sales, the cashflow.
So once you’ve worked out the areas where you will get best payoff from your activity, get out there and get selling. When times are tough, and sales people start to hear the word no more than they would like, they reduce their call rates.
This is great news, you can widen the gap between you and your competitors, the more intelligent activity you put in, the more sales will follow. It’s simple just talk to more people, but make sure you have an intelligent dialogue with them ( sorry I couldn’t resist that )….. Get out and get talking and you'll get selling.
it's all the the perception , how you take up your sales job ? If you take it like a task and actually try selling your services, there will be no our very few takers. people are not interested to hear your pep talks ! You can get them interested in your pep talk by converting a monologues into a bilateral discussion. Convert your sales talk into an interesting sincere 'conversation' ! Remember ! your prospect is more keen and desperate to get a professional service /product than you ! you can change your hot prospect from prospect to customer by changing the way you present yourself. Its all about communications and presentation. get specific, offer a solution not your product to the client. let him see the possibility of the services he's been missing all over.
Sales is akin to a one day international cricket match ! you know what the total is ! all you need to do is chase the runs consistently and don't let the wickets fall.
get cracking ! you're in the most interesting profession ever. ! lucky you !
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