What are the 3 Sales Essentials that make for effective selling?

By / / Communication, Prospecting, Sales Planning, Sales Skills, Sales Training

When we meet with leaders to discuss their sales challenges in achieving sales effectiveness we find that the source of their problems often stem from three key areas: sales planning, sales prospecting and effective sales communication with clients.

Whatever our vocation, we all need to make contact with and communicate effectively to secure the ongoing custom of members, supporters, sponsors or clients to make a living. Yet too many people still leave selling to chance. They do not have a robust sales process in place that works for them …

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Why selling is now a team sport

By / / Collaboration, Communication, Customer Service, Marketing, Procurement, Sales Relationships, Sales Training, Teamwork

Subjected to marketing and sales monologues for the better part of 40 years in the form of blanket advertising, product brochures and ‘your call is important to us’ busy signals, customers have taken the lead and are way ahead of us when it comes to having sales and marketing dialogues. Far more informed and sophisticated, and posting blogs, Facebook ‘Likes’, Tweets and reTweets, customers are engaging in their own sales and marketing dialogues about our products, our sales people, our promise, our customer service proposition and our brands, and they are affecting …

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Knowing your business

By / / Business Acumen, Communication, Procurement, Sales Relationships, Sales Research, Sales Skills, Sales Training

‘Knowing your business’ was voted as the Number 3 Sales Trends for 2011. With business becoming more complex it should come as no surprise that clients want to work with business people who can sell, think about possibilities and create a work partnership with their businesses. However, our studies with hundreds of sales professionals and middle management sales leaders reveal that the level of business knowledge and commercial acumen is poor or non-existent in many cases. Often trained on product but not on business practices, many sales teams are falling short in delivering …

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What are your relationships built on?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Ethics & Values, Self Development

If you are in business for the long haul then you know the value of building your business relationships on solid foundations. Too many times people have fallen foul of the broken promises and pipe dreams offered by those people whose only intention is to make money at your expense. I can recall a few incidents in my career where I have given people the benefit of the doubt only to be let down and in some very rare incidents, ripped off.

In sales and business we meet people every day and need to be able to size up and make …

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Having a sales monologue instead of sales dialogue with your customers?

By / / Communication, Prospecting, Sales Relationships, Social Media, Social Sales
  • Have you ever noticed your customers getting that glazed look when you tell them how fabulous you and your company are?
  • Have you ever had your customers seem very agreeable in your sales meeting but never seem to follow through with an order?
  • Have you ever found yourself doing all of the talking whether in a client meeting or over the phone?

If so, chances are you are having a sales monologue and not a sales dialogue with your customers – you are nothing more than a ‘talking’ brochure and are wasting yours and your client’s time.

We all know what it is like …

Having a sales monologue instead of sales dialogue with your customers? Read Post »

Transitioning from the old sales paradigm to the new world of social sales

By / / Communication, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Self Development, Social Media, Social Sales, Strategy

When I began my career as a professional sales person in the early 1980’s we were trained in product and client communication skills focusing on handling objections. We were given business cards, product brochures, a geographic territory of clients to manage and grow, and a car to get around in. We did not have mobile phones, let alone smart phones / tablets, laptops, or CRM’s. There was very little coaching and we were expected to make sales and make it work.

For a while there, let’s say 20+ years, it seemed like business as usual as many companies …

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Why hiring or keeping the 600lb sales gorilla is a mistake

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Ethics & Values, Performance Management, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Teamwork

For many years the legend of the 600lb sales gorilla or Alpha sales superstar has been strutting the hallways and boardrooms of businesses. Often revered for achieving top of the league ladder sales results, yet feared by many for their aggressive, manipulative, ego centric, demanding, intimidating antics, countless CEO’s and sales managers have allowed these sales prima donnas to remain in their sales teams but at what cost to their sales team and their business?

Too scared to confront them about their behaviours or sales tactics for fear of losing their sales contribution, many sales managers and their sales team have …

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Are your listening skills costing you or making you money?

By / / Communication, Sales Skills

Who is really listening? Genuinely, sincerely and honestly listening? I’m noticing a lot more telling and a lot less listening lately. You only have to watch the ABC program ‘Q&A’ to see the number of politicians who have great trouble listening – to anything except themselves. They interrupt others giving answers to questions that were never asked. No wonder we are a bit jaded and cynical.

If we reflect on our own approach to communication I suspect many of us would shudder if others described us in a similar fashion to those politicians. I am sure it is not how …

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What’s the difference between a member, a client and a customer?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Ethics & Values, Sales Culture, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Strategy

What’s in a name? Well, there seems to be some confusion in the market place around the terminology used to describe those people who pay us money for goods, services, experiences, donations, etc.

Different industries can have different terms for the consumers of their products and/or services. We see terms such as customer, client, patient, guest, patron, member, subscriber, donor, etc. used to describe a person who buys our products or services and intends to use them directly. In short, these terms are referring to the same person – the ‘end user’. However, not everyone ‘consumes’ our products or services or …

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We want more than a script

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Prospecting, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Sales Tips, Sales Training

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of sales people around the world use sales scripts. Used properly, sales scripts act as scaffolding or bridgework to earn us the right to have a meaningful discussion with our prospecting customers, members, donors or subscribers. The sales script is a well constructed set of guidelines that support us when we prospect.

Good sales scripts:

  • are purposeful – have a clear reason why you are calling someone;
  • use language the customer understands;
  • are designed for the benefit of the listener with it always being “the prospects choice” to accept …

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