Getting past the Gate Keeper

By / / Call Reluctance, Prospecting, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills

This time of the year many people are trying to get back into the swing of things after their Christmas break. It’s about this time that many sales people begin their prospecting efforts in earnest and many people are back from leave. It is as good a time as any to prospect.

So as it’s the New Year, I thought we could take a fresh look at some old issues.

One of the most common complaints I hear from sales people time and time again is ‘How do I get around the gate keeper?’

A Gate Keeper is the person who can prevent …

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Ashamed of being in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Ethics & Values, Mindful selling, Prospecting, Value Proposition & Value Add, Wellbeing
  • Need you daily fix of self-help tapes/CDs or guru books to get you pepped up to sell.
  • Have a fragile positivism about sales, which bursts at the slightest criticism.
  • Can’t wait to get out of sales to get a “real” job.
  • Secretly ashamed of being in a sales career – this isn’t what I should be doing, my mother wants me to be a dentist.
  • Fear the loss of approval of your friends, family or peers because you think they will think less of you if you are in sales.
  • Don’t like being called a sales person – prefer titles like marketing consultant or pre-need …

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Missed & Lost Sales Opportunities

By / / Call Reluctance, Prospecting, Sales Planning, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Time Management

Not enough new business coming? Sales drying up? Not making a satisfactory impact when in front of prospective clients?

If this is happening to you, consider your sales effectiveness and your sales efforts from these two angles:

  • Missed sales opportunities.
  • Lost sales opportunities.

    • If market conditions are right, and you have good products or services, then you may want to take a look at your own efforts. Your poor sales efforts may be due to:

    Missed sales opportunities: Put simply, missed sales opportunities are all about a lack of prospecting activity. If there is little or no prospecting for …

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    MYTH: Cold calling is a good idea

    By / / Prospecting, Sales Skills

    In the “olden days” when I first started my business, over 95% of my sales came about through cold calling, which I had learnt to do really well when I worked as a sales recruitment specialist with Morgan & Banks.

    At M&B – and in my business – it was very clear that if I didn’t bill anything I didn’t earn anything. So I got on the phones and I prospected to people I didn’t know – that is, cold calling.

    This was well and truly before the internet was in mainstream use and I had the privilege of learning how to …

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    The huge cost of hesitation

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Call Reluctance, Emotional Intelligence, Neuroscience in Sales, Prospecting, Resilience, Sales Research, Sales Skills, Self Development, Self Promotion

    I knew that being hesitant in the sales arena was a no-no, but I didn’t know just how much business it could cost.

    From my experience, hesitating sales people miss out on about 15 new sales opportunities a month. People who do not hesitate to prospect or make contact with customers are five times more productive than their hesitant colleagues.

    I find that most people in business hesitate to make contact with prospective buyers on a regular consistent basis, often leaving prospecting to chance. It is one of the biggest issues facing most businesses when it comes to making sales and staying …

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    How not to make a prospecting call

    By / / Call Reluctance, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Prospecting, Sales Skills

    I was working from home when the phone rang. No sooner had I finished getting the greeting out of my mouth than the distant monologue began.

    I somehow worked out that the woman on the other end of the line was calling from a charity. At the 30-second mark I interrupted her and asked her what the purpose of her call was, but she did not respond and just kept going. Sound familiar?

    At the one-minute mark I again interrupted, and asked her what the purpose of the call was. Guess what she said? “I’m getting to it love!” She wasn’t rude …

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    Professional Visitor or Professional Sales Person?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Prospecting, Sales Coaching, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Training

    I am seeing a lot of time wasted by sales staff aimlessly chatting with clients.

    How often are you left with the feeling that your sales people are seeing clients, but beyond the “hello” and general chat, nothing of substance is happening?

    I call it the phenomenon of “professional visitation”.

    Often the cause can be isolated to a sales person’s reticence to ask the “hard questions”. Preferring to operate at a more superficial level, there is little chance the sales person will ever become involved in negotiating their way through customer demands and price issues.

    Contact time with customers should always be productive. It …

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    Are your self-promotion tactics ethical or not?

    By / / Call Reluctance, Prospecting, Sales Skills

    Today it’s not uncommon for some people to stretch the truth in order to get a job, get a sale, get ahead or just get noticed, but this behaviour raises some important issues about the good, the bad and the ugly of self-promotion.

    We have all had an experience with someone, a sales person, a manager, an acquaintence, who didn’t seem to have our interests at heart. Something was telling you not to trust them but you couldn’t put your finger on it. They seem to be after VICTIMS not a viable prospect or a genuine contact.

    Proactive self …

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