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sales process Tagged Articles
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Are Sales Cycles Really Getting Shorter?
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| I read an article that claimed that winning sales cycles are getting shorter.
While I agree with everything else in the article, I questioned the 23% shorter because our substantial data does not support this claim. So where could the discrepancy be?
Let's start with the author's statement, "from qualify to close has reduced by a little more than 23%". |
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Defining Moments in Your Sales Cycle
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| What are some of the more subtle, but important, key moments in your sales process that affect every sales outcome?
If I were to review some recent conversations with clients and their salespeople, crucial accomplishments included:
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Is Your Sales Force a Ferrari or a Chevy?
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| Fine-tune your selling machine. Five step tune-up program to help you achieve that Ferrari-like performance and drive more revenue in 2010:
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Increase sales by optimizing your sales funnel
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| Businesses sell but are rarely as intentional as they should be about it. While a business might do a lot of things to market and sell their products, they might be doing too much! Even more success with less effort is possible by taking a closer look at the sales funnel. Use these strategies to optimize your sales funnel and get more people buying from you faster. |
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Why Follow a Sales Process?
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| The importance and benefits of following a sales process when working as a sales professional. |
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Losing vs. Not Winning the Sale
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| If a salesperson doesn’t win a sale, then they must have lost it, right? Wrong. There is a not- so- subtle- difference between ‘not winning’ and losing. When a salesperson does ‘not win’ a sale, it indicates that there was something that the salesperson did not do to win the sale. He’s responsible for not winning. Losing the sale, on the other hand, sounds like something simply happened to him. |
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Too Many Sales Reps Are Wimps
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| In general, sales reps represent themselves as a pretty tough, resilient, independent bunch. I’m not so sure about that. |
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The Eight Sales Dysfunctions of a Salesperson
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| If you're like most companies getting fewer opportunities to create sales this year, you need to pay attention to all wins AND all losses in your sales efforts! There are specific things being done by salespeople every day that create the LOSS of sales and the LOSS of customers. Are you sure you and/or your salespeople are NOT doing these?
It’s challenging enough in the marketplace today gaining new business from existing customers and gaining the trust of new customers to take a chance with you. The current state of the economy is driving fear and uncertainty which is driving decisions to new places in the organization. Those decisions are being made slower than ever and often times, by committees. On top of that, the competition is doing crazy things, dropping prices and trimming margins to all-time lows. |
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Developing a Strategic Action Plan
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| Strategic action plans bridge each step in the sales process. Key account planning allows reps to better align, differentiate, and demonstrate value throughout the sales process. This alone can reduce the number of accounts that require discounting by up to 20%. Sales leaders who take the time to implement action plans into the culture of their sales teams reap the benefits of better defined actions and adherence to processes from their reps. |
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Best Action Commitment
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| Sales reps must strive for the best action commitment from their potential buyers when developing a sale. Agreeing to commitment requests from a sales rep proves a buyer’s engagement in the sales process. Agreeing to the rep’s best action commitment demonstrates engagement at an even higher level, potentially reducing the number of steps required to close in the multi-step sales process. |
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Classifying Buyer Pain
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| Sales reps that can identify a buyer’s goals and objectives will be in an ideal position to uncover obstacles that are creating pain. Sales reps must understand that a buyer’s pain is their opportunity. The bigger and more urgent the pain, the better reps can properly identify the buyer’s pain classification, and therefore be able to effectively lead with an aligned solution that meets their needs. |
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The Buyer Engagement Experience
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| The buyer is the key to the sale. Sales reps that follow a sales process which effectively focuses on the buyer’s perspectives, needs, and situation will create an effective buyer engagement experience. Reps that can offer a customized service with a personal touch will have a significant edge over competitors that focus on a “make the sale” rep-centric approach to the sales process. |
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Exclusive Short Term Revenue Focus, Long Term Business Issues
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| Revenue is king. It is the primary focus for most sales leaders, and the measuring stick for sales success. While revenue is an important indicator of sales success, sales leaders also need to broaden their focus to consider the sustainability of revenue over a long period of time. Sales leaders who focus on achieving repeatable results through an effective sales process will consistently realize the revenue they desire. |
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The Genesis of Strategic Marketing-Tier II Marketing (Part II)
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| Where the previous article explored key performance indicators, market research, customer segmentation, and positioning, this article describes the remaining characteristics of the organization engaging in Tier II marketing. The remaining characteristics include marketing strategy drives tools, touch point integration, performance measurement, and marketing mapped to the sales process. |
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Where is your inner six year old when you need them?
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| One of the biggest issues for sales people is knowing the right questions to ask customers.
In our experience many people complain of not knowing how to structure questions, or knowing what type to ask and when to ask them. In fact, we have found that many people are often caught wanting in the questioning department and suffer from what we call ‘amnesia questionitis’.
Why is this so? Why are so many people paralysed when it comes to the vital skill of questioning?
If you have been around any children aged from 3-6 years old you will know that they do not suffer from ‘amnesia questionitis’.
In fact they never stop asking questions. It has been shown that asking questions and seeking answers comes naturally to all of us and as children we excel in this area. They also excel at listening too. |
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Solve the One Problem the Buyer Has, Not the Nine They Do Not
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| Executive Summary:
The buyer is the focal point of the sales process. Sales reps need to evolve from traditional
sales practices and place a greater emphasis on the buyer’s perspective. Having insight into
what buyers expect will allow sales reps to customize the features and benefits of their
product solution that directly impact a buyer’s situation. |
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The Value of a Value Propostion
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| Understand how a value proposition can assist in promoting your business and positioning your company. |
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Secrets of Selling to the "C" Suite
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| Learn the secrets of getting in front of decision makers and learning how to close business with those that can. |
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How to Get Better Results with Cold Calling
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| Learn the secrets to gain better results from cold calling success. |
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Negotiation Tactics
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| Understand the art of negotiation and win any conversation with minimal concession. |
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Winning Business with Referrals
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| Use referrals to decrease labor and increase your percentage of closed business and new revenue. |
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How to Increase the Sales Pipeline
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| Learn how to produce more leads with less labor |
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The Importance of Customer Service
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| Gain insights of how to use customer service as a branding and marketing differentiator. |
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Seven Irresitable Laws of Customer Service
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| Create customer service tools that set you apart from competitive forces and make you and your company a client magnet. |
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Solving the Customer Service Puzzle
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| Learn the simple rules of customer service to assist your organization create the differentiation required to create allure. |
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Selling and Attitude
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| Discover how much you attitude counts in trying to sell your products and services. |
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How to Survive in Volatile Times
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| Learn the art of companies that can survive in any economy and why they are built to last. |
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Understanding Sales Purpose and Foundational Structure
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| Executive Summary:
Every interaction with a buyer has a common purpose and structure. Even though no two sales processes are the same, they share fundamental steps and sales engagement methods. These set the stage for a rep’s buyer engagement process. |
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Feature/Benefit Selling Does Not Replace Effective Questioning
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| Executive Summary:
Buyers are only concerned about product features that are relevant to their needs. Sales reps
that focus on creating alignment with buyers, and avoid using a ‘feature dump’ as their
primary means to sell, will connect with buyers. This is accomplished when reps focus on the
unique capabilities of their product as the best means by which to improve the buyer’s
current situation. |
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7 Poisonous Sins of Trying to sell
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| Sales is a precarious profession that requires a process. Many believe that selling is an easy profession but it takes moxie, patience and more importantly strategies that pave the way to success. Discover the seven secrets to selling success. |
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Six Steps to an Effective Business Proposal
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| For many businesses, especially service based businesses, a proposal is necessary to communicate the price of the service to the client. It becomes the formal document that describes what the service provider will be doing for the client and it also sets the client's expectations for the project.
Though the proposal is only one of many steps contained within the sales process, it is an important decision-making point for the client to ultimately decide whether to buy from you or not.
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Are you Prepared to Sell?
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| Before you can have an effective sales conversation with a prospect (where you begin a relationship that will ultimately lead to sales), there are several items that you need to have prepared and be ready to effectively communicate.
Though it seems obvious, you need to understand (know inside and out) the basics of your business: what your business is, what you offer, and why you offer it. The clearer you are about what your business does, the easier it is to have the sales conversation. To get clear about your business, consider these questions: |
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Indecent Proposals
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| Why submitting sales proposals too early, and relying on proposals to win the deal can reduce your chances of winning. |
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Break the Email Delete Barrier
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| In three seconds your prospects make a choice between reading and trashing your email. Clearly your objective is to get them not only to read it, but to respond so you can set an appointment and begin the sales process. That means you need to find a way to get past their delete barrier. |
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How Christmas Gift Giving Mirrors the Ideal Sales Process
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| The process for giving Christmas presents is a lot like the ideal sales process.. |
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As Seen on TV- How Billy Mays Taught Us to Be Proud to Be a Pitchman
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| This article teaches us the secrets that made Billy Mays the world's most famous Pitchman. It also discusses the importance of being PROUD to be salesperson...just like Billy. |
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960 Moments of PRIDE
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| Five Essential Steps That Will Make You Famous in Your Industry |
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Are Your Customers Sick?
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| Why Early Diagnosis is Key to Saving Your Sales Life |
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Closing Too Early- The Risk of Overdoing it
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| Okay, can we agree that Christmas music starts too early on the radio. Well are you closing to early with customers. Watch it...they just might tune you out! |
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Hassles Harleys and Happiness-How to Make Tuesday Seem Like a Friday Night
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| TGIF Right? Well one big difference between top performers and the average is the attitude they bring to the office. This article teaches you how to bring a Friday night attitude to work every day. |
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�How a Dead Sale Can Bring Life to Your Career�
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| �How a Dead Sale Can Bring Life to Your Career� |
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How to Face Rejection
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| Let's face it. We all hate the word NO. This article teaches you why it is okay to HATE it! |
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I See the Light�Ouch!
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| �Why Pain is Essential to Your Growth in 2008� |
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The PRECISE Pitch
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| �The Three Essentials of Telling �Em What You Do� |
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Define Your Sales Process by Analyzing your Customer’s Buying Process
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| A good sales process is structured around the way your customers prefer to purchase your product/service. At each step, you should deliver the information that your prospect needs in order to move that prospect at least one step closer to purchase. |
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Increase B2B Sales by Managing Your Prospecting and Sales Ratios
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| Are you a B2B salesperson looking to increase your annual income goal? If you're responsible for generating new business, you need to track and manage (improve) your ratios. And the best way to start is by looking at a meaningful number... your desired income. From there we'll work backwards to let you know exactly how to make that happen. |
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5 Types of Questioning
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| Executive Summary
There is no sense asking aimless questions. Sales reps must be responsible and ask questions that serve a specific purpose. They need to understand the type of questions they are asking, and the resulting information they can expect in return. Sales reps that can master the five types of questioning will be able to develop a detailed account of their buyer’s situation and the solution they desire. |
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Implementation vs. Execution
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| Sales leaders need to understand and appreciate that words count, and using the wrong words or using words inappropriately will lead to same results: wrong and/or inappropriate. Using the right words will help their teams achieve the desired results and improve execution. |
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Using Neuro Linguistic Programming Techniques to Get Better Sales Results
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| Using Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques can help you in your sales process and get you better results. In the selling process someone is always buying. Either the prospect is buying your product, service, idea or you are buying the objection. Your ability to communicate effectively is the key to your success in any sales interaction.
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Effective Sales Techniques and a Consultative Selling Approach for Today's Marketplace
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| A few impressive sales techniques and staying motivated is no longer enough! It used to be true that if a sales person had a great sales technique and was highly motivated they would be great at selling. Well, that’s no longer true in the world of B2B selling. If you want to be successful in today's marketplace, you have to have a whole armoury of selling techniques that form an effective and integrated selling system. |
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What Automotive Technology Can Teach Us About the Sales Process
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| Do you remember before all the modern safety features were installed in cars? We didn't miss them or feel unsafe, because you as the saying goes, "you can't miss what you never had." It's much the same with sales forces and formal, structured sales processes, they "don't know what they don't know." |
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The New Sales Funnel – Makes Sales Fun, Easy and Effective
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| The economy is not the only thing that has changed, so has your relationship with your clients. If you want to attract new clients and expand existing relationships, then you need a new approach to selling and a new sales funnel. |
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12 Questions About Your Sales Process
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| Most sales people don't follow a process, those that do often confuse a sales process with a methodology. The process is the sequence of steps, "to-dos", milestones and goals that must be reached. The methodology is the technique you use to execute those steps. |
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The Three Biggest Mistakes in Sales Presentations
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| The sales presentation is the ultimate purpose of every sales process, of every sales call, and of every sales system. The job of the sales person revolves around the point in time when he offers the customer something to buy. Without the sales presentation, there can be no sale. It is, then, the foundational step in the sales process. Everything that happens before is in preparation for the presentation, and everything that happens afterward is a result of the presentation. Alas, that is not the case. Left to learn on their own, many sales people make the same mistakes over and over again. Here are the three most commonly made sales presentation mistakes.
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Seven Popular Sales Excuses
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| Now like many of you after 30 years I have pretty much heard almost everything. So when talking about this the other day during a recent sales coaching session I was reminded of the numerous excuses that we all hear from sales representatives.
So I sat down with pen to paper and rationalized what I believe of the top seven uses from selling professionals
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You Want the Sale? You Gotta Ask For It!
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| Get to the "selling end zone" more often by sharpening your skills. It is very important that we are focused on our ENTIRE sales approach. In doing so, we cannot forget to ASK FOR THE BUSINESS! We need to realize that whenever we do not actually attempt to create some closure--ask for the business--we literally destroy (or at least taint) all that we have worked for throughout the sales process. |
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Climb That Tree and Increase Your Sales
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| Most salespeople will tell you today that a lot of the business has gone away. The fruit that was once hanging so low in the tree is gone---picked away by the competition---caused to die away by the economy. In fact, it is these statements that trigger the VICTIM mentality and tend to shut down a good portion of the selling efforts. Listen to me: With very few exceptions, there is still plenty of opportunity (fruit) in the tree. Now is the time, however, that we need to learn (or re-learn) how to climb! Now is the time when the “weeding out” process begins. Now is the time when those who “cannot or will not” are replaced by those who can, will, and DO! |
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Did He Really Lose on Price?
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| A true story about how one salesperson lost a sale while inadvertently helping out the other guy. Too often, when we lose a sale because the other guy was cheaper, we throw up our hands and blame it all on price. We start crying about lack of quality, lack of service or lack of ethics in the other guy. What a bunch of babies! This is war today and the one who tends to win is the one who hustles! Read this true story and see if you agree! |
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This Economy Demands Your BEST!
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| BEST =Belief, Everything Matters, Step Up & Tenacity
Learn everything you need to do to be your best.
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6 Steps to More Sales
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| Entrepreneurs are often sales challenged. Here is a sales system for entrepreneurs that actually works. Learn how to replicate sales without being directly involved through the development of a sales system. |
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Sales Process is to Religion as Sales Methodology is to Prayer
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| Like religion, a sales process requires some faith... |
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Sales Strategies: Sell with MAPS
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| Going through four key steps will help you to get more sales. Meet your prospective customers, analyze their needs, present your solutions, and sell. |
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Marketing The Misunderstood Child within the Sales Process
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| Business and sales people really confuse marketing with selling and the overall sales process. This confusion potentially creates a lack of clarity resulting in not understanding the desired message. TV commercials have the potential to be compelling and yet many fail that challenge. |
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6 Tips for Setting Better Client Expectations
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| As an experienced business consultant I see issues with client expectations all the time. Businesses don't want to say ‘no' to customers during the sales process. They don't want to tell a new potential customer the truth about how long, how difficult or how costly it will be to achieve the desired result. They want to say ‘yes' and get the new customer to say ‘yes' so they overpromise. Somewhere down the road, your customer will question the promises you made and start to wonder why their expectations haven't been met. The natural reaction to losing clients is to assume the problem was with them-they didn't give you enough time or enough budget and they wanted the world in return, right? |
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Consultative Selling Won't Fill Your Pipeline
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| This Consultative Selling article explains the role of this sales method in pipeline management. |
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We Sell Like We Buy - The Yin and Yang of Sales
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| Many sales leaders fail to realize how their actions impact their sales teams' performance. The old adage of do as I say not as I do comes in to play. One of the severe impacts is the way in which our leadership goes about purchasing, the way in which they do that very much reflects the way their teams will end up selling, no matter what they might tell them to do. In short, We Sell like we Buy! |
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A Means to an End
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| One of the most stressful moments for most sales people comes at the point when they have to decide whether or not to go around someone they have been dealing with to that point, be they client or prospect.
There are a number of factors in determining if and when to do an end run in order to win a deal. The value of the product/solution to the client organization; how pervasive is your solution in the client’s organization; how the client goes about purchasing both in terms of deciding and executing the purchase. And most notably, how good the rep is to begin with. |
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How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle?
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| Shortening the sales cycle is a key objective for most sales organizations and sales professionals. How to do that continues to be a challenge. There are a number of proven ways, this article discusses one approach. As with any though, you do have to apply discipline and effort to make it work. |
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Actioning Your Plan
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| If you are going to drive revenue in a consistent fashion, you need to be able to focus on the "right" opportunities. To do that you need to be able to develop, validate and execute a plan or a series of plans to win sales and make goal. |
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Rediscover A Proven And Easy Way To Increase Sales And Productivity
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| There are many great sales people, just as there are some great athletes, but neither can succeed consistently without focusing on the basics. Those fundamentals that allow the great ones to soar - and when overlooked or taken for granted, cause the average to fail. |
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Two Words You Always Want To Use To Help You SELL BETTER!
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| With all the focus on the type of questions you can ask in sales, many sales people lose sight of the goal of the questions, and with that lose the ability to effectively move the sale forward. Here we focus on how to structure questions and why the type of question is less important than how and why you ask the question to begin with. Once you master and understand how and why, you won't worry as to the type of question. |
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12 Questions About Your Sales Process
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| A sales process is defined as a customized, formal process including the sequence of steps, to-do's, milestones and goals that must be achieved during your sales cycle. And your sales cycle is one of four cycles in your business that impacts cash flow (the other cycles: make/prepare to deliver, deliver, billing and collections). |
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Running the Sale
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| I am more than sure that I am not the first to make the linkage between sports and sales and how one is greatly analogous to the other. Like most I tend to relate to it through the sport I know which is running, just like my friend who was a competitive swimmer in his youth, so he draws on that. At my age I do not run competitively, and because of that, as with my selling, it is an endless process of continuous improvement. |
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Sales Reluctance In Any Part of Selling
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| Sales reluctance isn’t just first call or cold call reluctance. It’s also in the follow up, asking for a decision and even in asking questions. Anyone who sells likely at times has some reluctance along the way of helping someone to buy. |
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‘Tis the Season...
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| The holidays can be a frustrating time for sales professionals. Telephone prospecting calls end with no appointment the prospect instead saying, “call me in the New Year.” Proposals languish. Decisions are on hold. |
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8 Strategies to Guarantee Success in Cold Calling
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| No one will buy from you if they do not know of you, your company/products/services. Every sale has its own cycle. Depending on what you are selling, it could be a short cycle of a day or two, or it could be a long cycle of a year or two. |
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Wash, Rinse, Repeat
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| Most sales executives spend their time managing territories, developing account strategies, and setting quotas. However few pay attention to their sales process. |
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Sales Leaders Must Accept Change
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| As a sales leader, you will face change in one of two ways. One will be externally imposed and caused by a change in conditions such as your market or competition. It will hit you when you least expect it.
The second is initiated by you. It is the desire to improve and to strive to be better. Your internally driven focus can generate the energy and excitement for effective change. Change is coming. Which direction do you want to take for you and your sales team? |
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Without A Strong Sales Process You Will Fail!
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| In the buyer-seller dance, there is only one person who should lead, and that's you. When the prospect drives the process, your salesperson will fall victim to their stalls and excuses. Even worse, your salesperson will make them real. Unless you have your own systematic approach to selling that keeps you in control over the various aspects of the cycle, one that allows you to monitor and control your interaction for truth, you will fall victim to the prospect's system. And yes, a sale will always get made, but in many cases it will be the prospect selling you, not you selling them. |
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Sales Leaders Need A Sales Process!
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| The next time you are ready to point the finger at your sales team and externalize why something can't get done, look at yourself first. Ask yourself if your own skill set and management processes are at the level they need to be to maximize sales team performance. Often we need to change and develop first, before we can expect others to change and produce for us. |
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You Need A Sales System!
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| Most salespeople think they know a lot. And they do. But they are losing deals everyday because they prefer to "wing it" and don't have a systematic approach to the sales process that could train them to automatically respond to that type of situation. Their lack of results will be defended from a limited framework and perspective that is filtered from a belief system that has developed over time to protect their ego instead of making them stretch their comfort zones. |
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Does Your Sales Team Have A Sales Process?
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| On each and every sales call, your sales people should be trained to identify the prospect's preferred communications style. Based on this, their ability to develop the appropriate questioning strategy that results in a clear outcome is the skill that will foster a strong relationship |
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Selling Skills that Get More Sales
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| Sales skills that get results are always customer focused. Here are some top sales tips in the form of different sales hats that get more sales results. |
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Common Time Wasters of Sales Professionals
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| Sometimes it’s procrastination that steals the dollars out of your pocket, but sometimes it’s a false perception of what works. Here are some common time wasters, and a testing tool to make sure you don’t get caught out spending your precious time fruitlessly ever again. |
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Collaboration & Team Building for Sales Force Management Growth
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| Collaboration & Team Building: Adding Value to Your Employees |
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Selling B2B Services converting warm leads into eager clients - Part 2
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| Last time we reached the point where we held a meeting with our prospect to determine what they are really looking for, and decided "Yes, we can help them". So now we proceed to make...
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Slow Down to Speed Up Your Sales
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| After months of trying, you land an appointment with a major account who uses your competitor's products. Then everything starts to go wrong. They tell you everything is fine, even if they're dissatisfied with their current vendor. They rule out doing business with you if your product lacks a minor capability. Your pricing is never good enough. Or they simply thank you for the update and promise to contact you when the need arises. Sound familiar? It's the result of trying to convert long-standing vendor relationships in one sales call. |
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Sales Training London: Sales Training ABC of Closing
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| Why should you never "close" to win more business? What does closing your prospect do to his defence walls? When someone tries to close you, what's your reaction? Do you warm to them? Or do you put your hand on your wallet to protect yourself? I don't suppose you've ever said "that sounds interesting but I need to think about it"? So why would your prospects feel any differently if you come in with a close? |
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Is It Time For A Revolution?
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| Change is hard but a necessary part of growing and succeeding. Find out in this article how much change is enough to get what you want in life. |
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The Seven Sins of Marketing & Sales
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| What if you could isolate the one thing that would make your sales soar? The challenge is in figuring out what that “silver bullet” actually is – if it even really exists. The reality is that, for the most part, it is a combination of factors, including the efforts of both marketing and sales that can increase or depress revenue results. By focusing on a group of factors, it is possible to improve results without having necessarily to reinvent the wheel or engage in expensive technology solutions in the name of change.
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If Your Canary Dies, Then Your Sales People May Need Help
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| Most people are familiar with the age-old practice of bringing a canary bird into a coal mine to see if the oxygen is acceptable for human consumption. If the poor little bird dies, then the miners would know that either the air is toxic or there isn’t enough oxygen to sustain human life. I certainly hope that in these current times there are more humane methods for checking the atmosphere. No – I don’t mean throwing your boss in the mines instead of a bird! I mean technological equipment that measures air quality for humans. I DO know, however, that a similar inhumane practice exists in many sales environments. |
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Seven Early Warning Signals of Ineffective Sales
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| No one is perfect, and no business is either. So it stands to reason that individual components of a business may not be perfect either. Specifically, this could mean your sales department and sales processes could use some tuning as well. Consider these seven early warning signals and see if you can make some improvements in some areas of your business. |
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Explode Your Sales Success
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| In the last several years, I have had a revelation about the art and science of sales. The answer to sales success is within all of us. The answer is simple but the key to unlock the answer is elusive.
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Sales Training Doesn't Work
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| Sales training doesn’t work because it focuses on the wrong things in the wrong way. If you were to research books and training materials on sales for the last one hundred years you would find a vast amount of material on sales techniques, word tracks, objection handling, closing techniques and sales systems. All of those things are good for your sales knowledge and education but they account for only about ten percent of sales success.
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The Plain Truth About Sales
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| Selling for Small Business Owners |
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The Plain Truth About Sales
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| Selling for Small Business Owners |
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Lean Marketing
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| The number one complaint from CEOs of companies who are trying to rapidly increase sales is that they can’t measure their return on marketing investments and that the sales process performs unpredictably. When considering the bad habits and waste that they allow to exist in marketing and sales planning, execution, and management it is barely any wonder why there is so much money, time, and resources thrown down the comode in the sales process and marketing operation. |
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Sales Tips From Man’s Best Friend
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| Dogs are great teachers of how to sell easier and better. And if you think about a dog’s life, it’s an easy one. Here are more dog behaviors to serve as models for do’s and don’ts for salespeople. |
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Sales Success Tip-Stop Chasing Your Prospects and Close More Sales Immediately
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| Chasing your prospects will only lead to a loss of respect. Would you want to buy from someone you did not respect? |
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Sales Mindset vs Sales Training
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| Sales training and sales mindset can combine to be powerful allies in sales success. |
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Other sales process Related Articles
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Sales Process
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| Why Your Business Needs a Sales Process
A great sales process can help your sales force succeed.
The benefits of a sales process |
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Franchise Sales are Predictable with a well defined Franchise Sales Process
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| Franchise sales are predictable with a well defined franchise sales process. Franchising companies should have a well defined franchise sales process in place but it is doubtful that many do. Franchisors typically rely on sales pipelines and sales funnels rather than examining the due diligence process of prospects and the interaction with the franchiser. This makes forecasting franchise resources difficult and sales results difficult to manage. |
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Formula for Sales Templating
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| Sales templating is a technique that can help you develop a consistent sales process regardless of the background of your individual salespeople. What is sales templating? It is the technique by which you document the steps of the ideal typical sale. Sales templating allows you to capture the best practices and nuances of each of your salespeople to create a model sales process that all of them can follow. In addition to making your job as manager easier, sales templating will improve the performance of your sales force. By creating an overt, step-wise sales template or process, you give the salesperson the means to maintain control of the sales situation.
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A Sales Process is as simple as ABC
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If you are not following a sales process, you are not in control. Consider this for a unique sales process - a sales results process that is as simple as ABC.
A. You cannot build anything without a solid foundation and the same applies to the sales process. The A in the ABC Sales Results Process is for Attitude - the foundation of all successful sales people. Without a positive attitude and belief in you, there is no foundation upon which to build a successful organization, or winning products and services or benefit from market growth.
Sales professionals need a sales process to reflect, confirm and take hold of |
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Top 10 Rules for Getting Your Salespeople to Follow Your Sales Process
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| Sales Management's number one priority is to assure that their salespeople don't fall into old habits, take shortcuts, get lazy, or avoid steps in the sales process where they aren't as skilled or comfortable. Once your customized, optimized, integrated sales process is in place and introduced, my top 10 rules for all things sales process, strategy and tactics are: |
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Small Business: Creating Life Long Customers
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| When sales and marketing people talk about the sales funnel, they are really talking about the number of prospects they have that MAY convert to sales. This is a pretty common term in these circles and there is a fairly well defined process of qualification that moves suspects to prospects to qualified buyers to lifelong customers. It's important for all business owners to understand this process - even if they aren't involved in the sales process directly - as they will be able to better support their sales professionals in acquiring new business. |
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Complete Sales Reference Manual Now Available
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| This book includes contributions from 89 sales experts, covering every possible topic, including sales, sales management, sales 2.0, sales process, sales strategy, sales tactics, sales motivation, sales presentations, and sales psychology. It's more like a reference manual! |
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Tale of Two Clients - Sales Training! :) versus Saaaales Training (:
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| Here's an interesting comparison for you.
Two client companies are on the exact same sales development time line. (Same time line but separate from each other - they don't even know about each other)
Both of their sales forces went through sales force evaluations at the exact same time.
Both of their sales management teams were developed at the same time.
Both of their sales organizations received sales infrastructure help (sales process, sales pipeline, metrics, sales recruiting process, etc). |
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The Three Biggest Mistakes in Sales Presentations
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| The sales presentation is the ultimate purpose of every sales process, of every sales call, and of every sales system. The job of the sales person revolves around the point in time when he offers the customer something to buy. Without the sales presentation, there can be no sale. It is, then, the foundational step in the sales process. Everything that happens before is in preparation for the presentation, and everything that happens afterward is a result of the presentation. Alas, that is not the case. Left to learn on their own, many sales people make the same mistakes over and over again. Here are the three most commonly made sales presentation mistakes.
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Tweet Sales Success
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| Using social media in the sales process to accelerate revenue is a hot topic, but it requires an expert balance of art and science. It also greatly depends on your stage of the sales process.
How effective are you at selecting the right tools and using them at the right time in the sales process - in a way that delivers value to your prospects, your company, and your customers?
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