The amount of literature on how to be a good salesperson is so voluminous you might think that it’s nearly impossible to compete with other salespeople who have read all the books and listened to all the tapes. However, being a good salesperson comes down to being an approachable person who knows their product. Here are five stellar sales tips to get you started on being such a successful salesperson.
1. Speak with Confidence: Starting right now, eliminate every wishy-washy word from your vocabulary. No more saying ‘might,’ ‘probably,’ ‘maybe,’ ‘seems,’ or any other word that sounds like you don’t know. If you don’t know, then say so. These words also soften the strength of your pitch without adding anything. Eliminate them immediately and you’ll see the difference.
2. Use the Customer’s Words: When you sit down with customers, they’re going to tell you what they want and what they are looking for. Instead of giving them your usual pitch, use their words within your pitch. This means listen to the terms they use and repeat them. You’ll be answering their needs specifically and it shows you’re attentive as well. Plus, you’ll be meeting customers on their terms, not yours, which makes them feel better about the sale.
3. Diversify Your Communications Portfolio: Most salespeople grew up making phone calls and doing in-person contacts. In this day, people use all sorts of different media platforms on the Web and through other means to reach and maintain contact with customers. Learn to use these low-cost tools as one of many ways to reach new customers and maintain contact with old ones.
4. Set Yourself Up as an Authority: You may already be working hard as a salesperson, but part of doing your job is positioning yourself to be a trustworthy resource for customers to come to. Write articles for websites and other sources to demonstrate your knowledge of business and to give to customers as an example of your acumen.
5. Stay Current: Of course, be aware of the changes in your business, but also stay conscious of the changes in your customers’ business as well. Remember to also keep up on the personal lives of your customers, sending them well wishes throughout the year and whenever they see big successes as well. It’ll show you’re not just about sales, but an interested person as well, who is well worth keeping in contact with.
Any questions of if you would like to chat contact me through Scapes at http://www.scapes.ca
So what if people look at you funny, there’s nothing wrong with being a guerrilla. Look at it this way, you get to scratch yourself wherever and whenever you want, how great is that? Alright, alright, so maybe you don’t want to be an actual guerrilla, but if you’re a bootstrapped business owner, employing guerrilla marketing is sure to help you stretch your budget and tap into some awesome potential.
Where do you start? First, don’t concern yourself with thinking outside the box, forget the box altogether. Because by trying to come up with ways to think outside the box, you naturally start to align yourself with thought patters similar to other businesses trying to think differently. So, the key then is to think differently without thinking differently. Ha! How do you like that notion?
The point is, you’re all creative beings and hold an infinite amount of potential—you simply need to take a few minutes to relax and tap into your inner thoughts. You’ll be surprised at what you allow your brain to come up with when you give it a chance to plug into the subconscious and recall your past experiences and pair it with your expansive knowledge base. After you’ve given yourself some time to meditate and think deeply on how to make your business stand out, grab a pen and paper (or keyboard) and just start writing down all the different ideas that pop out of that beautiful brain of yours.
The key here is to allow for a stream of consciousness. As soon as you begin to question the legitimacy or plausibility of the ideas you come up with, you’re going to start suffocating the creative process—similar to waving your finger at your brain and punishing it for expressing itself. This is one of the leading reasons businesses have so much trouble being different, they don’t allow themselves creative license. Open yourself up and you’re going to love what you come up with. And you’ll be able to multiply your mental results by getting your team together and brainstorming together. If you’re truly a small business and don’t have any employees or teammates, then buy your friends a couple of beers and ask if they’ll come over and help you brainstorm. (Don’t have too many or they’ll have you convinced that standing on the corner naked screaming your site’s URL is a good idea.)
Here are a couple of quick ideas:
Fundraisers: There’s no shame in setting up a charitable event or fundraiser to garner lucrative exposure for your business. You will create the chance to help out a good cause and to get your name out in the public.
Chamber of Commerce: Many businesses seem to have forgotten about the good ol’ Chamber of Commerce. Joining this organization provides you with the opportunity to help your community while creating great business contacts.
Contests: Think of some contests that you can offer up to your business prospects and local community. Whenever you get people actively involved in something, you significantly increase the likelihood of lucrative conversions. Besides, they’re fun!
I once read a sign in a locker room that has always stuck with me: “If You Hit Your Hand with a Hammer Every Day, It Will Never Get Better.” Before we jump into the main significance of this message, I’d like to point out that I saw this sign years ago and still remember it quite clearly. The message was quick and to the point and was accompanied by a simple image. Remember there’s a time and place for longer content. Think about the audience and location of your ads before you develop your copy. Not to perpetuate any derogatory stereotypes, but guys in a locker room probably aren’t looking to read a whole lot. A quick and tempting ad has the power to persevere and remain locked into your audience’s minds. Okay, so now that I’ve gotten my standard tangent out of the way, we’ll get into the marketing meat and potatoes I originally intended.
Unless you’re one of those athletes who continued hitting yourself in the head with that hammer, then the sign’s message should be quite clear: Your injury will never heal if you continue participating in your sport and don’t do anything differently in your routine. As I am just short of the athletic talent level of Tiger and Gretzky, I decided to pursue the limitless possibilities of the Internet, and have remembered this sign for a different reason. In my sapling days, when I was a young and inexperienced entrepreneur, I sometimes found myself experiencing aggravating defeats in my marketing ventures. The element that made them the most aggravating was that my lack of success was consistent. It seemed that even though I had some great input from some marketing gurus and had applied my own Einstein-level of genius that my ads just weren’t gaining the traction I thought they were capable of. Then I saw the sign…literally.
When I read that sign, I realized I’d been hitting my injured marketing campaign with a hammer and expecting it to get better. I was so confident in the ads I had going that I managed them like a desperate soon-to-be-vagabond in Vegas, playing the same number over and over again in roulette, thinking that I was improving my chances simply because of numbers and time elapsed. Your bootstrapped marketing campaign should be looked at the same—you’ve got an equal chance of failure or success with every prospect. Granted, sales and marketing does ultimately come down to a numbers game, increasing your chances of a sale with every person you ask, but you are a bootstrapped budget and can’t always afford to play the game of large numbers.
Lesson learned: Whether it came down to wrong geographical location, incorrectly targeted demographic, outlying economic factors…I came to realize that even though I had some fantastic ideas and approaches involved in my ads, they simply weren’t working. Don’t hold on too long to ads or business methods that aren’t working or you’ll end up with an extremely bruised and battered hand. A particular method to help you decide how well something’s working for your business is conducting an A/B split test. For example, create two versions of an ad for the same exact product/service. To ensure accuracy, make sure you disseminate those ads equally among demographics and locations. Then, measure and compare the results of ad A versus ad B. Go with the one that garnered the best results, and then use that ad to create another split test down the road. Because even though you may have managed to put the hammer down, you may still be able to look into some business supplements to take you to an even higher level of success.
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Unless you’re an uber famous Hollywood star, then chances are you ask this question almost every time you purchase something (unless it’s toilet paper): Why should I buy? For one thing, some Hollywood stars probably do use their money as toilet paper. But the point is money isn’t exactly an issue for them, so they don’t put much consideration into most price tags they come across. For us Average Joe Consumers though, we’re on a constant hunt for value. We’re like a real-life version of The Price Is Right; with every successful move hinged on the price of a product or service. Now, apply this mode of thinking to your prospect’s perspective.
Every time a potential client is presented with your product or service, they will ask themselves why they should buy from you. This is a natural reaction—people have a natural propensity for procrastination. However, when you multiply this by the effects of today’s economy and then multiply that by the thousands of new small businesses entering the marketplace on a daily basis, well, you sure have to give them a helluva good reason why they should buy from you.
Now, hopefully you’ve been following along and enjoying our articles, so perhaps you’ve heard us mention unique selling point (USP). Your USP is the answer to your prospect’s question as to why they should buy. Make it incredibly obvious what makes your business different from the masses. These are the one or two gems that make your business a necessity in your prospect’s life. Take note of an important element in that preceding sentence. You need to make sure you keep your focus on just a couple distinguished aspects of your business. Include more than that in your marketing and branding efforts and you’re going to sound like a recent graduate’s resume, listing everything from “habitat improvement” for mowing lawns to “sales experience” because they buy groceries on a regular basis.
Spread your apparent specialties too thin and throw fluff at your prospects and they will see through you. And remember, Newton’s Third Law here: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This can go two ways for word of mouth (WOM) marketing. Most people only talk about getting clients through WOM, but if you come off as the recent graduate in your business pitch, then you may lose clients through WOM. Just think about all the countless blogs and online forums here on the Web today. An obvious trend is people’s absolute love of discussing hate. People are just tickled pink that they now have the opportunity to complain about anything at all that bothers them. Whether it’s the fact that one of their feet is bigger than the other so they have to buy two pairs of shoes or that they visited some person’s website and thought it was nothing more than a cheap ploy, word will spread about your business.
Your specialty could be the fact that you’ve never once been late or missed a deadline or possibly your stunning customer service which never allows the phone to ring more than three times and the promise that they’ll get a live person on the phone every time. Write down your business’ top 10 attributes, and then narrow that last to your top one or two. Now, make sure you’re striving for attributes that are not only top-notch, but are also distinct from other competing businesses.
Just be ethical, present your business in an honest manner, keep your USP simple and laser-beam focused, and prospective clients will then know why they should buy from you, and only you.
Check out these other articles for more information: Well I Should Hope So and People Buy Benefits, not Features
So, we’ve mentioned the importance of monitoring your marketing and we’re going to continue to do so because of its great importance. Otherwise, if you’re not monitoring your marketing, then it’s similar to throwing a piece of bait into the ocean without securing a line to it. Where did it go? What happened to it? You’ll be asking the same questions about your budgeting if you don’t keep a careful eye on promoting your business.
What’s one of the best ways to keep track of what’s working and what’s not with your marketing? Just ask. It really can be that simple. You should always have several marketing lines in the water, so if you get a new prospect or client, they could have come from any number of sources. One of the first things you should be asking them is “How did you hear about us?” or “Where did you find us?” You should also be sure to ask people via your website as well.
This method may not be earth-shatteringly new, but we just don’t see it that much on the Web or hear people asking us as much. Plus, you know the old adage, when we assume, it makes an ass out of u and me. Even if you’ve heard it before, its significance still bares repeating. By asking people how they found out about you, you then get a direct laser beam on your marketing. If after a couple of months of marketing, you find that 10 people found you through the local newspaper ad you posted, 50 people found you through the Internet and one person found you through your postcard mailers, what does that tell you? Dump the mailers and reallocate that funding towards your Internet and newspaper ads; with a majority of it going towards the more successful method.
We specifically suggested waiting a month or two before assessing your marketing because you should always be looking at statistical significance. Granted, statistical significance does sound pretty cool in a complex way, but it’s pretty simple. If you make an assessment after a week, then that hasn’t allowed enough people to see your add to make an accurate judgment. For example, at that point, you could have had one person across the board, which would have suggested that you keep investing your money equally in each marketing category. But as we saw after a few months, that would have meant a big waste in postcard mailers. So be careful about taking one set of numbers as gospel.
Speaking of statistics, you might gain a lot from a basic statistics class. Don’t worry, there’s no real brain teasers involved and you don’t have to be a true mathematician. What it will do is help you get a general grasp on the behavior and trends of numbers in your business and industry. From knowing what’s statistically significant enough to base your bootstrapped budget on, to knowing that correlation most certainly doesn’t always mean causation, a little extra education here and there will always help boost your business.