Sales Tips and Marketing Strategies

Every salesperson will you that the hardest and most stressful part of the process is the closing. Sealing the deal. Getting the client to commit. But in reality, everyone sells and closes deals every day. Even convincing your friends to go to your choice for lunch is a sales process. So how can you make the formal sales process easy and stress-free? Here are 5 tips to get the best return on all that sales negotiation training.

1. Understand that not every interested client is a buying client. People will often tell you right up front that they are gathering information for a decision that must be made in the future. In this situation, focus on establishing the relationship. Move from what you learned in the sales presentation training to what you’ve learned from establishing personal relationships. Let the client know that they can come back to you as decision date gets closer. You tell them that your role is to help them make the best decision possible, and tell them that the best decision possible is what you are selling. Always look for openings to have them make a purchase to “lock in” a feature or a price. And look for ways to keep the sales presentation brief. But always use language of inclusion (”When we have our monthly meetings..” as opposed to “We offer you monthly meetings…”).
2. A buying client simply needs to be guided to your product. Right off the bat, let the client know that your goal is to learn their needs and requirements, and to mutually decide that your product or service is their best decision. Listen to what problems the customer has, and brainstorm solutions. Make sure that your ideas all are provided by your product. And remember – customers buy benefits, not features. Let’s say a company is deciding on hiring a new law firm. Law firm A pitches their multiple offices, many lawyers, diverse areas of expertise, and commitment to technology. The customer hears “Law firm A has a huge cash outlay that they want ME to pay for.” Law firm B pitches multiple internal resources to draw from as customer problems arise, levels of experience to use the most appropriate billing level for the task, ability to use areas of expertise as needed, and technology to minimize costs and maximize ease of communication with the client. The customer hears “Law firm B is set up for me.”
3. Move the customer to the point of action. Customers will signal their willingness to purchase by asking specific questions (”What license would be needed for my location?” or “What would be the first step?”). Don’t give a direct answer. Give a vague answer – “We have several licensing options, depending on the size and growth potential” – and then lead into asking for the sale.
4. Ask the customer to take a specific action. To continue the example above, your next statement would be something like “we can conduct a specific analysis of your needs as part of the contract.” Or even offer it free (if you have the authority). Sometimes, the specific action is to arrange a presentation with the decision maker. Sometimes the specific action is to reach and draft an agreement and send it to the lawyers (with a sticky note: “Make this happen.”)
5. Have responses to objections prepared. Customers can tell when you are making stuff up on the fly. But if you have put yourself in the customer’s chair and realize that he or she has to sell it to their company, you have a pretty good idea of what the customer needs to know. Sales training courses too often focus on helping you sell to the customer, and not enough on educating the customer to sell the decision to buy to his or her company. Your responses should relate back to each point you have already discussed. If the customer brings up a competitor, don’t put them down, but do point out why you are a better match for the customer.

Too often, you and your sales team have gone to countless hours of sales seminars and sales presentation training. These are usually led by a cheerleader, who is really modeling a particular sales process. Because their job is more to sell their companies’ sales products and really expensive sales training courses than to make you a better salesperson.

If your attitude from the beginning is that the sale is inevitable, it is easier to get the sales presentation into a conversational mode as opposed to a sales mode. Isn’t that what is taught in sales negotiation training al the time? People do not want to be sold. People want to buy. They don’t want to be sold a solution. They want to buy something to make their pain go away. And the more stress-free you can make this conversation, the easier the sale will be to accomplish.

You can hardly find somebody who has no idea about the computer virus and how they work on your system. Most of the time, they spread from one application to another and one system to another system. Now, do not start thinking that viral marketing is also like this. The concept is pretty much same though, but viral marketing does not harm the system or steal the data from any system. It is a simple and effective marketing strategy in this edge of internet. Viral marketing actually sends you information about various products so that you can check and buy them. This can happen though mails, advertisement or something like that. Though, there are many people who feel these mails are spasm and they get annoyed. But no matter how annoyed you are, viral marketing is making its progress really fast and has become one of the most effective marketing strategies among all.

It can happen that you get mails from some company and you know nothing about them. Well, as a simple user you may not understand the whole thing but if you are going to make your own website then you too need to use these strategies to increase your customer base. There are two types of marketing one is simple and one is forced. You can call all these forced marketing. But before choosing the marketing strategy you need to build up your website properly and host it to some reliable web hosting solution provider. Once your site is ready with the content then you need to increase the traffic there so that you can get some potential customer from there. That is why list building is very important. This is the list of your potential customers who can later purchase or subscribe your products.

If you survey the market one thing you will notice that the bigger and successful companies have a huge subscriber base and email list. Now you may wonder why email list building is so very important instead of other types of marketing strategies. In case of email marketing you can reach your entire customer base in just one click. Whatever products and updates are happening they will get to know about each of them without wasting much time. Many people feel scared of these viral marketing and email marketing. But if you want to become successful then you need to take risks otherwise you will not be able to explore the ups and downs properly.

You can also take help from the Auto responders. Various companies are using auto responders so that there customers can get the reply every time they send any mails to them. To make progress you must get scared experimenting. Remember, the more you will experiment the more things will get explored to you. To become a successful business man website is your biggest tool and you must use it strategically. Break the geographical barriers, use the email list and stay in touch with your customers 24×7. You will soon reach the place your desire.

If you’re not including video marketing as one of your strategies, your missing the boat! Here’s why… Its the only marketing method that puts you right out in front of people and makes you real to them. Its the top way to brand your face and voice, people are more willing to buy or join up with a person who has a face and voice to them. Your not just an ad somewhere in internet land, this allows you to break the dreaded credibility gap and up your sales conversions drastically. Many sources say video marketing will be 85% of all the traffic online… So eventually you’ll be forced to learn video marketing strategies, whether you like it or not! The top problem people have with video’s is they don’t know what to say, or in what format to actually be effective with it… I have been using a 4 step formula for conducting all my video’s, no matter the niche! This well help you create video’s that convert to targeted and qualified traffic immediately… First you need a very powerful opening statement, which includes the problem your going to solve for them. This will hook them to stay, instead of clicking their back-button. Your opening statement should be like a headline on a squeeze page… “Stay tuned because Im going to show you exactly how to generate targeted traffic with video marketing strategies no one uses but me…” Get the point? After that you want to talk a little bit about your background and who you are. Make sure to make it in relation with what your about to talk about, this will brand you and give you authority in what your saying. Once you have done that, now you can talk about the solution.

You should sell the hole not the drill… What I mean by that is don’t talk about your product or service features, talk about how their problem can be solved… Once you’ve established how they can solve their problem, give them a call-to-action! This can be your website, your phone number or maybe your email. It all depends on what your trying to accomplish. I usually send people to a targeted website where the can get the solution I talked about.

Finding the best sales agents is among the most important duties a sales team manager undertakes. The catch is that the majority sales managers don’t have a proved process to hire top salespeople. Yet to develop a group of solid high performing sales agents, a sales manager needs a repeatable, established method to hire leading sales agents.

A word of warning nevertheless, no matter what company or business you’re in, don’t ever hire soon after one interview. It’s way too little time to really find out what someone’s about.

Regardless of how awful the tension gets to hire rapidly, always keep to the same six-step system we outline on this sales management training. This kind of sales management hiring technique ensures uniformity so you can consider each applicant in as consistent way as is feasible. Continue reading ‘Sales Management Training: 6 Actions to Hiring a Top Sales Person’ »

Consumers are no longer the only target for most businesses nowadays. These firms need to target other businesses in order to gain more business transactions. As such, telemarketing companies are being sought out in order for them to handle these business’ sales campaigns.

Consumers are not the only important asset for most businesses. Companies do not only target individuals for their products and services but also other firms as well. Affiliating themselves with another company lets them get the most out of their marketing strategies. In addition, businesses that have a lot of connections in the business world are able to acquire the most number of customers.

In recent years, business to business transactions are now being made popular by firms that want the highest possibility of business success. Today’s business era no longer tries to corner the consumer market but also the business aspect of it as well. Continue reading ‘The Advent of B2B Telemarketing’ »

Last week I asked for the order from John, one of my prospective customers. I had sent him a working module from a sales simulation training program to evaluate. He listened to the audio, looked at the workbook and loved it. And, didn’t buy. Why? Because of timing. Because his boss, rightfully, had found a part of his business that could be fixed and drop money right to the bottom-line. Not top line as in revenue increase, but bottom-line, as in expense reduction. So he chose to use his only limited resource, time, to fix the hemorrhage of cash.

John asked me to visit with him in 90 days by which time he thought his boss would see increase in top-line revenue as a high priority and one he could fix with my wonderful sales simulation training program.

Now for the good news. He gave me a great referral. What’s that you say, how could you get a referral from someone who didn’t do business with you? I constantly ask for and get referrals from prospective customers who can’t or won’t do business with me. How do I do that? I start by taking notes during the rapport building process. Continue reading ‘Rapport Building Leads to Referrals – Even If You Don’t Make the Sale’ »

Ok so what is a sales lead?

Wikipedia describes it as: the identification of a person or entity that has the interest and authority to purchase a product or service.

Basically it’s an interested potential customer: the person standing outside the shop window admiring the pink dress; the car owner showing an interest in the family car at a showroom; the parent who picks up a leaflet for ballet lessons for their child at the local community hall – these are all sales lead one can directly relate to.

So having got a grip on what a sales lead is, what is a hot lead? It’s the sales lead that is the easiest sale to close. So the person standing outside the shop window, who has surplus cash and a dinner to go to that night; the car owner who just had a new baby and needs a larger car; the parent who always wanted to be a ballet dancer. Continue reading ‘Hot Sales Leads – Child’s Play’ »

Question? How many times should you make a follow up call?
Answer: how long is a piece of string?

A piece of string is as long as you cut it. Follow up calls are as long and as many as you make them. To be effective and successful in following up leads, you need to know when to cut the string. You need to know when to cut it short or when to cut it long.

Too Short

Bottom line? Most sales reps cut their string far too short. Continue reading ‘What Every Telephone Sales Rep Needs to Know About Making a Follow Up Call’ »

When sales start to drop many business owners tragically cut their marketing budget. Instead of making their marketing a math equation (i.e. spend $100 to get a $700 sale) they look at it as an expense. All they can see is a big bill being spent each month. Many people delay firing people who aren’t putting in the hours in favor of cutting their investment on marketing…a big mistake.

It would be nice to say that you shouldn’t cut the marketing budget, but sometimes when the old marketing isn’t working you have to cut it in favor of something better. Whether you are the business owner or you are the sales professional trying to help get the company back on track, getting maximum results out of each lead is essential. Before I share with you HOW to increase your conversion, consider the following methods to AVOID:

Answering more questions
Being more helpful
Hard selling
The more questions you answer and the more helpful you become the less you will sell. When you get stuck being interviewed by a prospect you might as well hang up the phone because they won’t be buying from you. Even worse you might try to combat their inquisitive nature by trying to “sell” them on the features and benefits of your product or service! Continue reading ‘3 Sales Script Tips to Convert Even the Smallest Number of Leads Into Customers’ »

There are so many possibilities out there to making custom booklets, a little guidance can go a long way. When it comes to your booklets, it can be easy to get overwhelmed, but it is possible to be effective by following these 5 trusted tips collected from experts in the marketing industry.

1. Make sure your cover sends the right message:

It can be easy to get carried away with color and interesting photos on the covers of your booklets, but it is important to keep it simple. Make a statement with your cover by keeping it clean and using imagery that sends the message you want. Your headline, subheads and description should be to the point. Give your readers snippets that will make them turn the pages of your booklets.

2. Whenever possible, use bullet points:

This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Your customers, clients and readers don’t want to be overwhelmed with a mass of text. Give them little bite-sized portions of information so they will actually read your booklets. If you want someone to buy a product with your booklets, give them the features in a list format so they can digest it without getting overwhelmed. Continue reading ‘5 Tips to Making Custom Booklets Effective’ »