It’s Easy To Close Sales And Overcome Objections When You Only Say What The Customer Wants To Hear
One problem that many salespeople encounter when trying to close sales and overcome objections is the fact that they are selling what the customer isn’t buying. The cause of this is talking about the things that interest you instead of what is of interest to the customer.
Why would anyone do that? There are several reasons that cause this even though we all know intellectually it’s the wrong thing to do.
Not Asking Enough Questions
The main cause of selling the wrong things is not asking questions. The only way we can know what to say to make the customer buy is to ask. Be sure every sales situation uses lots of questions before you start selling to determine what the customer’s buying motives are. Asking questions in most cases should be the longest part of a sales encounter.
Not Listening To Answers
Asking is good but listening to the answers is essential as well. Many salespeople are already thinking ahead to what they will, say next while the3 customer talks. Be sure that you listen and understand what the customer is saying before you start selling what is of interest to you.
Ego’s Take Over
Some salespeople cannot wait to show the customer how much they know. Remember the old saying that you can feed your ego or feed your family. You are not there to educate but to find out what will make the customer want to buy.
Use Emotions Not Facts
Remember that no matter how technical the product you sell may be, customers buy for emotional reasons. They do it for status, for safety, for lack of problems and for many other emotional reasons. Make sure that every feature you present is followed by the benefit and the emotion the customer will experience of they purchase your product.
It only makes sense that in closing sales, if you are selling what you know the customers wants and you raise their interest in the emotions that they will get from ownership, they will want to buy. You won’t need tricky closes or strong arm tactics, they will want to go ahead and make the purchase. There will also be far fewer objections to overcome as well, since we all overlook minor problems when we really want to buy something.
Try these techniques and it will make it much easier for you to close sales and overcome objections.
If you found this article helpful, visit www.close-more-sales.info for a free sample of Carl Davidson’s instant video training package “Secrets Of Closing Sales & Overcoming Objections. or call 716-580-3384.
Sales Manager Training - How To Find Great SalesPeople
Sales Management – The Secret To An Active Sales Force
In territory sales management, many sales managers are watching the wrong statistic! They try to manage sales and that’s an error when it comes to territory sales management. No one can actually manage sales. What you can manage are the activities that lead to sales. Focusing on measureable activities will keep you sales force active and is the secrets to territory sales management success.
Your sales staff probably will not want you to focus on activities. Activities are easy to measure and come with no excuses. There is no mystery. They would probably prefer that you focus on sales. Sales are shrouded with mystery, close calls, luck and sales that will definitely happen next week.
Savvy territory sales management stays focused on activities and measures results often. For example, let’s assume you are in charge of territory sales management and instead of focusing on sales, you assign each of you five sales representatives hard numbers to meet or exceed every day. These assigned activity goals could be numbers like 20 contacts, five appointments and one sale each day. When discussing these numbers with your staff, I suggest you get them to give you numbers and make sure that they “buy into” the numbers you agree upon. If they tell you they can do the numbers, it is their number and they should be responsible to meet or exceed it every day.
Once you have the activity goal numbers, don’t worry about sales. Sales will happen if we have the right activities happening. For the individual sales representative, there is now a certain “pressure” to achieve. If quitting times rolls around and they have not met their contact quota, they have a decision to make. They can go home and face their boss tomorrow when he gets their activity report or they can make the contacts. This subtle pressure will encourage your staff to meet their goals.
The effect for the company is exponential. If you have five territory sales representatives that actually hit their goals, the company now contacts 100 prospects per day and does 25 appointments per day. This level of activity will result in greater sales.
To make this happen, the territory sales manager should get a report at the start of each day from each representative listing their activities from the prior day. These reports should not only contain the results in numbers but the actual contact information for each prospect and each appointment. The territory sales manager can then randomly check on the performance by calling prospects and customers occasionally to be sure the report is accurate and to give good service to the contact. If the salesperson has not met their activity goals, the sales manager should help. They can go over what the sales representative should do differently to succeed today. If necessary, the territory sales manager can travel with the sales representative to show them how to meet or exceed their goals.
This focus on daily activities and actual results coupled with support, assistance and field training by the sales manager will make sure that the team meets or exceed their goals and is a secret of success in territory sales management.
If you found this article helpful, learn more about Carl Davidson’s territory sales management training programs at www.salesandmanagementsolutions.com or call Carl Davidson at 716-580-3384.
Is It More Important That Your Sales Force Like You Or Respect You?
One of the secrets to good sales force management is to realize that it is more important that your sales force respects you than like you. If they like you, that’s great but often in sales force management as in family rearing, you need tough love to achieve success.
In the end, what the company and the sales staff want is success. If you help them succeed and you are fair and consistent, they will respect you and they will want to work with you.
Keep in mind that you own or work for a business. The main goal of business is to make a profit. A secondary goal is to provide good customer service and a good environment for workers but these goals mean nothing if a profit is not made because the company cannot last without success in goal number one.
Part of good sales force management is the ability to separate personal matters from business matters. Remember that your team’s personal problems can best be solved by people outside the business. The smaller your company, the less resources you have to help your staff. Getting too personal with your staff makes this difficult. In sales force management, it is important that you keep your team focused on success without being cold or cruel.
Remember too that good sales people are professional manipulators. We pay them to convince others to act as the sales person directs. Keep in mind that whenever they are not selling clients, they are probably selling you. Some problems they reveal may be designed to gain an edge unfairly. For example, if a team member tells you they hurt their back and that they will need three mornings a week to get treatments, only a cad would refuse. Yet, is it fair for the company to assume the burden of that back injury? Could they reschedule their treatments to evenings or Saturdays or other off times? If you think of the company as well as your team member, a compromise can often be reached where both parties get what they need and deserve.
For sales force managements success, you should stick to the numbers. Every member of your team should have a number of contacts they need to make each week, a number of presentations and a number of closes they need to achieve. If they meet or exceed these activity quotas, be generous with your praise. If they cannot meet their goal, you need to assist them until they can achieve them.
Yes, for successful sales force management, it’s great if they like you but in the end, it is far more important that they respect you and that you are achieving the goals you are responsible to achieve.
For more information, visit http://www.salesandmanagementsolutions.com or call us at 7160580-3384.
10 Effective Time Management Tips
Save time. Stop wasting your time, use these time and activity management techniques
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The 5 Keys To Successful Sales Presentations
The quality of your sales presentation will determine the chances of success in any selling situation. There are few areas of sales training with more misinformation than the presentation. Forget about working on a slick presentation, practicing your pitch, learning long speeches filled with all the technical details. Here are the five keys to great sales presentations. I know that if you will use them, the interest shown by your prospects will rise dramatically and so will your closes and sales. Remember that the key to closing is doing a presentation that leads to a sale.
Customized For Each Customer
To be effective, your presentation should be customized to your customer. Forget about learning one pitch and using it all the time. How do you customize it? By asking enough questions that you know what this particular customer wants, needs and fears. Only then are you ready to present, so ask questions first and sell later. This becomes selling not telling and it works with today’s customers. People today will not politely sit through a presentation that doesn’t interest them. Throw away your flip books and charts and talk to the customer about things that they told you they want to hear.
Benefits Not Features
If a young man sees a great looking woman walking down the street, is he thinking, “I’ll bet she has a great liver?” Not likely, because we all want the benefits not the features. The reason features are taught in sales training is that much sales training comes from or is paid for by manufacturers and creators. They are proud of the products and services they have created and can’t wait to tell you all the details. Like livers, valves, size of steel, actuarial tables and more probably will not raise a customer to the boiling point. If a customer is interested in the technical, by all means, use it. However, realize that people buy benefits not technical information. For example, most people want to know their new home will keep their family “warm on the coldest winter night” as opposed to what the insulation is made of and how it is installed. Make sure everything you say is about the benefits for the customer. Presentations that focus on the company fail. Things such as “we are number 1 in the state”. “we invented it first”, “we’re a family company” and “our founder built this company from scratch” may not be of interest to most customers.
Trial Closes
When you present any benefit, always end with a question, not a statement. Weak salespeople say, “This computer has dual processers and a titanium bus board”. Stronger salespeople say, “this computer is the fastest available to get your work done faster and without crashes. Is that the kind of stability your company is looking for?” If you end every point with a question, every time the customer says “yes”, you are closer to the sale and you know you are on the right track.
Know Your Product/Service
Even though I have stated that people do not buy the technical, there is an important use for product knowledge. You need to know your product inside and out so you can customize a presentation to your customers. If you only know the 8 main points about your product, you won’t have much room for customization. If you know lots of exclusive features and benefits, you will be able to raise the buying temperature of many more prospects.
Keep Your Eye On The Sale
Remember that everything you say takes you closer to the sale or farther away. Be careful what path you go down in any presentation. Anything you talk about that is not pointing out a benefit you know your customer is interested in is taking you away from the sale. Think before you speak and be sure every word is taking you closer to the sale by raising the customers’ interest.
Salespeople often concentrate on the close but the truth is that great presentations make the close easy. You may already be a better closer than you think. You may be able to raise your sales by improving following these steps to better presentations.
If you found this article helpful, visit Carl Davidson’s web site at www.salesandmanagementsolutions.com . We have a variety of instant on line video training programs including a new on Secrets Of Closing And Over Coming Objections. You can call Carl Davidson at 716-580-3384.
Sales Techniques for Sales Staff Management and Motivation - UK
http://www.salesdnaltd.com. Sales Team Motivation UK. A simple 4 step sales technique for sales staff motivation and improved sales Team morale. Guaranteed to get You results. Must See.
Duration : 0:6:14