7 Paradoxical Sales Principles

Recognizing and acting on these 7 paradoxical sales principles is critical to your long-term success.

1. To win more sales, stop selling.
When people feel like they're being sold, they react negatively and put up barriers. Focus on helping your prospects achieve their business, professional and personal objectives – not making a sale.

Selling to Small Businesses

For certain products and services, the 'sweet spot' prospect is small businesses. That kind of B2B sales requires a very different approach from selling to big corporations or, for that matter, from selling to consumers. Small businesses have their own needs and limitations, and if you can identify and address these you can have considerable success with this market.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) defines a small business as one that is for-profit, privately owned, and not dominant in its field. Small businesses generally have revenues under $20 million a year and employ fewer than 500 employees (sometimes much fewer). Small businesses don't have the need or the funds to keep a purchasing expert on staff. So if you sell to small businesses and your product is something more expensive than office supplies, odds are you'll be selling to the business owner or owners.

Strategies for Answering the Toughest Questions

One of the hardest things to do in all of sales is handle tough questions from skeptical prospective customers. After interviewing thousands of customers as part of the win-loss studies I have conducted, I can tell you with certainty that answering customer questions successfully is often the difference between winning and losing. Here are seven points to consider when answering questions:

Clarify the question first. Customers ask two basic types of questions. Some are very specific questions about a feature or issue, while others are more general about a broad topic or your opinion. In both instances, make sure you understand the question before answering it. Either rephrase the question your own mind your own words and repeat it to the questioner aloud or ask the questioner to further explain what he meant before answering. Many times, salespeople are too eager to give an answer to a question that wasn't even asked.

Selling is a contact sport

Timeless tips on winning over the customer

At a very young age, I could tell the difference between a ’55, ’56 and ’57 Chevy. Later, I could tell the difference between a ’61, ’62 and ’63 Chevy Impala, which was considerably more difficult.

I’ve loved cars since I was very young. So when I needed a job while attending high school, I applied at Paramount Chevrolet in Downey, Calif. At the time, they were the greatest volume Chevy dealership in the area and employed a large number of salesmen, and I made friends with most of them. I often received tips for helping them resolve minor customer complaints and handle favors, like free car washes.

23 Rules for Face-to-Face Meetings

Follow these guidelines when you meet with customers and you're much more likely to win their business.

While a lot of business is conducted today over the Internet and the telephone, customers often want to meet you personally, just to make certain you're the kind of person who can be trusted to deliver what you promise.

Here are the eternal DOs and DON'Ts of these face-to-face meetings, based upon my own experience and dozens of anecdotes from "school of hard knocks" salespeople:

3 Classic Follow Up Mistakes Most People Make With Their Sales Calls…..

Here’s the challenge…..you’ve spoken to a potential client in the past, and now they’ve come up again in your “follow up” list….

Now, depending on the quality of your “follow up” call, the opportunity for you to do business can be won or lost at this point. Which puts a lot of pressure on you for this call, doesn’t it?

It won’t surprise you to learn that the majority of follow up calls that I hear made are fairly poor (and some are truly awful) so here are a few mistakes you need to avoid, in order to get more business from your calls.

The Importance of Positive Sales Attitude - A Tribute to a Friend

We recently attended the funeral for a friend, Kevin Dully, who was only 53 years old.  He was diagnosed with Leukemia 20 years ago and had been fighting for his life for most of them.  He lived 19 years longer than he was expected to, but his best days were probably more like our worst days ever, in constant pain, discomfort, and with an inability to do many things which we take for granted.  Through all his suffering, he had a family, worked full-time, drove, and NEVER complained.  As a matter of fact, he had a lot in common with John Robinson.  Whenever he saw anyone, regardless of how he was feeling, he greeted everyone with a great big smile.  And when he was asked how he was doing or how it was going, he always said, "It's all good. I'm here!"

How Social Has Changed The Way Customers Shop – And How It Hasn’t

There’s a theme I’ve been hearing from brands and retailers lately. The time has been spent, the vibrant fan base has been built, and it’s time to generate some real return on our social investments – but how?

Well, we know it’s not a question of volume. After all, there’s no shortage of content being created by brands of all shapes and sizes. Most have someone in-house managing social media full-time, and they’re tweeting, posting and pinning with the best of them.

It’s not an “information overload” question either, contrary to what many experts have been suggesting. In fact, according to new research, “the high volume of information available these days seems to make most people feel empowered and enthusiastic”.

Assessing Prospects

Experienced salespeople have an almost clairvoyant ability to home in on the best leads. Years of following through on hundreds or thousands of sales prospects gives these sales superstars an intuitive understanding of what to look for in a prospective deal. For salespeople who are still acquiring their share of experience, a more analytical approach can help identify truly worthwhile opportunities.

The first step to assessing a prospective deal is to determine whether or not the target is a qualified prospect for your product. If the individual or company you're examining doesn't have both a genuine need for your product and the ability to buy it, there's no point in pursuing them further. You may need to gather more information before you can determine if they are a true prospect; such details are often posted on the Internet, particularly for B2B prospects.

Selling Point: How to choose the right sales exec

A business is ready to go up the ladder only when the sales department is in place and it is staffed with the right people. This is even more crucial for a start-up because one wrong decision could create an irreparable dent in your business. Thus, look for people who have a natural ability to sell and market a business and its offerings.

Start small
Start-ups begin with a small team and a modest budget. With early investments in the bank, it's time to expand your team. The sales force is the last team to come on board, probably because, up until then, the founders were still putting together the company. It's always a good idea to hire someone with a little experience, even if yours is a small company.

In-Person Cold Calling

Before voicemail and email became part of everyday life, many salespeople preferred to physically visit prospects instead of calling them on the phone. It's not as common an approach today, especially in B2B sales, which means that it can actually be more useful than you'd think. After all, if you're the first salesperson who has stopped by a particular office, the novelty can help you get your foot in the door.

Before You Close the Sale

A salesperson's job boils down to convincing prospects that they are better off with the product than they are without it. If you do this successfully during the first stages of the sales process, then closing the sale will follow naturally. But if you neglect to prove the product's benefits to your prospect, you'll find closing to be an uphill struggle. You'll find yourself in the position of closing AND meeting objections AND presenting your product all at once. No wonder salespeople have trouble closing in these conditions!

Are you allergic to your prospects?

For the past two months an unknown allergy complete with red blotches and freakish itching has overtaken my life. (No, it’s not contagious.) After extensive testing, I’ve discovered that I’m allergic to dogs. Our beautiful, loving standard poodle that I walk every day, who sits in my office through every call, and who the kids laughingly watch follow me everywhere – is not good for me.

How can that be?

Sometimes it’s that way in sales. The prospects we love to target aren’t good for us. The customers we enjoy most aren’t the ones who will buy. While we don’t break out in blotches, we do experience other nasty sales side-effects:

    Long, drawn out sell cycles
    Smaller than average sales
    Shrinking pipelines

When this happens, you have to take a step back and analyze why it’s happening. You may be allergic to your prospects and you haven’t noticed the rash yet.

6 Keys to Make All Sales Calls Easy Sales Calls

Some sales calls just go so well, flow so smoothly and have little to no resistance.  Some have no competition, others have plenty of money and a few allow unlimited access to senior decision-makers.  Some of your sales happen so quickly that you wonder why they can't all be that easy.

10 Steps to a Sales Page That Doesn’t Suck

In general, writing comes pretty easily to me. When I’m in the flow (which is relatively often), I can write about 2000 words in an hour. And yet when it comes time to write a sales page for myself, my writing flow and speed used to ground to a halt.

I’d spend hours on a single paragraph feeling frustrated that I wasn’t making any progress at all.

What was especially frustrating was that when I’d write a sales page for a client it didn’t take nearly so long—it was only when I sat down to write sales copy for myself that I couldn’t seem to get the words out.

Building Your Sales Pipeline Is Not a One Step Process

Do You Have a Sales Funnel?

For many years, the “sales explanation industry” has worked with and discussed a Funnel or a Pipeline model to explain how you need many more leads to eventually turn into prospects, and then ultimately a smaller subset who become actual customers. Hence using a picture of a funnel gives a visual on how you need more at the top to end up with some at the bottom. I’ve used a pipeline for years rather than a funnel,  so am used to talking about the front, middle, and end of a pipeline. Whichever works for your visual, use that.

How to Ask for an Appointment in an Email Cold Call

Why is it better? The person on the other end feels like they're talking to a human being, not a salesperson. It reduces their defensive responses and opens them to actually talking with you -- just like you're talking to them.

But enough of my pontificating. You need to read what he wrote:

The Slippery Slope Called Sales Enablement

If your “help” is hurting someone, it is enabling them.

We’ve all heard of the classic cases of enabling…the wife who calls her husband’s boss to tell him the husband is sick when he’s really hung-over; the parents who let the drug-abusing 25-year-old son live at home because “he can’t find a job.” Enabling shields loved ones in the name of love. However, consequences may be exactly what are needed to shatter the denial that allows addicts, or even just lazy children, to keep from hurting themselves and others.

Don’t Forecast Your Prospect’s Opportunities

“This client could be huge! If they win the contract they’re competing for, they would need to spend a massive amount of money on what we sell! They’re perfect for us!”

Have you ever caught yourself saying something that sounds like that when reviewing your pipeline? Have you ever heard a salesperson say something like that? Is this a case of happy ears? Whatever it is, it shouldn’t go into your forecast.

It’s Not Your Deal to Win or Lose

Up Sell or a Cross Sell

As many of you may know I own a media consultancy company called NRS Media. We consult to Radio, TV and Newspaper publishers and online media companies all over the world.

As you can appreciate it involves a lot of travel, and many of our staff are often on planes for weeks on end.

If you want to watch a great movie on air travel as a business person, I would recommend Up in the Air starring George Clooney. Some of the tricks and manoeuvers he goes through to get on some of his flights are very funny and I am sure many of our staff think the same as they contemplate their journeys.