To be successful in selling requires you to learn and use basic sales techniques. Products don’t sell themselves, salespeople do. These sales techniques don’t come via your DNA, they come from continuous learning and years of experience.
But if you learn the right skills and techniques and take the time to practice them regularly, you can sell anything.
Selling, like art, is all about perception. When you show the value of your product you won’t have to defend its price. Don’t start selling until you have uncovered a problem that your product can offer a solution for.
Here are some basic sales techniques you can use to sell just about everything. These techniques, however, require you to be passionate about the products you’re selling.
Buyers buy products not because they are excited, they buy products because the sales person is excited.
No sales technique will work if you are not committed to the products you’re selling. Your sales prospects and customers can tell when you are not genuinely enthusiastic about the products you’re selling.
Bottom line – if you can’t get excited and passionate about your products, please don’t expect your customers to get excited – it just won’t happen.
Another basic sales technique you should adopt is to always use the words “You” and “Your” when discussing your products. You can’t use these words too often.
Doing this ties your products to your customers, so that they can picture themselves owning your products. If you use words like “I” or “he/she” you don’t create the same effect.
In a sense you’re transferring ownership when you say “You” and “Your” when you’re talking to sales prospects and customers about your products.
Another good basic sales technique is to let the sales prospect handle the product. For example, if you’re selling computers, invite your prospect to use the computer so you can demonstrate the key features and benefits.
If you’re selling cars, ask your sales prospect to take it for a test drive.
If you’re selling Cessna Citation Jets, invite your sales prospect to sit up front with the pilot for a test flight.
Another fundamental sales technique is to ask really good open-ended sales questions to uncover problems that your products can solve. This is what selling is all about. It’s not about selling, it’s about helping someone to make the right buying decisions.
Selling isn’t about convincing and persuading – it’s about understanding what your sales prospect needs and wants and helping him to get it. And for Pete’s sake don’t talk too much. The more you talk during a sales call the more you run the risk of sounding “Pathetic.”
Another sales technique involves being well informed about your customers, your competition and even your own company and the products you sell.
Now, how in the world can you do this without committing to a 24/7 work schedule? Google makes this real easy for you. Go here to check this invaluable sales tool out for yourself. http://www.google.com/alerts
When you get to this page enter the names of your biggest sales prospects, customers, and competitors. Anytime anything at all is written about them – you’ll get an e-mail with a link to the article.
It’s simply a great way to become well informed on the things that matter most to you.
Finally, always have a positive attitude. Remove the words “Can’t” and “Impossible” from your dictionary. And if you don’t own a dictionary go buy one fast. The ultimate resource for salespeople is words. How can you not own a dictionary?
Not all of your customers are going to buy your products. That’s life. But every sales prospect has the potential to become a future customer – so be careful not to burn any bridges with a poor attitude.
Remember – in sales you get what you expect so always expect the best outcomes on all sales calls.
By: Jim Meisenheimer
Posts Tagged ‘Sales Person’
Basic Sales Techniques
April 14th, 2010Counter Sales – Defining the Role
April 3rd, 2010
As a counter sales person, when a customer walks through the door, you are generally the person they are looking for. The customer wants to place an order and expects you–the counter sales person–to take care of him. Although this encounter is usually brief, let’s examine what the customer’s overall expectations may be. What do customers expect of counter sales professionals? Since customer’s perceived value of you as a supplier drive their expectations, knowing the answer to this question is important to meeting expectations and building relationship equity.
CEO Strategist research indicates customers have the following expectations of counter sales personnel:
o Product and application knowledge in order to efficiently answer questions.
o An understanding of the customer’s business in order to make good buying recommendations and to ask intelligent questions to learn about his or her needs and interests, problems and types of customers they serve.
o Provide accurate pricing, inventory and timely service.
o Keep customers informed about new products, special promotions and company policies affecting the business relationship.
o Provide timely follow-up to customer questions, timely solutions to problems and timely complaint handling to ensure customer satisfaction.
o Demonstrate a service attitude that proves the customer’s business is valued.
o Possess a sales mentality to help match the right products and the right services to customer needs. This will provide your clients with choices of accurate information about the features, the benefits and the value of each.
The Rest of the Story
As the counter sales person you are definitely on the front line. Yet, everyone in your company also plays a role. Accounting, human resources, warehouse personnel, truck drivers, administration, information technology and even your receptionist, if you have one, are part of the service excellence formula. Why, because people from every one of these functions touch the customer in some form or fashion.
Purchasing plays a particularly important role. The purchasing department must be knowledgeable about every manufacturer and each product line, and aged and dead inventory must be kept at a minimum. Remember, the right product at the right time is a key expectation of the customer. Purchasing and inventory management play a key role in meeting customer expectations.
Counter Responsibilities–Juggling and Multi-Tasking
You are a frontline warrior who makes real time face to face contact with the customer. First and foremost, you are a salesperson. That deserves repeating. First and foremost, you are a salesperson. As a result, helping the customer buy is a key responsibility. But keep in mind that in the customer’s eyes, you are also the service person. You are their lifeline, their support structure and their solution to all problems. That translates into them wanting immediate attention to their needs. This can include pricing, problem solving, recommendations and even sometimes just someone to listen to their issues and/or problems. You will check stock, write orders, pick and pack and even invoice and collect on occasions. Indeed, you are –”director of first impressions,” so don’t underestimate your value or your impact on developing customer relationship equity. Frankly, you play a crucial role, which means you need technical knowledge, product knowledge, industry knowledge, leadership skills, and most importantly, people skills. You must be able to recognize opportunities to help the customer through suggestive selling, defining your value proposition and offering a choice.
Your knowledge, professionalism and people skills will lead to respect, which is the only platform able to support your efforts in building relationship equity. Look around, how is the counter organized? Are you always searching for product literature and flyers and promos, or is everything common to your customer base at your fingertips? What about your merchandising efforts? What does your storefront look like? Do you have shelf talkers?
The job of the front line counter sales person is not always clearly defined, but by nature it encompasses many responsibilities including:
o Sales–serving the customers at the counter or on the phone
o Up-selling and suggestive selling–giving the customer a choice
o Merchandising–maintaining stocked shelves and displays
o Order filling–picking, packing and pulling product for customers
o Administrative tasks–for returns, credits, lost sales, etc.
o Receiving and other warehouse duties
o Will-call
o Education–learning product lines/applications, including features, benefits, warranties and limitations, plus training and sales meetings
o Company policy–understanding policy for credit and product return/exchange
On top of all this, a counter sales person is often expected to support field sales by taking their calls for customer service issues, product inquiries and numerous other requests, and, they’re often subjected to disgruntled field sales representatives.
“Many counter sales persons keep their RED CAPE under the counter at their fingertips.”
Summary
The counter sales person plays a pivotal role in sales success. They are a key link to the customer; a crucial ingredient in the service excellence formula. Don’t underestimate their impact on customer relationships, sales growth and profitability. Customers have higher expectations of counter sales people as their face-to-face contact than anyone else in the company. They want to get the right product, at the right time, at the right price. They also want to talk to knowledgeable total solution providers who do more than just write orders and handle complaints.
By: Rick Johnson
Sales Turnaround – From Closing Sales to Opening Sales
April 3rd, 2010
One of the most successful sales turnarounds that I have been part of was when I was GM Sales & Marketing at ihug. There we had a very averagely performing sales team who could answer questions but couldn’t close the sale. After six months of coaching, rewarding the good performers, changing the team around the results were still very similar. So we knew it was time to do something different.
To turn things around we turned around our whole sales process. Instead of talking about closing the sale we changed the language to opening the sale. This focused the team on asking the right questions to qualify customers and identify needs. Opening sales turned the focus into starting a conversation rather than just answering questions. It turned a reactionary team into a proactive team.
Previously our sales conversations would be something like;
Customer – “Hi I’m interested in getting an internet connection…”
Sales Person – “Great we have 3 different dial up accounts, the Starter plan which has 15 hours of access, the mid range plan… …we also have 4 different high speed accounts the fast start plan, the get going plan, the next plan up and the ultimate plan. The fast start plan has 3 Gb of data and 5 free email accounts, the…
You can see that this conversation is very one sided. The sales person telling the prospective customer about all the products. At the end of the call the customer is too confused to know which is the right product and often wouldn’t be able to make a decision.
Instead of a one way conversation you need to have a two way dialogue. You need to get the customer to tell you something about themselves so that you can then tailor your response and recommend to them the products that best suit their needs. So instead the conversation might go like this.
Customer – “Hi I’m interested in getting an internet connection…”
Sales Person – “Great have you got an existing connection”
Customer – “No”
Sales Person – “OK – what were you needing the connection for”
Customer – “I’ve just brought a computer and I want to get online”
Sales Person – “Great, is the computer for home use or business use?”
Customer – “Just at home”
Sales Person – “That good, can you tell me a little bit about your house hold, will others use the computer, do you have any children, what do you think you’ll be doing online”
Customer – “No problem, my wife and I have a 5 year old and we’ve primarily got the computer for him”
Sales Person – “Great, so do you want to be able to use the phone while he’s on the computer?
Customer – “Yes!”
Sales Person – “And what do you think you will be doing online, mostly just email, banking and a bit of online surfing or would you be looking to do lots of movie or music downloading etc?
Ask questions to qualify and recommend.
You get the idea. What we’re doing here is opening the sale, finding out enough about the person so that we can find the right product for them. That is the right product for that customer – not telling them about every product in the range.
Give options so the customer can still make a choice.
Even though you might know exactly the right product for the customer, give them some options and then explain why your recommendation is right for them. People don’t like it when they are only presented with one choice, they then make a choice between yes and no. By presenting two options you can give them a choice between yes and yes!
Getting some details.
OK but how do you get the sale! Once you are sure the customer has agreed with your product recommendation you just asked them if you could get some details. These details at worst allowed the team to identify qualified customers if they didn’t buy but did call back. And often once you have started taking down their details then ask “would you like me to arrange installation for you?” more often than not you will get the sale.
If you are talking sales – remember who you are selling to, treat them with respect, understand what their needs are, and recommend something that suits them. If your product isn’t right, tell them. Have some integrity, it will show and you’ll generate the results over the long-term.
By: Duncan Shand
