Archive for Client Builder Selling
When Selling, You Gotta Believe in Yourself and Your Organization
At its very essence, selling is about the transfer of beliefs. Before your client decides to buy your product or service, your client buys your belief that you can solve their problems. Your customer will never believe in the value of your product or service any more strongly than you do. If you don’t believe [...]
The Art of Listening
No overview of a sales or client development process would be complete without at least mentioning listening skills and questions. Questions are the building blocks of our client development process.
To be truly effective on a sales call, a salesperson needs to speak only 20 to 30 percent of the time. This means that the vast [...]
Why Prospects Aren’t Honest With You (And What You Can Do About It)
Too often, buyers mislead salespeople into believing they are interested in their products when they really aren’t. They don’t do it because they are bad people. They do it to protect themselves. In fact, if you sat down and thought about it, I imagine that even you have misled salespeople on at least a few [...]
The Difference Between “Persuasion” and “Manipulation”
Unfortunately, “sales” and “persuasion” are sometimes considered dirty words in our culture. While entrepreneurs and small business owners are praised in our society, the notion of a salesperson conjures up caricatures of joke-telling con artists in plaid sports jackets. Yet, often the most important role played by a small business owner is the role of [...]
Why Salespeople Earn More than Customer Service Personnel
In the end, there are only two things that separate salespeople from customer service personnel and it those two things that make selling so much more difficult. Salespeople have to talk to strangers and gain commitments. Everything else is customer service. And while customer service is important, it is not as important as selling. Customer [...]
The Hard Truth About Soft Selling
Over the last 35 years the pendulum has swung away from the stereotypical “hard sell” of the fifties and sixties, to the “soft sell” of the seventies and beyond. Although many of the manipulative “moves” of the hard sell salesperson have been discredited along with the stereotype, we must be careful not to discredit the [...]
Do Extroverts Make the Best Salespeople?
The extroverted salesperson is extremely anxious to tell their prospects about their products and services. Yet they often leave a sales call bewildered as to why they didn’t get an order. You’ll hear them say “I answered all of their questions and told them every reason why they should buy but nothing happened?”
Selling is about [...]
#5 of Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Selling Results… Now!
#5 – Don’t Become Caught in the Time Management Trap
Have you ever felt like there wasn’t enough time to get everything done? Actually, you have all the time there is. The challenge is to determine exactly what you want to “get done” and by when. Committing to a daily plan of activity is paramount to [...]
#4 of Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Selling Results… Now!
#4 – Don’t Overlook Previous Clients as a Source for New Business.
While I don’t want to diminish the importance of prospecting for new clients, it’s important to note that previous clients, those who have dropped out of your current client base, are often still highly qualified prospects and can represent significant revenue.
Keeping in touch with [...]
#3 of Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Selling Results… Now!
#3 – Learn to See the Prospect’s Point of View
As the saying suggests, “walk a mile in their moccasins” before making judgments and recommendations. Before you can really understand what your prospect wants or needs, you must understand what they feel and why they say the things they do.
Respect their point of view, even if [...]
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