Published Sales Articles
Below is a list of our most recent published sales related articles.
Managing Accounts: Build Rapport and Revenue
We tend to think of sales as all about gaining new clients and new accounts. However, existing accounts and clients represent new sales as well. Meeting and exceeding customer expectations and becoming a valuable business resource for your current accounts is one of the best sales tools you have. Moreover, your customers are prime targets for competitors. Guard your sheep well by keeping the grass the greenest in your pastures. Click Here to Read More…
“Make It Quick”: Selling to the Busy Executive
Hey, I don’t have a lot of time, so I’m going to be quick here: The next busy executive you meet with will buy from you, if you grab their attention with something of value.
You have to earn the right to ask all the wonderful questions you have prepared to determine their needs—why should this busy executive take precious time to feed you with information? Your opening statement needs to have something of such compelling value that they cannot ignore it. Click Here to Read More…
The Value of a Structured Sales Process
Structuring a proven process for conducting the sale puts your company in a position to define, prepare for, quantify, track, and increase sales success.
Allowing salespeople to “wing-it”, be mavericks, or sell in their own “unique” ways is unreliable. You need real data to predict sales with more accuracy, to prepare for a variety of scenarios, to identify areas for improvement, and to make your sales behaviors fit better with your customer’s buying behaviors. Click Here to Read More…
Sell People Not Products
You’ve heard it before: People run organizations not products, not merchandise, not ideas, not even money. It’s people who make the valuable connections between the products, the ideas, and the money. Without the people, these things are meaningless and subject to change beyond control.
Given this philosophy, now ask yourself, are your salespeople selling themselves or are they selling products? Click Here to Read More…
Qualifying to Invest Your Time Wisely
Time is money. We’ve all heard that. As a salesperson, you invest your time to make money; since time is limited, you need to put yourself on a budget and spend wisely.
When you’re budgeted on time, qualifying your sales leads is like careful shopping. Remember the days when you had less than $20 to spend on groceries? You didn’t just throw anything in the cart. You set parameters on what qualified as a “good buy” and what didn’t qualify. When you qualify your sales leads, you are choosing what to spend your time on. Click Here to Read More…
Following Up on Sales Presentations
Following up with clients keeps the sales wheels greased. There are several types of “following up” you should be doing—checking in with new clients, keeping lines of communication open to existing clients, calls to cold prospects that might be ready to talk again, following up on sales appointments. The follow up we want to focus on here is the follow up to clients you have just delivered a sales presentation or pitch to in person or over the phone.
What do you do after you have just spent 45 minutes on the phone or in person with a potential client? Click Here to Read More…
Building Rapport
Rapport is a relationship of mutual trust and respect that is crucial for healthy social interactions. In sales, a social interaction, quickly building and consistently maintaining rapport engages customers and earns their commitment to continue the interaction and ultimately their commitment to purchase.
How do you build rapport? Since selling is social behavior, we’ll start with some guidance from human behavioral science. Click Here to Read More…