Category Archives: Sales Coaching

Sales Coaching

Professional Sales Coaching – 5 Hidden Objections

You “hear” objections on a daily basis. The problem is the objections you “hear” are rarely the real objections that are preventing prospects from buying your solution. When you understand the five hidden objections you can proactively remove them.

The 5 hidden objections are based on human frailties:

 

  • Resistance to change
  • Lack of focus
  • Selective listening
  • Assumptions
  • Negative attitudes

 

No matter what the prospect tells you one of these is an underlying factor inhibiting you from moving forward. People don’t like to change unless there’s a powerfully motivating reason to do so, and fear of change or the need to be right even if being right is causing you harm keeps many prospects from being able to accept your solution.

Keep it simple sweetie when it comes to presenting your solution. If your solution can’t be succinctly and simply presented you’re losing sales because the client is getting lost in your story, and their attention is wandering. They’re confused and a confused prospect can’t make a “yes” decision.

You’re just as guilty of selective listening and assumptions as your prospects.

Selective listening is hearing what you want to hear, and then making assumptions about what you thought you heard to your advantage. If you keep your solution simple enough that the prospect can explain it back to you you’ll avoid the frustration of misunderstandings that damage your relationship.

Most people have a negative attitude even when they proclaim they don’t. That means that the whole time you’re talking about your solutions the prospect is thinking, “I can’t …this won’t work…this is too good…etc”. Accept that people are people and they will suffer from one or all 5 of these human frailties, and plan how you’ll address and overcome them as they silently creep into your sale conversation.

Enjoy the time and financial freedom you deserve: “7 Secrets Top Producers Know that You Can Put to Use in the Next 9 Days” [http://increasesalescoach.com/]

Get a daily boost to increase your sales: the blog for Top Producers and Future Top Producers [http://increasesalescoach.com/blog]

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Cheryl_Clausen/56791

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Sales Coaching

Using the Theory of Supply & Demand in Service Sales to Your Advantage

Is there too much of you available to be desirable? If you’re ready to jump for every lead that comes your way, the answer is “yes”. Professional sales coaching will help you to understand you can increase demand for you by controlling supply without being discourteous to your prospects.

Have you ever noticed the more plentiful something is the less you want it? Well, the same is true when you make yourself available to everyone for any and all reasons. Professional sales coaching will enable you to see there are several things wrong with being overly accessible: it creates time inefficiencies and low productivity, it reduces your perceived valued in the eyes of the prospect, and it lowers your self-confidence because you’re setting yourself up to hear “no”.

So how do you increase demand and reduce your supply, and do it effectively without acting like a snob? This professional sales coaching secret is based on disqualification. Currently when you meet with a prospect or contact a lead you think of yourself as being accepted or rejected.

Your objective should be to reject any and all leads that aren’t qualified leads. You view this as being far more difficult than it is. Spend some time identifying the 1-5 key questions that you need answers to.

When you know the answers to these questions you will know if there is a reason for you to set aside time to spend with a potential prospect. That means whatever approach you’re using to attract prospects now needs to include a qualification step(s). When the prospect has successfully met the qualification criteria then and only then is there a reason for you to have a face-to-face appointment to discuss how your services might help them to get what they want.

Do you realize just how much time you’ll free up for actual selling if you stop meeting with the wrong people? You won’t be wasting ridiculous amounts of time running to meet people you shouldn’t be meeting with in the first place. And when you’re only meeting with real prospects, do you realize how much more productive you’ll be in terms of closed transactions?

When your focus is on disqualifying the prospect the power is in your court. In contrast, when you live in fear of being rejected by the prospect professional sales coaching demonstrates that you have forfeited your power. The funny thing is we all have an internal weakness meter, and when we sense it we move the other direction.

Review your appointment calendar over the past month. If you find that a paltry 20%-30% of the prospects you met with converted into clients that’s a clear indicator that you need to take the professional sales coaching philosophy of disqualification leading to a supply and demand advantage for you to heart. You have the power to put the ball in your court by knowing the critical qualifying questions and incorporating them into your marketing funnel.

Get a daily boost to increase your sales: the blog for Top Producers and Future Top Producers [http://increasesalescoach.com/blog]

Enjoy the time and financial freedom you deserve: “7 Secrets Top Producers Know that You Can Put to Use in the Next 9 Days” [http://increasesalescoach.com/]

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Cheryl_Clausen/56791

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Sales Coaching

Direct Sales Training – This CSI Will Close You More Sales

Direct Sales Training:

Jared is an exceptionally good closing manager. He is the manager that closes the difficult deals. One day I asked Jared to tell me his negotiation skills success secret.

Jared said his secret is like the TV show CSI (Crime Scene Investigation). Only Jared’s CSI stands for “Customer Selling Investigation.”

Jared explained that when he was a new closer and didn’t close a sale he would do a CSI on the deal. He would interview the salesperson that worked the deal. In most cases he was able to quickly determine the missing ingredients in the deal. Maybe the salesperson did a poor job fact finding with the customer and didn’t know their hot buttons. Maybe they didn’t identify the customer’s main motivation for considering the purchase. Maybe there was a poor product selection in matching the customer’s needs.

Jared’s Realization

Jared said he soon started to realize that as a closer he was more like a report card on how well the salesperson set up the deal.

Jared concluded if he could do effective direct sales training with his salespeople his closing ratio would increase. Jared soon became a sales coach to his people. He helped them improve their fact finding skills, their listening skills and their product selection skills.

Jared’s Almost Magical Closing Improvement

As Jared started doing more sales training coaching his negotiation skills and closing ratio seemed to almost magically improve. And the more he did sales training with his sales team the more his closing ratio skyrocketed.

Your Direct Sales Training Action Item:

Proactively take charge of your own sales training. Take some time to sharpen your fact finding skills and product knowledge skills. Do your own CSI after each deal and analyze what happened and why. Soon you will be working a lot smarted and closing a lot more sales like Jared.

David Nassief negotiation skills [http://www.phoenix-best-sales-jobs.com/negotiation-skills.html] coach invites you to improve your sales with the free report “Selling Secrets of Top 5% Earning Salespeople” [http://www.phoenix-best-sales-jobs.com/top5-free-report.html] David’s site is [http://www.phoenix-best-sales-jobs.com]

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/David_Nassief/114887

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Sales Coaching

Sales Coaching – How to Turn a Shopper Into a Buyer – Taking a Sales Lead

Shoppers don’t yet know what they want to buy so how do you turn them into quality sales leads?. This is how a person’s mind is working when they are shopping for, say, a new kitchen. “I know I want a new kitchen, but I don’t know which style to choose; I don’t know how much I can afford; I don’t know what kind of sink, or taps, or oven, or worktop, or fridge, or … to choose? You may find this kind of response is familiar for shoppers in your industry.

Do you send them off with a brochure? Do you take the lead anyway in the hope that the prospect would have “got themselves sorted out” by the time the sales appointment comes round? Do you try and help them make a decision on product ranges before you take the sales lead? Do you dismiss them as time wasters? Most of these responses to a shopper will generally develop into a sales lead that does not sell.

Buyers, on the other hand, will generally know what they want and spell out or list the ingredients of their required purchase. Their mind is working in a more focused way and slight changes to their original order can easily be made to the final sale through the introduction of “value added” products and services such as labour saving equipment and insurance backed guarantees, etc.

A few qualifying questions asked of a buyer are quickly answered. They are open to suggestions based on new technology or better quality materials. They want to get to the next stage of their buying cycle as quickly as possible. However, they are still looking for one more ingredient to turn them as a qualified sales lead into a satisfied buyer and customer. If you are thinking … discount or special offer, you are way off the mark! Before this question gets answered, let’s go back a step and look at a few tips on how to tell a shopper from a buyer.

Shoppers:

  • A shopper will meander around a display area and will probably be trying to compare ‘apples’ with ‘pears’ from your product portfolio.
  • Physically, a shopper will walk and touch things more hesitantly.
  • Shoppers will generally wait to be asked if they need help.

Buyers:

  • Alternatively, a buyer will be more focused at what they look at from a product point of view.
  • A buyer is more likely to read point of sale information.
  • A buyer will ask more in-depth questions and will probably relate these questions to specific circumstances – their reason for wanting the product.
  • Buyers generally approach or walk towards a product or sales assistant more confidently and will be more likely to open the conversation.

 

For the person taking the sales lead, it just needs them to watch the customer’s activity and change the opening comments or questions to fit their assessment. However, the opening question can be the making or breaking of converting the shopper into a buyer. Although these are generalisations, it is a basic human characteristic of how knowledge, or lack of, affects the psyche.

Now for the answer to above comment of what additional ingredient is required to turn a buyer into a qualified sales lead and subsequently a satisfied buyer and customer. This is also the same ingredient that helps shoppers become buyers. It is confidence and you will never get anywhere near the completion of a sale with any prospect until you have installed this characteristic into the shopper or buyer.

Taking this a stage further … if you agree with the precept that people buy people first and the product after, the feeling of confidence from a prospect must be in the sales person not necessarily the organisation they represent although this may be a consideration later.

Getting the “first contact” right every time means understanding how this element of the sale forms an important part of the complete process that takes a sales lead to a successful sale. However, there are many companies that sell their products and services direct to the public that do not successfully link the sales lead with the sales presentation and, as a consequence, will always be working on the wrong aspects of conversion ratios.

Ian D Ludlow helps sales and customer service people and organisations in the business-to-business, direct sales and retail environments to improve their current performance.

As a Master Practitioner of NLP and Accredited LVT Practitioner, he uses fun and creative techniques to change unproductive behaviours and to help individuals and teams THINK FASTER and REACT QUICKER to ever changing market conditions.

He states, “If you carry on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” Ian’s specialism is knowing what to change and how to change it with minimum effort and maximum return.

Ian helped improve the average sales value for a retail business by 14% which added £34M in sales revenue over one year from 320 stores. He also helped increase the sales conversion ratio by 7% through quality sales training and lead generation programmes for a kitchen and bathroom installer; increasing sales by £24M over one year.

Ian D Ludlow can be contacted on +44 (0)1795 55 56 83 whilst his website is under construction.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Ian_Ludlow/104607

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Sales Coaching

Sales Coaching – How to Successfully Follow Up

When I accompany sales people on their appointments in my capacity as a sales coach, I very rarely see the follow up used as a sales tool. However, I have witnessed two extremes of sales follow up technique that left me cold.

The first was immediately after the sales person had finished the presentation of the price and received a polite, “We’ll have to think about that, it is more than we anticipated paying.” The negotiation was based on discount which still was not bringing the price down to the customer’s expected price level.

The sales person then packed his things and stated that he had to call his manager to tell him how the appointment had finished. You can see it coming … the manager then wanted to talk to the customer and, blow me down with a feather, more discount was offered to close the sale. This technique actually turned the customer off so much that I could see the anger in their face. Something the sales person missed!

What a shame that the only selling skills available was based on discount rather than understanding the customer’s perceived idea of value for this particular product.

The other extreme of follow up was used by a sales person selling kitchens and, at the end of the fruitless presentation, told the customer that he would call in a few days having given them time for thought about the purchase.

What made it worse was the statement, “I have to follow up every call or my manager has a go at me and after a certain period the system takes the lead back and I get nothing.” I don’t know if this was the “sympathy sale” close technique!

The follow up call was made a few days later with this, less than effective, telephone call. “Hello, this is … from … (names withdraw). Have you thought about the price any further, or what other thoughts have you had.” I’m not sure I need to comment on the quality and substance of this follow up call because it is so similar to many I have witnessed in the past.

Here are some tips on how to make sales follow up calls more effective.

 

  • Make an appointment with the customer for the follow up; what day, morning or afternoon, what phone number.
  • Agree what the subject of the call will be about; not just asking about if the customer has thought more about the purchase.
  • Have another reason for the customer to buy; but ensure this reason has a customer based benefit, not just the offer of another discount.
  • Have a progression plan for what happens after the follow up call; many sales people just continually use follow up calls as their method of keeping a sales prospect “live”.

During my Follow Up Workshops the delegates discover different ideas on how to make their calls more effective. Many find that creating a rough script helps to put some structure to the calls. Delegates also coach each other in how the call sounds from a customer’s point of view. Many have reported an up-lift in conversion ratios after implementing a properly thought through sales follow up process. 

Telephone communication for follow up and sales prospecting is a science and I am amazed at how many call centre and sales operations get it so badly wrong. Many subtle messages can be delivered through a well planned, non-visual conversation but this needs to be set up well in advance – even at the point of first contact with the prospective customer.

Ian D Ludlow helps sales and customer service people and organisations in the business-to-business, direct sales and retail environments to improve their current performance.

As a Master Practitioner of NLP and Accredited LVT Practitioner, he uses fun and creative techniques to change unproductive behaviours and to help individuals and teams THINK FASTER and REACT QUICKER to ever changing market conditions.

He states, “If you carry on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” Ian’s specialism is knowing what to change and how to change it with minimum effort and maximum return.

Ian helped improve the average sales value for a retail business by 14% which added £34M in sales revenue over one year from 320 stores. He also helped increase the sales conversion ratio by 7% through quality sales training and lead generation programmes for a kitchen and bathroom installer; increasing sales by £24M over one year.

Ian D Ludlow can be contacted on +44 (0)1795 55 56 83 whilst his website is under construction.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/675666