When you’re in business with partners, make sure your agreement covers how much control each person has.

Original post by (Selling Power)

When it comes to sales, there are three distinct styles. Every sales person on the planet fits neatly into one of these styles.

* John Mclane - You live for the thrill of the hunt. You’re aggressive, competitive and impatient with paperwork. You know your production to the penny. As soon as a sale is clinched, you’re looking for your next conquest. You are the John Mclane of the sales world.

* James Bond–You’re a people-person and a relationship builder. For you, the sale begins at the time of the close. You take pride in providing strong customer service and it shows in your high persistence ratios. You believe a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

* Robocop –You’re the Energizer Bunny, the Robocop of sales. You’re relentless. While you’re not flashy like James Bond or warm and Rugged like John Mclane, you get the job done through sheer perseverance. Rejection doesn’t wear you down. Repetition doesn’t bore you.

Original post by The Salesman

They say you can’t sell ice to an eskimo. I believe you can! But there is no doubt that the key will be in using a killer closing technique.

If you can learn and eventually master these closing techniques, then you could quite literally sell ice to an eskimo.

Below are the 4 most powerful closing techniques that any sales person, business person or website owner should know:

* A Direct Close - Simply ask the eskimo for the order when you are sure your prospect is ready.
* A Deal/Concession Close - Using this closing technique gives the prospect the feeling that they are making a smart choice and saving money (or getting more value). Use it with phrases like “Order today and I can add an extra 3 bags of ice for only 10 percent more.”
* A Time-Driven Close - This one works well with statements like, “Ice caps are likely to melt next week, so you should go ahead a let me place your order today.”
* Trial Offer - You can let the prospect use the product at no risk for a trial period. This works well if you’re selling products that make people’s lives easier. They aren’t likely to want to give it back if it has saved them a lot of time and effort during the trial period. On the other hand, if they haven’t had the experience with the product you told them they would then you probably won’t get another chance. Note: This method won’t work too well with ice.

So there you have it, with enough practice and development of these techniques, you should be ready to launch your ice company in the North Pole.

Good luck!

Original post by The Salesman

It is not easy condensing the entire sales process into one template or cheat sheet. But if pushed, I would point towards the format that has been the industry standard since the early 1950s.

It goes a little something like this:

1. Attention: The first step should always be to grab attention, this can be done via adverts, headlines, a catchy opening line etc. If you can grab attention and prospect the customer, then even better!
2. Interest: Build their interest by using an emotional appeal such as how good they will look to their boss when they make this deal that will save the company thousands of dollars!
3. Desire: Desire can be built by showing the features and benefits. A great example of this is a test drive in a car.
4. Conviction: At this point you need to give them logical ammo to help them see the purchase as a logical and intelligent one. This can be done via testimonials, facts, stats etc…
5. Action: Without action, nothing happens. You really need to finish by encouraging some form of action. This may be an order, an address, their email details etc..

This sales process will be just as effective in offline and online worlds, so make a note of it, bookmark this page and use it as your sales template for future sales.

Original post by The Salesman

Mike Bosworth is probably the smartest guy I ever met in the sales training world. His first book, Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets, was brilliant, and full of great advice. I highly recommend it.

That being said, I observe that very few companies actually follow the system that Mike lays out in that book. Instead, they simply trick out their “products” as “solutions” and pretend that they’re doing something different. (Note to top management: if you want the benefit of new ideas in a book, read more than just the title.)

The reason that “solution selling” is honored more in the breach than the observances lies, at least in part, with the word itself: “solution.” First of all, the term sets the wrong tone. A “solution” is supposed to solve a customer problem, right? That idea assumes that the business world is full of PROBLEMS waiting to be solved. Problems, problems, problems. What a negative and depressing worldview!

The successful people that I know — the real decision-makers — don’t tend to think that way. They tend to think of the business world in terms of possibility, opportunity and achievement. To these folk, the idea that business is a collection of “problems” is foreign, so if you’re talking “solutions” you’re not talking their language.

That’s why, half the time, when people talk about “solution selling” they tack the phrase “or achieve a goal” to the phrase “solve a problem.” But that always sounds lame. What has a “solution” got to do with achieving a goal? Nothing. Solutions solve problems. They don’t achieve goals.

But even if the word “solution” in English meant “something that solves a problem or achieves a goal” the concept of solution selling would still be stillborn because a “solution” is only a THING. The B2B customer doesn’t want a THING. The B2B customer wants RESULTS.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, “solution selling” consists of replace the word “product” with the word “solution” in the marketing materials.  Sometimes there’s also some half-hearted attempt to explain why specific product features relate to some customer problem. Often, what’s presented is a tautology like “our networking solution has ultra-fast bandwidth in order to solve the problem of not having enough bandwidth.” As generally presented to customers, a “solution” is a THING that has features and functions and benefits. A product wrapped in extra verbiage.

Last week, I wrote about Manager-to-Manager (M2M) selling — the kind of selling you need to do if you’re going to call high and make the big ticket sales. If you want to sell M2M, the first thing you need to scrap is the silly notion that you’re selling a “solution.” At that level, solutions are just background noise in the sales process. Details.

If you focus too much on your “solutions,” you’ll either lose the sale or fight an uphill battle. This isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of lower-level functionaries who think of business almost solely in terms of problems. But they’re not the decision-makers. From the perspective of a real decision-maker, all products (even when relabeled as “solutions”) are basically the same.

You may think that customers should care that your “solution” has superior features. They don’t. Customers — decision-makers, that is — don’t have the time, energy or inclination to learn enough about your product category to understand why those features make your solution better.

Decision-makers want results and they want YOU to take responsibility for those results. In today’s crazed business world, the only reason that a real decision maker will talk to you about those results is that they want to outsource a function that your firm is hopefully capable of performing.  In fact, if your customer contact DOES appear to care about product feature/functions, and wants to get into a long discussion of “problems” and “solutions,” you’re not talking to a decision-maker; you’re talking to a speed-bump.

That’s why I say that solution selling is dead. More on this tomorrow.

Original post by Geoffrey James

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Original post by (Selling Power)

Are your company’s sales incentives and compensation plan aligned with corporate strategy? Of course, right? The salespeople are compensated for making sales and guess what – the corporate strategy involves making more sales! Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that. Bruce Merrifi

Original post by ()

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Original post by Selling Power

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Original post by Selling Power

For these entrepreneurs, every day is like Halloween. Ghosts, spirits and other things that go bump in the night help bring in the chills and the business.

Original post by (Selling Power)