5 Questions Salespeople Need To Ask, But Rarely Do
How salespeople can get what you want by asking for it directly.
Call Me Next Week
You finally connect with a prospect and the end of your conversation goes something like this, "I'll get that information to you by tomorrow and I'll call you early next week to discuss it with you." But when you call the following week, you get your prospect's voice mail.
Fishing For Referrals
Just like fishing, the process of meeting people, staying in touch, and then asking for their business is something you can do time after time. Do referrals happen by accident?
Lead Nurturing: A Proven Tactic For Generating Up To Three Times More B2B Leads And Sales
While your salespeople, reps, re-sellers and distributors focus on closing sales from the most promising short-term sales opportunities that come from leads, nearly three-quarters of the leads that will convert into sales are neglected.
Hooking More Clients With A 'Bait Piece'
The free information offer is one of the most effective on and offline marketing tactics. Here's how to create a cheap and versatile educational "bait piece" that you can use to increase the effectiveness of your marketing.
Will Your Ship Come In Today?
A lack of consistent revenues is caused by a lack of consistent prospecting. A failure to prospect on a regular basis will inevitably result in irregular revenues, and inconsistent commissions. It's that simple.
Pitching Successfully
Owners of companies of any size and especially SMEs whose life blood is winning new accounts can learn valuable lessons from some of the highest profile pitches in the world. Whether it’s $50,000 or $50 billion, many of the rules of pitching remain the same.
How To Win The Pitch
Does this sound familiar? Your team worked hard on a pitch, everyone is feeling sure that you will win the new business, there has even been talks regarding the celebration party – only to hear the business has gone to a competitor.
Prospect Not Buying? Here's Why....
We’ve all been there. You’re on the phone with a prospect, you’re asking for the deal, well sort of asking for the deal, and your prospect is just giving vague answers and mild put offs.
Prequalified Prospects
The new reality in marketing and business today is that when business owners, managers and sales people first talk to new and prospective clients, many are pre-qualified. Indeed, self qualified.
Referral Sources
What are the three common 'delusions' about referral sources?
3 Ways To Improve Your Listening Skills
In sales, the ability to truly listen is what separates the Top 20% of producers from the bottom 80%.
Getting Prospects To Talk To You
Before you can engage in any conversation with your customer or prospect, you have to give them a reason to want to talk to you.
Turning Your Prospects, Leads And Enquiries Into Customers
Here are seven ways that you can turn more of your prospects, leads and enquiries into customers, and how you can do it with integrity.
How To Find Out What's Stopping Your Prospect From Buying
How do you get a prospect or customer to tell you what's really going on? After multiple calls, messages and emails, when you do get them on the phone, all you get are vague answers. If this has ever happened to you, then here's how to deal with it.
8 Ideas To Help You Sell In A Tough Economy
Selling in a tough economy requires extra effort, tenacity, better planning, and greater control over your sales cycle. Remember one thing: The top 2% of all salespeople automatically turn up their activity a couple more notches when things get tough. By doing so, they're the ones who'll be standing tall when the economy turns around.
Lead Management Success Checklist
How you handle sales leads once you get them in the door will make the difference between a happy sales team and new customers - or an unhappy sales team and lost sales.
Practical Tips For Selling During Tough Times
Tough times call for new strategies and tactics. Here are 15 practical things you can start doing right now to boost your sales.
8 Principles Of Making Appointments
One of the quickest ways of generating more revenue in this troubled economy is to get in front of more people than usual. Use these 8 principles to successfully make appointments with your prospects.
Stop Panic Killing Sales From Within - Go For Sales Growth Instead
Times are tough. That doesn't mean that it is time for a management meltdown. There are solutions to slowing sales.
The Five Secrets To Writing Killer Prospecting Scripts
You can instantly improve your prospecting script by incorporating any or all of the following techniques.
Five Ways To Get Cashflow Fast - Increase Sales!
Sometimes you have a desperate need to get some cash in the door quickly, and to do that you have to make sales happen fast. Here are five proven ways you can get the ball rolling quickly and really crank up your sales figures.
Getting Inside Your Prospect's Head
Find out how to get inside your prospect's head to determine why they're hesitating to buy, and what you can do about it.
Five Secrets Of Winning Emails
Learn the secrets to sending email messages that stand out in your prospect's inbox.
It's Not The Time For Farming Your Sales - It's The Time For Hunting
If we want to thrive instead of just survive, we'll have to become aggressive hunters once again. But if we do it, we'll find that our business - and our clients - will be thankful for the change it brings about.
How To Qualify Prospective Customers
Every salesperson should have a page full of qualifying questions as a ready reference they can use every time they talk to a potential customer. Let's take a look at what this idea of qualifying customers is all about - and why you should!
Size Or Strategy? Which Customer Should You Invest In?
Customers are the most important asset for any organisation and the loss of key clients in today's economy can edge companies closer and closer to peril. If a company hopes to grow, it needs to invest in its customers. But which one's?
Closing Sales: Face The Decision-Making Dragons
Close more sales by applying these five strategies when you have to face your dragons.
3 Tips To Shorten Your Sales Cycle
Here are three changes you can make to close more deals in less time.
How To Attract New Business In A Lagging Economy
Have your phones stopped ringing yet? The economy is lagging and dragging and we've felt the effects globally. So, how do you tackle economic uncertainty?
Phone Sales Tips When Contacting Customers
Applying these phone sales tips to your daily routine should help you to increase your telephone sales.
Turn A Cold Potato Into A Hot Prospect
Do you have prospects that seem to give you the run-around? They expressed interest in your product or service when you first contacted them but now they don't return your calls, reply to your emails or seem interested in making a buying decision.
Qualifying Questions Lead To Quality Sales
In minutes, this three-step qualifying process will help you evaluate whether or not a prospective client is truly interested in doing business with you.
Not only will you save time, money, and irritation for both yourself and your prospects, but the answers you've uncovered will help you better prepare any future proposal you might submit to them.
Create The Winning Proposal
As a professional salesperson, you expend a lot of energy creating favourable first impressions. You work hard at prospecting, but a proposal can make or break a sale. Follow these basic steps to ensure you won’t lose a sale in the proposal stage!
Just Checking In Makes Your Prospects Check Out!
Prospecting today has changed. You've got to do the things that get prospects' attention and add value. If you are just checking in, your prospects are checking out. Be a prospecting genius! Prospect the right way.
Prospecting For New Business
If you are in business, then you are in sales, and one of the real keys to success in any business is having enough customers to make your business successful.
Solving The Mystery Of Timing
There are key clues that identify when a customer is ready to listen that can help reveal the best time to present a proposal.
Cold Call Common Sense
Why do so many managers, CEOs and salespeople keep cold calling? I've discovered the reason. It works. It does work. It really is that simple! Here's how to make your cold calling more time-efficient - and effective.
Overcoming The Top 10 Sales Barriers
Avoiding sales barriers is crucial to success in any industry. Whether you're selling products or services, remember this simple rule: sales doesn't have to be difficult. Your job is to simply help people buy products and services that are of use to them.
7 Secrets To Creating Client Referrals
It is astounding that most companies do not have active referral strategies. Devoting most of your marketing budget to referrals is a bit far-fetched but here are seven killer strategies that don't cost the earth to boost your business.
Find The Hidden Message In Your Prospect's Handshake
More than just physical contact, a handshake conveys a wealth of psychological information.
Sales Presentations
If you or your staff are involved in sales presentations (to a group), as opposed to sales conversations (with one or two clients), my advice is - get good at them; because they are becoming more common.
14 Steps To Successful Cold-Calling
The vast majority of salespeople do not enjoy cold-calling. Yet, at the same time, it is an activity that most need to do on a regular basis.
Getting To The Economic Buyer
When you are dealing with a certain individual on a long-term sale, who tells you he is the decision maker and everything must go through him, but you know he's not, what is the correct way to get to the actual decision maker without undermining your point of contact?
Myth: Cold Calling Is A Good Idea
In the "olden days" when I first started my business, over 95% of my sales came about through cold calling. It was very clear that if I didn't bill anything I didn't earn anything. So I got on the phones and I prospected to people I didn't know - that is, cold calling.
Find Hidden Revenue By Cross-Selling And Up-Selling
This article defines what cross-selling and up-selling really mean; address the correct timing and key steps for successful cross-selling and up-selling; and discuss how these can help you bring dormant accounts back to life.
Increase Sales By Educating
I would like to share an incredibly powerful approach to marketing with you. It will help differentiate your business, enable you to convert more prospects, generate greater positive word-of-mouth and ultimately create more referrals for your business. This article is about educating your prospects and your existing customers.
Your Acres Of Diamonds
How you can identify and profit from the untapped growth opportunities surrounding your business.
The Importance Of Building A Database Of Prospects
Having a database of prospects can be a powerful source of new business for you.
How To Generate Endless Referrals
Businesses live or die by the volume of regular referrals they receive. Yet many business operators place little or no energy on the art of giving and receiving referrals. As a result, they regularly experience erratic cash flow.
How To Turn Your Sales Effort Into A Rocket Ship Of Results
Most business leaders don't know how to structure their sales organisations or even themselves for maximum productivity. They don't know how to change, adapt and re-organise for new stages of growth. Whether you are a one-person army or a large-scale sales force, you can learn and leverage my golden secrets to super sales mastery.
If You're Getting Referrals, Do You Need To Sell?
Truth or delusion... If you're getting all the referrals you need, you don't need to sell.
Not All Referrals Are Equal
In this article, I will discuss the varying levels of a referral, starting at a level that is just one step above a cold lead.
Increasing Each Customer's Value
You've spent lots of time and money in acquiring your customers and servicing them well for that initial sale. So it follows that you should try and work out how to increase and maximise the amount of money that they spend with you.
Cross-Selling Takes Teamwork
Progressive company's understand the power of cross-selling and recognise it as a critical component for promoting both customer retention and revenue growth.
Drive Leads And Sales With A 'Get It Done' Attitude
I think most business-to-business marketers should aim for "get it out" and "good enough" rather than aim for perfection when it comes to marketing to drive leads and sales.
Pitching For New Business
Successfully pitching for new business depends not only on your ability to think and act outside the square but also on providing opportunities for your customer to do the same.The three rules of the game for capturing new business are simple: plan, prepare and pitch.
Six Powerful Prospecting Tips
Why is it that some sales reps consistently earn a six-figure annual income while other reps, putting in the same hours, selling the same products and trained by the same sales manager, struggle each month financially to make ends meet?
Up-selling: It's Sales AND Service
People often regard up-selling and cross-selling as sales techniques or sales strategies to increase sales. Yet each has a customer service component to them as well. I prefer to think of them as forms of both sales and customer service.
Sales Objections Overruled!
Objections come in all shapes and sizes. Your challenge: avoid taking them personally, recognise them as part of the sales process, and learn to transform them into opportunities to solidify sales.
Getting Past Gatekeepers
Strategies for reaching decision-makers.
The Greatest Business Asset: Your Past Customers
Whether you are a business owner, marketing professional, entrepreneur, or fundraiser, it is crucial to remember your greatest business asset is your past and present satisfied customers.
How To Double Sales In 12 Months Flat
Here is the most powerful lesson you will ever learn for doubling sales in the next 12 months.
The Profitable Art Of Generating Referrals
Most people believe that their business would be improved if only they could generate a few more prospects itching to buy.
Are You Dropping Out Of The Lead Nurturing Race Too Soon?
The value of longer-term B2B sales leads, with strategies and tactics for marketing and sales.
Sales Lead Success Checklist
How you handle sales leads makes the difference between happy customers or lost sales.
How To Increase The Value Of Almost Every Sale
Have you ever been into McDonalds and ordered just a burger, nothing else. If you have, I’ll bet that the kid behind the counter didn’t say "That’ll be $2.85 thanks" did they? Their exact words were "Would you like French fries with that?"
How To Convert Sales Opportunities Into Sales — Part 2
This article (in three parts) explores the opportunity management process — that all—important process responsible for converting sales opportunities into sales.
How To Convert Sales Opportunities Into Sales — Part 3
This article (in three parts) explores the opportunity management process — that all—important process responsible for converting sales opportunities into sales.
How To Convert Sales Opportunities Into Sales — Part 1
This article (in three parts) explores the opportunity management process — that all—important process responsible for converting sales opportunities into sales.
Tendering - Do's And Don'ts
When putting a document together, regardless of whether it’s a tender or proposal, there are some basic rules that should be taken into consideration. By applying these rules you can ensure that you will not only address the buyer’s requirements but also supply a response that may position your business more positively during the evaluation phase.
Winning And Managing Clients Remotely
Working with clients remotely doesn't mean you can't achieve a close working relationship.
Telemarketing Disconnect
Call it telepathic if you like!
Word-Of-Mouth Promotions That Suck!
Would you like to know if a word-of-mouth promotion is viable for your company or product? Here’s a one-second acid test...
How To Get Your Prospects To Sell Themselves
A good salesman needs to know when to ask questions and when to answer them.
Prospecting Can Be Easy
The ability to prospect for new business is a vital skill for all professional sales and business people.
Recession Mentality
It can begin and end with you!
Are You Wasting Your Time?
You are if you are talking to someone who can't make a decision!
Success Starts With Prospecting
More than any other single sales activity, high levels of prospecting can turn an average sales person into a TOP GUN salesperson. Make contact with enough qualified prospects and sales success is practically a sure thing.
How To Organise Your Database
What's in a name?...everything.