Six Sales Secrets
By BJ Farish, Profit Builders Consulting
Since the dawn of time (or at least since the creation of money), people have wanted to get as much money as quickly as they possibly could. Offers like “Make $1,000 by working just 4 hours a week” or “Make Enough Money to Quit Your Job Next Month” seem to on every utility pole at every intersection. If you can make $1,000 in just four hours, why wouldn’t you work forty hours and make $10,000 in a week? Each of these “opportunities of a lifetime” involve selling some type of product or service.
It has been said that there are two kinds of people in this world: those that know that they are in sales and those that don’t. Everyone is in sales. Parents have to sell their children on the benefits of eating vegetables (even if Brussels sprouts are nasty). Managers have to sell their employees on the benefits of working their fourth Saturday in a row. Sales people have to sell products and services to customers that are bombarded on a daily basis with phone calls, emails, and visits from twenty other sales representatives. If you have been selling for years, these tips will be reminders of things that you may have forgotten. If you are new to selling, these are tried and true techniques that will give you an edge over your competition. Here are six secrets to improving your ability to sell:
1. Relationships matter. You buy from people that you know, trust, and like. Your customers are no different. They want to purchase products and services from someone that understands their needs and appreciates their business. One national company that was fortunate to have several multi-million dollar accounts lost a key customer. Their pricing and service were excellent and unparalleled in the industry. When the decision maker at the corporate office was asked why they were shifting to a new supplier, he responded, “Your sales rep sold us a great system eight years ago. We haven’t seen him since we signed the contract. We went with someone that wanted our business.” A few visits from the salesperson over those eight years would have kept a huge customer happy.
2. Being consistent brings new business. Regular contact with your customers is a key to building relationships. I had a potential customer tell me, “We’ve been buying from your competitor for years. We’ll never buy from you.” That sounded like a challenge to me. I continued to call on that company and within a year, their supplier had a service failure. Because I had stayed in contact with them on a regular basis, they called me to see if I could get them the products that they needed. This customer that planned on never buying from me became one of my largest customers.
3. Solve a problem. Your customers have problems. As a salesperson, your job is to identify the problem and find a way to solve it with your product or service. A seasoned telecommunications salesperson related the story of one of his biggest prospects. He asked his customer, “What is the single biggest problem in your organization?” The response was quick: “We don’t have enough parking for our employees. What can you do about that?” The sales rep came up with a plan to set up a portion of his customer’s employees to work from home. He helped them avoid spending millions of dollars to erect a parking structure by offering a telecommuting solution. It is standard practice now, but in the mid-1980s when this deal was initiated, it was virtually unheard of. Be creative with solutions and your customers will reward you with their business.
4. Tell the truth. This secret is pretty self-explanatory. When my wife and I were building our home, we would stop in every couple of days. After one visit, I was excited to see that our deck was finished. The next day, I returned to the construction site and noticed that the deck was no longer there. I asked one of the workers what had happened. “I put the deck on incorrectly. We’ll have it fixed by the end of the week. It’s my fault and I’m not allowed to work on it unsupervised anymore.” I appreciated his candor. Rather than blaming someone else, he took responsibility for his mistake and shared how it and when it would be corrected.
5. Under promise and over-deliver. I used a dry cleaner for several years. After the first couple of visits, I never had to give my name or my telephone number. The store owners would see me walking from my car to their store and have my clothes already pulled and ready to go by the time I got inside. They had promised me next day service. “Your jacket will be ready by 5:00 pm tomorrow.” If I needed to pick my order up by 3:00 pm, it was ready. I found out later that they consistently had my order ready by noon the next day. My orders were always ready well before I needed them and were hanging on the rack by the cash register before I made it inside their establishment. They understood the importance of under promising and over delivering.
6. There are no shortcuts. Being a salesperson is a great way to make a living but it also involves a lot of hard work. Preparing for a one hour sales call can take four hours or more. Putting in the time to research your customers’ needs and finding solutions requires diligence, dedication, and patience. If you take off at noon every Friday, you are losing five hours per week of selling time. That is the equivalent of losing over thirty days of selling opportunities. Selling gives you the freedom to make exactly what you are worth. A highly successful friend of mine who started her career in direct sales often repeats these words, “If you do the things you are supposed to do when you are supposed to do them, then you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them.”
BJ Farish is the president of Profit Builders Consulting and provides new business development, sales training, and marketing services. You can reach him at bjfarish@profitbuildersusa.com, 253-929-9804, or www.profitbuildersusa.com.
By BJ Farish, Profit Builders Consulting
Since the dawn of time (or at least since the creation of money), people have wanted to get as much money as quickly as they possibly could. Offers like “Make $1,000 by working just 4 hours a week” or “Make Enough Money to Quit Your Job Next Month” seem to on every utility pole at every intersection. If you can make $1,000 in just four hours, why wouldn’t you work forty hours and make $10,000 in a week? Each of these “opportunities of a lifetime” involve selling some type of product or service.
It has been said that there are two kinds of people in this world: those that know that they are in sales and those that don’t. Everyone is in sales. Parents have to sell their children on the benefits of eating vegetables (even if Brussels sprouts are nasty). Managers have to sell their employees on the benefits of working their fourth Saturday in a row. Sales people have to sell products and services to customers that are bombarded on a daily basis with phone calls, emails, and visits from twenty other sales representatives. If you have been selling for years, these tips will be reminders of things that you may have forgotten. If you are new to selling, these are tried and true techniques that will give you an edge over your competition. Here are six secrets to improving your ability to sell:
1. Relationships matter. You buy from people that you know, trust, and like. Your customers are no different. They want to purchase products and services from someone that understands their needs and appreciates their business. One national company that was fortunate to have several multi-million dollar accounts lost a key customer. Their pricing and service were excellent and unparalleled in the industry. When the decision maker at the corporate office was asked why they were shifting to a new supplier, he responded, “Your sales rep sold us a great system eight years ago. We haven’t seen him since we signed the contract. We went with someone that wanted our business.” A few visits from the salesperson over those eight years would have kept a huge customer happy.
2. Being consistent brings new business. Regular contact with your customers is a key to building relationships. I had a potential customer tell me, “We’ve been buying from your competitor for years. We’ll never buy from you.” That sounded like a challenge to me. I continued to call on that company and within a year, their supplier had a service failure. Because I had stayed in contact with them on a regular basis, they called me to see if I could get them the products that they needed. This customer that planned on never buying from me became one of my largest customers.
3. Solve a problem. Your customers have problems. As a salesperson, your job is to identify the problem and find a way to solve it with your product or service. A seasoned telecommunications salesperson related the story of one of his biggest prospects. He asked his customer, “What is the single biggest problem in your organization?” The response was quick: “We don’t have enough parking for our employees. What can you do about that?” The sales rep came up with a plan to set up a portion of his customer’s employees to work from home. He helped them avoid spending millions of dollars to erect a parking structure by offering a telecommuting solution. It is standard practice now, but in the mid-1980s when this deal was initiated, it was virtually unheard of. Be creative with solutions and your customers will reward you with their business.
4. Tell the truth. This secret is pretty self-explanatory. When my wife and I were building our home, we would stop in every couple of days. After one visit, I was excited to see that our deck was finished. The next day, I returned to the construction site and noticed that the deck was no longer there. I asked one of the workers what had happened. “I put the deck on incorrectly. We’ll have it fixed by the end of the week. It’s my fault and I’m not allowed to work on it unsupervised anymore.” I appreciated his candor. Rather than blaming someone else, he took responsibility for his mistake and shared how it and when it would be corrected.
5. Under promise and over-deliver. I used a dry cleaner for several years. After the first couple of visits, I never had to give my name or my telephone number. The store owners would see me walking from my car to their store and have my clothes already pulled and ready to go by the time I got inside. They had promised me next day service. “Your jacket will be ready by 5:00 pm tomorrow.” If I needed to pick my order up by 3:00 pm, it was ready. I found out later that they consistently had my order ready by noon the next day. My orders were always ready well before I needed them and were hanging on the rack by the cash register before I made it inside their establishment. They understood the importance of under promising and over delivering.
6. There are no shortcuts. Being a salesperson is a great way to make a living but it also involves a lot of hard work. Preparing for a one hour sales call can take four hours or more. Putting in the time to research your customers’ needs and finding solutions requires diligence, dedication, and patience. If you take off at noon every Friday, you are losing five hours per week of selling time. That is the equivalent of losing over thirty days of selling opportunities. Selling gives you the freedom to make exactly what you are worth. A highly successful friend of mine who started her career in direct sales often repeats these words, “If you do the things you are supposed to do when you are supposed to do them, then you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them.”
BJ Farish is the president of Profit Builders Consulting and provides new business development, sales training, and marketing services. You can reach him at bjfarish@profitbuildersusa.com, 253-929-9804, or www.profitbuildersusa.com.
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