10 Awesome Ideas For Increasing Sales
By Robal Johnson
- Listen - Listen - Listen -- No, don't listen, hear them, be allocentric, focus on them. Seek first to understand, and then be understood.
- Find something about each customer to reinforce what you generally admire or like about that person. Say it with emotion and don't wait for a thank you -- drop it on them and then change the subject by asking them a question about themselves.
- Do small things for your prospects or customers -- like remembering a birthday or an anniversary -- or write them a thank you after a call. Little things add up to big things like relationships and more orders.
- Organize your time and territory. Call on those that have "A" potential or are A customers. Remember the 80/20 rule -- 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. Use the dual system frequently in organizing your calls.
- Bring your top managers, customer service manager, accounts receivable manager, delivery person, technical people, etc. to call on your customers. If "Big Blue" can do it, so can you. This idea belongs to Jim Meisenheimer, a great sales person's consultant. It's called "Platooning".
- While you are making the call with one of the above, find a way to excuse yourself for a minute and make sure the person you brought with you "tells the customer the positive things you have said about them (the customer) on the way over". This is called third party pairing and will do more for the salesperson than anything the salesperson does.
- Prepare, Prepare, Prepare -- Know the objective of the call, strategies and tactics and don't go there without preparation or a definite purpose (not always to get an order).
- Be enthusiastic, emotionally responsive about your company, your product, your competition and yourself.
- Find out what your prospect likes best about your competitors and what he would change about them that would make them more effective. Guess what you talk about when you hear the answer?
- Be honest, have high integrity, be sincere, be humorous, be self-deprecating, be humble, be responsive and be persistent -- and remember what I call the salesperson's "Bill of Rights".
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