For real people selling real products in the real world
It’s now late December and either you are on vacation or in the office catching up on your paperwork. Most customers are doing the same, so now is an excellent time to sit down and set your goals for the coming year. Here are some goal setting tips for you…
Top Down. If you have objectives [...]
A festive salesman hard at work! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to our readers…
I recently came across this survey undertaken by Win New Customers on the freshbusinessthinking.com site. I was stunned by the responses from UK small businesses (I’m guessing small businesses in other countries aren’t much different). Of the participants…
83% said they needed more telephone sales skills to grow their business.
73% said they needed more face-to-face selling [...]
You’ll remember that in Analysis Paralysis – Part I we talked about what happens when paperwork, reports and forecasts get out of hand. The process can be quite insidious with the request sneaking up on you disguised as “an information request” or a “quick summary”. We also gave some ideas on what sales managers can [...]
You’ve worked with the customer for months, closed the big deal, even enjoyed the adulation and now the agreement is with legal. A month later the agreement is still with legal and you’re getting nervous. A conference call is arranged with the customer’s lawyers to go over it. Someone is off sick, so it gets [...]
We’ve all been there haven’t we? The boss has to present at the board meeting and needs a special report from his managers so that he’s got something to fill his 10 minute slot. This ususally is requested with the minimum of notice, despite that fact that the board meeting has been scheduled for months. [...]
Tonight I was happening to be vegging out in front of the TV (sorry… call planning for tomorrow) with a glass of Valpolicello Repasso. The programme happened to be a thing called “Antiques Roadshow”, which I’m sure most Brits will be familiar with. The debaniar presenter was holding forth about the exquisite nature of the [...]
You will always have a problem selling if your customers don’t trust you. In fact if you are selling products that have a long sales cycle or managing major accounts you will be dead in the water without trust. Here are five ways to help build trust…
Have the customers best interests at heart. If your [...]
Many years ago a colleague of mine told me that he thought I was more of a farmer than a hunter, which he said was fine. At the time I didn’t agree because being a hunter sounded a lot more macho, active and plain fun.
With the benefit of hindsight I think he was probably right. [...]
What does your job title matter?