As a sales professional, entrepreneur or business owner, being able to effectively establish new client partnerships and increase sales results quickly is vitally important. When sales are going great it can be very exciting! When you have a great month you are filled with sales motivation!

But, after a while, things slow down and you hit a wall. You find yourself chasing after prospects and wondering why it is taking so long to convert prospects into clients.

You’re stumped!

You start exploring different techniques and try to find a solution. But, no matter what you try, the results are the same and the sales cycle is a much longer process than what you would like.

So where do you turn when you are stuck in sales quicksand and can’t get your prospects to move forward?

Here’s How You Can Shorten The Sales Cycle and Win More Clients, Increase Sales and Profits with 2 Simple Strategies:

1. Determine, Uncover & Clarify Challenges
If a prospect is not clear about their challenges and the impact of these challenges, this will greatly slow down the entire sales cycle. This is because the client does not yet believe their challenge is significant enough to take action, and guess what, because of this, they won’t take action! It is a waste of time for you to give information before understanding their needs, goals, challenges and problems. You are presenting a “solution” to someone who doesn’t believe they have a “problem.”

So, what do you do about this? Ask a lot of questions! Ask open ended questions. Get curious and don’t assume you understand their problem or challenge no matter how long you have been in the industry. Dig in and really find out what is going on, and ask follow up questions that focus in on the greater impact of their challenges. Uncover the impact of the current challenges on both the organization and the individuals or groups you are selling to. Your questions will help them understand and verbalize that they have a challenge or problem. Now you have the information you need to explain how you can help solve their challenge.

If you find yourself talking more than 20% of the time during your sales meetings with prospects, stop yourself, and ask a question!

2. Always Set A Clear Next Step
Have you ever heard this before? “Thanks for your time today, your product looks great and we will get back to you soon.” Yet, you never hear back, and end up having to chase, follow up, and make multiple calls, send multiple emails to no avail. That is not fun for you, nor is it fun for the prospective client.

How do you solve this?

Well, if you are a great salesperson or great sales minded business owner, you don’t need to chase. You don’t need to pressure. You don’t need to persuade. Really. You need to set up a clear next step, and if your prospect is not ready to take the next step, they will tell you, and you will determine if they are a serious prospect or not, on the spot.

Remember, give your prospects an option to say, “No.” When you do this, all the pressure is taken off of you, and more importantly off of your prospect. That way, they do not feel like they are being “sold,” nor do they feel any pressure from you. Many of the sales coaching programs and sales coaches still are teaching the same old techniques developed decades ago that involve pressure and persuading. You do not need to do that anymore and it does not work.

Simply set up the next step at the end of your meetings. The next step could be a follow-up face to face meeting or a scheduled phone call for example. However, make sure the next step is moving the sales cycle forward and has a scheduled date, time, and location.

Map out your sales cycle and know what steps need to take place. Here is an example of a 5 step sales cycle: 1. Initial appointment, qualification, discovery, 2. Agreement to conduct an in-depth analysis, 3. Demonstration of service or product, 4. Contract review meeting, 5. Signed agreement.

At the end of each meeting, you should be setting up the next meeting and next actions. Explain the next steps you both will need to take to start working together. Map it out for them and provide them with a simple document that explains the next steps with clear time lines. Ask them to commit to the next steps along the way. Guess what happens if you do this effectively? You don’t need to “close” or persuade, the sale will be made, faster, naturally, and more effectively.

These 2 Sales Coaching tips will help you shorten your sales cycle and experience dramatically improved sales results. Don’t wait to make these changes, take action now, and make a commitment to yourself.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3425460

What do you do when you are just starting a business and need your first client? What if your existing clients have closed their purse strings? What if you just want to grow your business and the only way to do that is to get more buyers? In all three instances you have to find a way to get clients willing to pay for your services.

There are lots of ways to get new clients. Before you set out to do any of those things you need to prepare to effectively get more new clients. That means the first step to finding new clients for your business is to prepare your proposition for business.

When it comes to a proposition many people mistakenly think of a pitch for your services as your proposition. Unfortunately, when you approach a potential new client that way you position yourself as an ordinary sales person. Once you put yourself in that slot it spells BIG trouble for your efforts to get more clients and more sales.

As soon as you put yourself in the ordinary sales person slot you trigger the defenses of your potential new client. Once that potential client becomes defensive they get extremely skeptical and they don’t trust you. If they don’t trust you they will never hire you as their service provider.

No one hires a service provider they don’t trust. Trust is mandatory in any service business. Once you put your trustworthiness under question it’s a tall order to overcome trust issues.

The other problem with centering your proposition on your services is you immediately trigger objections.

That’s why you hear things like, “I already have a (insert whatever you do)”.

That’s why your certifications or level of experience come into question.

That’s exactly why these potential new clients think of you as an expense they can live without.

When you develop your proposition think about what the people who buy your services are looking to get, solve, or overcome. Put yourself in their shoes and look at it from their perspective. Imagine if a software sales rep called you and asked if you’d like to buy their CRM program.

What would you say? No.

Now imagine if that same sales rep called and asked if you would be interested in some ideas to close more sales. I’ll bet you’d say “yes”.

The first proposition was about a thing. The second proposition was about what the potential new client wants the thing only comes into play if they have a need waiting to get filled.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3064074

Are you as a Sales Leader or Manager facing any of these issues with your team?

Sales training often isn’t enough to produce long term change in your sales team.

Read this list to see if you might benefit from a sales coach:

Having trouble with:

• Generating new customers
• Increasing returns on marketing campaigns
• Failure to consistently achieve sales revenue goals
• Reduce ever-lengthening sales cycles
• Increasing costs of maintaining an effective and productive sales team
• Keeping the sales team motivated
• Shrinking margins – mounting pressure to discount
• Protecting and developing dwindling key accounts
• Increasing erosion of market share
• Increased failure to forecast revenue with any degree of accuracy
• Increased quantity and ferocity of competition and being outsold by competitors
• Limited product knowledge in the field
• Declining customer satisfaction and increasing customer expectation
• Global market rationalization Increasing number of stalled sales opportunities
• Finding and keeping good people
• Managing salespeople who plan and manage their time and territory by the seat of their pants – they don’t seem to have a game plan or a strategy as to how they are going to win
• Reducing the “last three weeks of a sales quarter” syndrome where everyone scrambles to try and pull in as much as they can to hit sales targets and we end up giving away our margin
• The current economic crises are impacting on sales team’s ability to consistently achieve their sales quotas
• Operating in markets where there seems to be more and more “gatekeepers”, buying committees, tendering processes, RFPs, etc., all of which prevent the sales team from gaining access to decision makers
• It is becoming increasingly tough to get to talk to the people who matter about what they really need and want when it comes to buying our services
• We struggle to speed up the buying process and close more deals more often
• Sales teams that needs constant motivating. They seem to lack passion, focus and commitment
• “Give us a quote” is a common response my salespeople are hearing. So what I find is that my salespeople often invest large chunks of their time putting together proposals for prospective clients that have no real intention of buying from them
• The message we hear from our customers over and over is, “Your competitor can do it faster and cheaper.” And they are right! How do we sell against that?
• No predictable and accountable selling process that moves the sale forward smoothly
• Constantly grappling with costly, wasteful, and ineffective sales practices (e.g., low yield on direct marketing, low close ratios, high costs for branding, tradeshows, or product development)
• I don’t have a clue where to start to get sales back on track!

If you or your sales team are facing any of these common issues, you should consider getting coached!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2231945