Whenever I found myself in a slump or things just didn’t seem to work the answer always seem to be in the basics. A great chef, master carpenter or champion athlete always seems to have a mastery of the basics. So let’s take a look at what this idea of selling really amounts to.

First: Sales is two people, a customer and salesperson, communicating with each other. The customer is communicating their needs, wants and results required. The sales person is trying to understand these so the issue can be solved by their product or service. Just think of this as two people getting together to help each other improve their situations.

Second: Customers purchase products and services for the results they provide. This can be a real challenge for sales people that have been indoctrinated that sales are all about their product. This means saving time and money, preventing problems, solving problems or creating opportunities; that’s what the customer is looking for. Your product or service is simply a way or method to get the results, so salespeople need to communicate these results to customers instead of the product.

Third: Getting into new accounts, selling new and existing accounts and servicing accounts is all about two people communicating. Getting into a new account is about communicating results that the customer could achieve and communicating it in their language. The selling part is listening, questioning for clarity and communicating the results. Servicing the account is continued communications about the results to date and additional results needed.

Fourth: If we take the selling process, the objection response process or presentation part of selling and take the words “selling”, “objections” and “presentation” away, guess what we end up with. The “Selling” process becomes a communication process that is used every day. The “objection” response becomes a conflict resolution process and “presentation” becomes story telling.

Take this idea of communications instead of selling and see what happens to your productivity. Ask yourself what the potential results of your product could be from your customer’s perspective. Now think about how that could best be communicated to your customers.

We’ll explore each step of the sales process and how communications fits into it in future segments. For now, just think communications.

Here are a few tips on how to get to know your product better:

1. Brochures and Literature: Obtain as much written information as you possibly can on your product. Read up on the features and benefits your product offers until you know them by heart. Keep reading until you can roll every detail off the tip of your tongue including any fee’s associated with the product. Also, keep your brochures handy, open them up in front of your customer and go over the details of your product step by step. Customers love visuals.

2. Role Play: Role playing is a fun way to get to know your products. You will need two of your associates to help you out with this. You play the salesman, have one of your co-workers play the customer, and have one of your co-worker’s critiquing you. Have your co-worker playing the customer ask as many questions about the product as he can possibly think of. When you are finished, go over the sales session with the person that critiqued you. Also, take turns playing each character, playing the customer can give you a great perspective on their point of view. Think about it, how often are you the customer when it comes to buying your companies products? Never.

3. Use the Product: This is perhaps the best way to get to know a product. To actually own, have, and use the product, not only gives you the ability to know it inside and out, you will also be able to tell your customer that you have and use the product, and how wonderful you think it is. This will tell the customer how much you believe in the product and that you have confidence in it.

One of the worst mistakes a sales person can possibly make is to be unprepared. Take some time out of every day to understand your products/services better. Make learning about them fun with the role playing, and concentrate most on the products you know least about.

Remember, the more you know about your product/service, the easier it will be to explain their usage and benefits to potential clients, and sales is a direct outcome of such discussions.

Why does this keep happening? You put in effort, find pain and uncover reasons for them to do business with you, show them what you can do-and then the opportunity evaporates in an instant.

The problem here is one of sales process. If you find yourself disappointed again and again by prospects who are eager to hear what you can do for them, but at that critical moment announce they do not have the means to pay for it, let me suggest that your process steps are out of order. You’ve brought forward your solution too soon. You’ve invested too much energy on this prospect without first finding out their budget.

This common circumstance occurs typically because of two reasons. First, the sales person does not have a formal selling process, and therefore does not have steps or stages in any particular order. Having such a selling process would reduce stress on themselves and systematically increase the odds of a successful outcome. Second, the sales person has been taught (often early in life, perhaps by a parent) that bringing up the subject of money is impolite. While perhaps well-intentioned, this taught premise is a bad one for success in sales.

The budget question has to be raised with the prospect before demonstration of any possible solution. Uncovering the prospect’s budget is not impolite: it is a necessary and important component of the qualification process. Imagine someone walking into an automobile dealership and saying to the first sales person he sees, “I want to buy a car.” Are you already starting to see the problem here? The price of cars ranges considerably. A consultative sales professional can doctor for pain, find out underlying issues, prescribe a solution-and totally miss the prospect’s budget. “Yes, Mister Prospect, I have a lovely Lamborghini that will give you that feeling of youth, vitality and power that you’ve been craving!” “Amazing! That sounds fantastic!” “It’s only $455,000.” “…Uhh…gee. There’s no way I can afford that.”

Prior to working on solutions, bring up the budget question. If you’re nervous or uncomfortable about discussing money, do it like this: at the start of your conversation, say, “Misses Prospect, I have a minor problem I’m hoping you can help me with. You see, I always get a little uncomfortable when it comes time to talk about money. When we get to that point, will you help me? I want to make sure that, if it turns out that I do have a solution to offer you, we’re on the same page with what you can afford. I’d hate to talk with you about something inadequate or too much for your budget. When we get to that point, can you help me talk with you about that?” The prospect will almost always move to rescue you, and say of course. Naturally, if you’re comfortable with the subject of money, you don’t have to do this-just bring the topic up at the right time. And when is that time?

Let’s say you have been doctoring for pain, have some, and are thinking about possible ways you can help the prospect. You have a small, medium and large model for handling the prospect’s problem, with respective prices. Now, before investing the energy in demonstrating the potential solution(s), you can gently bring up the budget question. “Mister Prospect…I don’t suppose you’ve set aside any kind of budget for solving this issue, have you?”

Or: “Miss Prospect, I think I have something for you. However, we offer a range of potential solutions. I’m not sure which one is right for you…I have an idea, though. Would it be okay if I shared with you the investment range of each solution, and you can let me know which you’re most comfortable with?”

If you’re a more direct person, you could even say something like, “John, I have to be frank with you. These items aren’t cheap. Before I explain to you how they’ll solve your problem, could I go ahead and share the rate with you and you can let me know if that works for you?”

Remember, uncovering the budget is nothing more than another solid step in the qualification process. You want to know whether or not the prospect can afford your product or service. If they can’t, why would you want to waste your time?

Now, I’m not suggesting that you be a jerk and roughly steer those who cannot afford your help out the door. While consultative selling professionals do not give out free information as unpaid consulting, in many cases it can be a very good thing to educate people who don’t have it in their budget to retain your services. People tell other people -a few people, it’s true, but they do tell some-about positive experiences. This can directly and swiftly lead to qualified referrals. I’ve recently seen this happen in the field of wedding videography.

Prospect A discovers Superstar Videographer’s rates are way out of their league, but because he bothered to spend the time educating them nicely, they quickly referred other people to him-and those new prospects could afford his time. What’s important to keep in mind here, however, is that Superstar Videographer rapidly qualified Prospect A out, and while he did help them, he didn’t get himself all worked up about offering a beautiful and expensive potential solution, investing that time and energy, getting his hopes for a project up, and becoming extremely disappointed when it turned out (as it would have) at the last minute that they couldn’t afford his services.

The time to uncover the prospect’s budget and ability to pay you is after you’ve doctored for pain, and before you show them any kind of solution.

Author: Jason Kanigan is a consultative sales training professional originally from Vancouver, BC, Canada, and now based out of Wilmington, NC, USA. His background includes selling both tangible and intangible products & services, and work with clients across North America.

Reference: http://EzineArticles.com/6032926

Let’s talk about the intent of your sales process for a moment. Are you trying to push your prospects into buying from you, or pull them into buying from you?

In my opinion, both those approaches are wrong. Selling based on features and benefits results in trying to make the prospect buy from you. Whether you attempt to:

* Push them into buying from you, by forcing your values of the features and benefits of your product or service on them, or
* Pull them into buying from you, by trying to attract them with those same values, and hoping they will match up with their own values, and you will have an ineffective and inefficient sales process.

If you’ve read some of my articles on resume writing and the job hunting process, you’ll note a similarity here. The employer does not hire you (and the prospect does not buy from you) for your reasons. They buy for their reasons.

So if you can’t push and you can’t pull in the sales process…what can you do? This can be a very disturbing question for salespeople. I was in technical sales for several years, and worked with features and benefits selling because that’s all I knew there was. Here’s the kicker: I didn’t know why in some situations I’d get the order, and in others I wouldn’t.

Talk about a weird situation! Here I was, supposedly experienced, knowledgeable about the products and services offered by the companies I worked for…and I had no idea why things worked some times and didn’t others.

Here are some key indicators of sales confusion:

* No documented sales process
* No sales coaching
* Doing a great deal of quoting to prospects who then disappear
* Consistently getting squeezed on price.

Trying to push or pull my prospects into buying from me, based on features and benefits, resulted in this situation! Recognize any of these indicators in your own work?

Yes, there is a way to improve your sales efficiency and effectiveness and at the same time eliminate these sales confusion indicators. Remember from the last entry, customers buy from you for their own reasons, not yours! So how do you find out their reasons? Ask Them.

And that process, the systematic and effective questioning of prospects, is the real key to sales success. It’s something different in sales, and hardly anybody does it well or at all. I’ll bet 95% of salespeople have no idea, just like I used to think, that there is another way than features and benefits selling. It takes time and practice to learn. So this is the powerful alternative to trying to push or pull your prospect over the “passion fence” to buy from you: help them find out their very own reasons. Consultative Selling is what it’s called, and it will completely change how you go about the sales process.

Another take-away thought: If they say it, it’s true.

Author: Jason Kanigan is a consultative sales training professional originally from Vancouver, BC, Canada, and now based out of Wilmington, NC, USA. His background includes selling both tangible and intangible products & services, and work with clients across North America.

Reference: http://EzineArticles.com/5875932

1. Conduct a regular sales meeting with your team

In this line of business, you don’t see your team eight hours a day. They are busy chasing those accounts and closing business deals. Therefore, make sure that you schedule a regular meeting. This is the best option for you to ask how their days were, how the sales call went. This should be as a team and also individually. Meeting with one of your sales people should be a planned event. The more quality time you spend with them, the better they will perform. Sales coaching and development is one of the fast growing areas. Why because it works and can demonstrate measurable results.

2. Have an interesting and worth while reward system

Managing sales people includes creating a reward system that’s delivers its outcome. That is to motivate your sales staff and reward them for the performance and effort they put in. More than the basic compensation, along with development what keeps sales people is the kind of perks/rewards that they can receive. This could be anything from the number of day’s holiday. Staff discounts. flexible working hours, upgraded IT equipment. Think about the kind of market you are in. What age group are your sales people? Increased pensions might not be important to a 25 year old though holiday vouchers certainly will be.

In cooperation with your Human Resources team, you might be able to come up with a reward system that is intrinsically equitable and externally competitive. With this in place, you are sure that you’ll stand a much better chance of keeping your quality sales people

3. Keep performance evaluation transparent

Everyone in your team must understand how they are evaluated and should feel that they are fairly rated. In managing sales people, you need to show them that their performance is transparently being measured. This way, all of you are on the same page as to how you draw the line between the top and average sellers. Understanding the evaluation process is motivation enough for them.

Author: Denise Oyston is an award winning online sales and marketing consultant and closet geek! Who now helps companies dominate their local market by attracting all the clients they want. She is a thought leader on how to leverage the power of the Internet for small businesses. She lives in the lake District in England. Denise Oyston is an industry thought leader for sales managers. With over 25 years experience in sales and three national awards to her credit she is passionate about helping sales managers succeed in the new business economy. For a free hour long Audio recording with guaranteed success strategies go to: www.SalesManagerMastery.com
To read her blog for New Sales Managers go to: www.ManagingSalesPeople.com

Reference: http://EzineArticles.com/1875894