Why is a Salesperson like a Refrigerator?

Let me ask, have you heard the joke about the light being on inside the fridge? Top sales professionals, like fridges, are always "on".

Let me ask, have you heard the joke about the light being on inside the fridge? You know, where you were asked to open the door of the fridge and voila, the light was on. Now I know you know the light only comes on when you open the door. But the refrigerator is always on! It has to be to do its job.

Top sales professionals, like fridges, are always "on". This is especially true for those who need to prospect to find new clients.

One individual I know worked many years as an electrician for a major U.S. automobile manufacturer. At the suggestion of a good friend, he decided to pursue a sales career in the financial services industry. This was a pretty major change in vocation; he went from dealing with watts and volts to handling people’s investment and insurance needs.

Was he a success? Well, in his first full year he shot up to becoming the top rep in North America for his company. To prove he was not a one hit wonder, he repeated this feat his second year, and yes, the third year too! To this day, he remains one of the top reps with his company.

So how did an electrician, now a salesman, become so successful? If you ask this modest man, he will say "It's simple really, you do the best you can for your client, and you always have to be on."

To meet this gentleman, you would know someone with an insatiable appetite for learning. He wanted to know everything he could about financial planning and the products he represented. He was a keen student of his sales manager and a constant observer of the successful reps around him. He was a sponge.

One day, I asked him what he meant when he said being "on". He told me "To be successful I have to meet a lot of new people. I have to be able to tell them quickly what it is I do and how I can help them."  He went on to say, "I look at everyone as an opportunity." "When I go to the super-market I look for the longest line and stand in it, I know I’ll have a chance to strike up a conversation with the person in front of me, and the person who comes behind me." Talk about captive audience.

I marvelled at one story he told me about when he went shopping for a bed cover and pillows. After he completed his purchase he thought, "I've done business with you, you should do business with me." He proceeded to book an appointment with the sales clerk who had sold him his pillows. He also asked if she would introduce him to her manager and the other sales clerks. He left the store that day with five appointments booked in his day timer.

Why? Because he was always "on".

Top sales people maintain a laser like focus combined with a strong desire to succeed.

Don't be as cold as a refrigerator, but do think about being "on" all the time.

Summary:
Top sales people maintain a laser like focus combined with a strong desire to succeed.

What Not To Do With Your Leads

Anyone that works in sales knows just how important it is to have lead sources to keep your pipeline filled. But it is not only how we obtain the leads that is important, it’s what we do with them once we get them.

One of the most critical mistakes a sales person can make once they receive a lead, is not acting on it immediately.

I once worked with a guy who belonged to a networking group, the soul purpose of his joining this group was to receive leads. This group wasn’t cheap either, it cost him $500.00 annually to be a member.

He would come back from his weekly meeting with a lead in his hand and pin it to the bulletin board above his desk, and there it would stay until he noticed it a few days later.

It drove me nuts!

In sales, and it does not matter what you are selling, every day is critical! At any moment, your competitor can call your customer and walk away with the business.

Another common mistake I have witnessed countless times, is contacting the lead in a timely fashion, but having absolutely no enthusiasm once you contact the customer.

When you call a potential customer, smile as you speak to them, the customer will pick up on the inflection in your voice and respond to it.

Don’t act as though the customer is a burden to you, and that you are doing them a favor.

Remember, you are the expert when it comes to your product, don’t expect your customer to know everything, if they did, they wouldn’t need you. So make sure they know that you are happy to help them.

Another no-no when following up on a lead is to yawn, sneeze, or cough into the receiver of the phone. I understand that these are normal and common bodily functions, but there is no excuse for doing it directly into the receiver, this is a great way to loose the sale, the yawn alone will most likely make the customer hang up the phone.

Always put yourself in the shoes of the customer. Imagine meeting someone for the first time over the telephone and your conversation is being interrupted by yawns, and sneezes, I doubt you would be gung-ho about doing business with them

Following up with a lead and then putting that person on hold is another common mistake I have come across. Although your reasons for putting your customer on hold may seem very important to you, your customer will find it to be annoying regardless of your reasons. So be sure to set aside a time to call your lead when you know the interruptions will be few.

So the next time you receive a lead, act on it immediately, let your customer know that you are happy to work with them, speak clearly and avoid interruptions, and watch your sales productivity increase!

Summary:
Anyone that works in sales knows just how important it is to have lead sources to keep your pipeline filled. But it is not only how we obtain the leads that is important, it’s what we do with them once we get them.

Understanding Sales Recruitment Services

Undoubtedly, employees are the backbone of any business! Regardless of the size and the renown of your company, the efficiency, profitability and longevity of your business are direct proportional with the professionalism, seriousness and implication of your employees. In order to achieve and maintain a solid and prosperous business, you have to make sure that you are surrounded by loyal, trusty, dedicated and hard-working employees. This rule is even more prominent in marketing, as every single action of your employees can trigger a pronounced increase or decrease in your profits! Thus, during the process of recruiting new members for your business, you should account for a wide range of personal traits and abilities in your future employees.

Apart from a satisfactory professional training level, your employees should have good communicational and interaction skills, good negotiation abilities, good decisional skills and so on. These traits can only be revealed during job interviews and testing periods. Elaborate individual evaluations are very time-consuming and few business owners can afford the luxury to personally assist in the process of recruiting new employees. The solution is to either assemble a reliable recruitment team that can take care of the recruitment process in your place, or better yet, ask for the help of a professional recruitment service.

Lots of businesses are nowadays turning to Sales Recruitment Services in order to find well-trained professionals with minimal time and effort. There is a wide range of reliable Sales Recruitment Services on the World Wide Web that can take care of all the aspects of employee recruitment in exchange for a previously established fee. If you simply don’t have the time to personally supervise the process of employee recruitment, online Sales Recruitment Services are best solution to your problem!

Once you have requested the help of a certain Sales Recruitment Service, you will be asked about the nature of your business and the exact profile of the sales persons you need in order to complete your business team. According to your instructions, the service will then take care of every single aspect of the recruitment process, frequently providing you with feed-back regarding the progress of the recruitment program. You will quickly start to receive appliances from well-trained professionals in the branch, allowing you to choose the sales persons that best fit your business. You also have the freedom to access the database of contacts at any time, in order to find the best candidates for your offered job vacancies.

Sales Recruitment Services are effective means of finding the most suitable candidates for your business. With the help of a professional online Sales Recruitment Service, you can enter in contact with a wide range of suitable candidates with a minimal investment of time and effort. Whether you are looking for a salesman, advertiser, telemarketer or a sales executive, territory manager, business development manager or sales director, online Sales Recruitment Agencies can quickly fulfill your requests!

Summary:
Undoubtedly, employees are the backbone of any business! Regardless of the size and the renown of your company, the efficiency, profitability and longevity of your business are direct proportional with the professiona

The Secret Ingredient That Creates The Sales

Copyright 2006 Karl Stadler

The internet has become a huge mall with little ally ways and secret entrances all over the place. There are a huge amount of sales websites all vying for the same attention. Indeed a highly competitive market.

Marketing skills and writing have become more and more important to the marketing of your products and will become increasingly so as the internet increases in size.

Don't be under the illusion that now is to late, there are millionaires made every day and there will still be made twenty years from now.

Advertising your site and product is the small part of marketing, the secret ingredient is in the pitch, whether a landing page, opt in or sales page.

Funny enough it has been the same for as long as you possibly can remember, from the first radio commercials, print commercials up to the latest in HDTV, it has not changed, what has changed is the jargon, the language and the way people perceive the world around them on a daily basis.

The way you write your sales pitch, where you place which word, how long must it be, what do you say, how do you say it, what guarantees do you give, how good do you make it sound, what is the perceived value, what does the buyer get, why or why not ad bonus products, what about the price.

The buzzword niche has now been around for a while, and in most places you will be taught that to get good business you must find your niche. For most this is easier said than done, think about it while you walk the dog, it  may help but it wont resolve the issue at hand.

Many new internet marketers make the same mistake, including me, when you start out, you want to sell everything to everyone, make millions of dollars and retire on the beach watching whatever you enjoy watching.

Many just throw in the towel after a while and that depends where they can push their patience to, others last a bit longer and as these leave new recruits eager to do the same join the party.

A vicious circle indeed and it seems that just a few at the top are making it. Many well known marketers are making it, but there are many more who remain quiet and anonymous that are raking in millions. It is up to you if you want to be well known or not, but use the right secret ingredient and you will be raking in the cash.

So for how long am I still going to be ranting on about the secret, or maybe it is my sales ploy, who knows?

Well lets let the cat out of the bag and not keep you in suspense any longer. You cant buy the secret ingredient. You are it. You just need to develop yourself using the right information.

What this means is that your product, book, sales letter or email needs to be unique to yourself. That is how your product will stand out from the rest. Just duplicating someone else's work might bring you  some success but the real success lies in you. Like any game before you can get those tricky moves going you need to do the basics right. Learn the basics and the rest will follow.

Do not believe that you are not a writer. For some it is harder work than for others, but if you intend to be a successful internet marketer and have those vacations at the beach, every moment spent will be worth your while.

Summary:
Advertising your site and product is the small part of marketing, the secret ingredient is in the pitch.

Setting Realistic Goals

When we make a sale, or take one step closer to meeting our goal, we are overcome with a felling of achievement which motivates us to sell more.

I’m sure that anybody who is reading this article has been in the situation where they may have been given unobtainable goals from one of their bosses, sales manager’s, or some higher up somewhere in the company.

When goals are given that are unrealistic, the mission is doomed from the beginning. It immediately gives a feeling of despair to the sales team, which can be devastating to morale.

The sales team will do their duty and work as hard as they can to obtain the goals, but when they fall short, they will have feelings of failure, and will be reluctant to move on.

Simply stated, unrealistic goals, take the fun out of selling.

A personal story . . .

During my years in the banking industry, I managed a sales team in a small branch inside of a grocery store. This is what is known as In-store banking. It was estimated that seven thousand people came through the grocery store where my branch was located on a weekly basis.

With that statistic, my sales team was given a goal of opening up six checking accounts per day, among other things.

This would be a monthly goal of one hundred and eighty checking accounts per month. To me and my team, this was highly unrealistic.

Then, In-store banking was brand new to the banking industry, and these goals were being handed down by people who never once stepped foot in an in-store branch.

Please understand, I am not bitter about this, I am just stating the facts, and believe this to be an on going problem with companies.

This problem works both ways. Sometimes the goals being handed down are not enough, and a sales team will fall short of what their potential could be.

Needless to say, my sales team never met their daily, weekly, or monthly goals. We did however, fight the good fight and manage to hold our own. But morale was never what it should have been.

Every six months my team and I would attend the semiannual sales rally, where we would sit and watch as the other branches so proudly accepted their awards for meeting their goals. It pained me to watch my team walk away empty handed knowing that they worked so hard.

My point is, when goals are being set, they need to be realistic and obtainable. The more you or your team reach their goal the more motivated they will be.

Once you are reaching your goal at a steady pace, challenge yourself or your team, and raise the bar. Challenge them to reach higher on a daily basis


Keep in mind, when you raise the bar, keep this new goal realistic as well, you don’t want to become over confident and put your goals out of reach.

Summary:
When we make a sale, or take one step closer to meeting our goal, we are overcome with a felling of achievement which motivates us to sell more.