When I started out in sales I didn’t worry about a website. The Internet hadn’t been invented. I relied on my listening and presentation skills, on my personality and knowledge, on my marketing ability and how well I could get a customer to relate to me and trust me. I was able to get clients by being able to listen, to watch their body language, and hear their hesitancy in their tone of voice. Sometimes it would take several calls, many conversations and a lot of contact with someone while I earned their trust. Now I have a partner in that process—the Internet. Only now I don’t have the advantage of the personal touch. A potential client or customer can find my page, scan it for 10 seconds or ten minutes, make a decision about me without ever meeting me and I never get a second chance to make the right impression. If they don’t find what they’re looking for in a few mouse clicks, they’re gone. Many of them make a decision based on the colors, the graphics, or a few paragraphs of copy. If that doesn’t click with them, or if they don’t find exactly what they’re looking for, they click away and they’re gone. I heard someone complaining a few weeks ago about not having the technology to “keep up with the big boys.”

Frustrating isn’t it? And it doesn’t seem fair. Salespeople think, “If they’d just call me, email me, give me a chance, I know I’ve probably got what they’re looking for.” We complain about not having the best website, the coolest toys or best tweets. The fact is, before the Internet our customers, or potential customers, did the same thing with our ads, brochures and fliers. They glanced at them and kept them, or tossed them. They decided on whether or not to call based on the content they saw, or a commercial they watched. Maybe we didn’t have social media, but we had the water cooler. The technology has changed, but people haven’t. Don’t blame your lack of customers or clients on technology. It plays a part in sales, but people are still people. They respond to people—not to the technology.

Quote:
“Life is not fair; get used to it.” ~Bill Gates

You may not consider yourself a sales person, yet you do depend on selling your services or products to make a living. Freelancers—such as artists, writers and many others who sell their talents and art (music, writing, crafts etc) often tend to be shy and struggle with how to sell themselves. After all, their primary business is what they create or do, not selling or sales. A few tips for those who shy away from selling, but need to sell to survive:

• Stop apologizing for selling or asking for the sale. Unless you’re trying to cheat someone, it’s perfectly legitimate to offer your services or products for money. People expect to pay for items they want.
• Let your prospect, client or customer do most of the talking. Listening is a better sales skill than anything else you can do. If you don’t understand something they say, ask for a clarification. Listening takes the pressure off of you to “perform” or pitch, and you’re more likely to make a sale because you’re answering the customer’s questions and solving their “problems” by providing the right answers.
• Be yourself. All you have to do is be honest, be positive and be relaxed. You don’t have to pretend to be something you’re not. Just be authentic.
• Avoid negative self-talk. Don’t think about what can go wrong. Focus on what can go right. Remember that someone saying “No,” to your services or products isn’t being personal; so don’t take it that way. Focus on the next client.

Quote:
“Everyone is shy — it is the inborn modesty that makes us able to live in harmony with other creatures and our fellows. Achievement comes not by denying shyness but, occasionally, by setting it aside and letting pride and perspiration come first.” ~ Kirkpatrick Sale

image compliments of spanaut

New salespeople are a lot like kids at Christmas, looking for the “perfect present.” Just as kids think the perfect gift will make their holiday perfect, salespeople often think there’s one or sometimes two or three secret sales tricks that once they learn that will make sales “easy” for them. If they can just learn “the trade secrets,” or how to close a sale, or how to do this or that, then somehow things will magically get easy. Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but there is no “secret” to success unless that secret is, “work at it.” Sure, techniques and insight and people skills can make a tough job easier, but even the pros have to work at it. We’re all always perfecting our game, learning new techniques, and honing our talk, our listening skills and getting to know our customers and their problems better. As much as I’d love to promise you a rose garden, I can’t. I can teach you how to plant, tend, feed, weed and develop your skills and techniques, but ultimately the only proven path to sales success is practice.

Quote:
“Nobody’s a natural. You work hard to get good and then work hard to get better. It’s hard to stay on top.” ~ Paul Coffey

image compliments of Chronon6.97

People tell me that dog training is hard. I disagree. Mine had me well trained within a week or so about when to feed them, give them treats, pet them, and walk them and all the usual stuff about sleeping on the furniture. Sure, I resisted, but in the end they mostly had their way. Funny right? But it’s true. We’re easily trained, not by others, but by how we allow ourselves to be treated by others—even our own pets. Whether your clients treat you with respect or distain, you’re the one who taught them how you expect to be treated and you’re the only one who can change that.

If they cancel on you at the last minute, or stand you up, or ignore you, and all you do is smile and nod and reassure them it’s “okay,” you’re sending the message that your time is not important and that’s how they’ll continue to treat you, as if your time is not important. If however you set boundaries, and pleasantly but firmly call attention to the fact that if they’re not able to make a meeting you’d appreciate a call, they learn how you expect to be treated and will treat you that way. Respect your customers, but expect respect as well. People rarely buy any product or service from someone they don’t respect and who doesn’t respect themselves.

Quote:
“How you look and treat yourself teaches everyone how to handle and treat you.” ~Anonymous

I don’t know about you, but I love a good magic trick. I love being caught up in the impossibility of the trick. I love trying to figure out “how they did it.” I love the surprise, the laughter and feeling amazed. There’s just something captivating about magic. I even spent some time learning how to do a few tricks that I could use to entertain prospects and customers. What I learned along the line was that all magic has one thing in common with sales. Focus. People can only focus on one thing at a time. So when the magician is waving his hands around, fluttering his fingers and touching his head, pocket, wand or hat he’s subtly creating motion—which is what we’re hard wired to focus on. Studies show that no matter how good we think we are at multi-tasking, in reality we can only do one thing well at a time. It has something to do with running from lions, tigers and bears and maybe dinosaurs—you know—anything big enough to eat us.

What’s that got to do with sales? Again, focus. Get people to pay attention to your presentation not just by clicking the advance on your slide show or flipping the page in your notebook. Point to features. Get the customer to handle or touch the product. Big motions, not short, small motions attract attention. Use your whole arm, not just your index finger. Move around. You don’t have to do an imitation of a windmill throughout the presentation; but remember people are hardwired to pay attention to motion and to focus on it. Find a way to use motion when making critical points in your presentation. See if it doesn’t make a difference. It’s almost like magic!

Quote:
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” ~ Roald Dahul

image compliments of Hryck

Police departments call them “ride-alongs.” Other companies and schools call them “shadows,” but whatever you call it, there’s a lot to be said for just going along for the ride and watching an expert sell. Whenever you get the chance, outside your training for instance, to go along and watch a peer, or the top salesperson, or anyone in sales in any industry perform their pitch, do it. If you can’t find anyone who will let you watch them, then be a customer. Go to a car dealer. Talk to an insurance person. Let other people practice their pitch on you. What do you like about their style or approach? What do you hate? How does it feel to be in the customer’s shoes? Do this for items you’re seriously considering buying (cars, major appliances, insurance etc) and things you’d only dream of buying: a fishing boat, a Mercedes, a $5,000 watch). Watch or experience enough pitches and you’ll begin to notice the patterns, the pacing and the pitch of the experts. When you’re on a tight budget, or no budget, sometimes it’s the best training you can get. The idea is not to be like everyone else though. The idea is to figure out what no one else is doing that you can do, or could do better—and then do it.

Quote:
“If you spend too much time being like everybody else, you decrease your chances of coming up with something different.” ~ Robert Ornstein, PhD

Life is risky. The greater the risk, the greater the payoff, or the greater the loss. Since most of us hate loss, we tend toward “safer risks.” It’s less risky to introduce yourself to someone you’ve met at an industry conference or function than to come up with a great solution and call a CEO of a Fortune 500 company in hopes of pitching him the idea—yet it happens all the time. As I tell people far too often, “What have you got to lose? It doesn’t work out, you’re not that much worse off right?”

If you’ve read my book, “Listen First, Sell Later,” you know I took a huge risk (Well, it seemed huge at the time) and it paid off handsomely—kick starting a new career in marketing as well letting me do what I loved—photography. There are times to “play it safe” and times to uncork all the stops and go for it. You’re the only one who can decide what the timing for each is, but I encourage you to take risks whenever you can so you (1) learn how to judge when and what to risk and (2) so you experience the thrill of risking big and winning big, (3) so you see that even when you risk big and lose big you really do recover. You don’t have to fail to learn. I’ve learned a lot of things by not failing! There’s a lot to be said for learning through success. As a matter of fact, just as there are things you can only learn by failing, there are also things you can only learn through risking and succeeding.

Quote:
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all.” ~ J.K. Rowling

A explanation about the photo.
In looking for a photo to go with this post, I came upon this one of me taken shortly after soloing in this actual plane back in the 70′s. (Yes, that is how we dressed and the hair style I chose back then.) The photo reminded me that J.K. Rowling is absolutely correct in her point about the futility of living cautiously. Don’t let living a life without risk keep you from spreading your own wings and soaring. You’ll miss seeing things you can’t see from a place without risk.

I don’t have to read the logo on their shirts to know that the guys dressed all in brown are UPS delivery guys. When they say, “We’re starting a new service over the holidays that can save you money on shipping, would you like to hear about it?” they don’t sweat my answer. I’ll say “Yes,” or “No” and they nod and go back to doing what they do the other 99% of their day—delivering or picking up packages. They aren’t really salespeople, although they occasionally sell a service by default—I need some thing, they provide a solution. The same is true with waitresses and waiters, the guy at the Post Office, the kid at the drive-through window, or even the customer service rep who answers the phone to take my order when I can’t get through online. These are some of the professions or jobs where everyone doing sales is just doing a job. We know they’re selling, what they’re selling and we go through the motions of buying from them because they’re selling what we need. Think of retail stores and your local mechanic. They sell. We buy.

But have you ever had one of those retail robot type salespeople step out of character and treat you like a real person? They may laugh, tell a joke, give you a genuine smile and express real interest in you. They may comment on your car, pet your dog, and remember your name. They interact with you and enjoy it. They’re animated. They participate in the sale. They stand out. They truly care. Maybe they’re wearing their name on their shirt and making minimum wage, but they’re loving what they do and it shows. You remember them, or even ask their name so you can buy from them the next time you’re in the store. Here’s a tip: They’re not going to be asking if you “want fries with that?” forever. If you’re a sales manager, get their name. Engage. Watch them. Better yet—hire them. They’re the people who go on to make great salespeople.

Quote:
“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” ~ Judy Garland

If your sales letters aren’t bringing in queries and responses, maybe you’re not writing them right. People hate to be sold, but love to buy. So make sure your letters do these seven things:

1. Write sales letters to generate leads, not to sell your product. Just because it’s called a “sales letter,” doesn’t mean you sell with it. Your goal should be to generate a lead, or interest in what you have to say or sell, not to sell the product.
2. Address your target audience. Don’t make a general pitch to a general audience. If you’re trying to reach shipping, write to the shipping department, not the marketing staff.
3. Make it personal and conversational. Don’t use a form letter. Get the name of the person you need to speak with, and their title. Write like you talk. Don’t spew sales speak. Sound like you’re writing a friend—keep it casual, but professional.
4. Get to the point fast. Don’t ramble. Don’t meander into the letter with a vague, general stroll around the proverbial barn. Get to the point in the first three lines.
5. Be clear and concise. Say, “I know one of the problems manufacturers have is downtime from widget stress. It’s a common problem with a simple solution. If you’ve got 15 minutes this week I can show you a simple maintenance trick we’ve learned that shows how you can shorten your downtime by 10 hours a month.” Don’t say, “Widgets R Us is the Industry Standard in widgetry. I think you’d be impressed by our widgets. We were founded in 1819 and have been selling widgets to most of the major widget users in 10 states for more than 50 years….blah…blah…blah.”
6. Sell your product’s benefits, not the features. It’s easy to list a product’s features. For instance, a car has “memory control” for its seats that allows a driver to push a button that returns the seat to the right position for them. That’s a feature. The benefit is, “You don’t have to fight the seat adjustments, or bang your knees, or struggle to reach the pedals every time you drive your spouse drives your car. Memory control remembers and adjusts the seat at the push of a button.
7. Keep your letter only one page long. People are busy. Pages get separated and lost. Limit your letter to one page in length.
8. Make an offer. Offer your potential customer something for free if they respond to the letter. It could be a 15 or 30-day trial, 20% off a purchase, a sample, a tutorial, a video or a white paper.
9. Have a call to action and a deadline. “Call now, this offer is good for 30-days.”
10. I know. That’s a lot to squeeze into a letter, but with practice you can do it!

Quote:
“Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so exciting.” ~ Bill Gates

Life would be a lot different if we could cue the music at critical points in our presentations. There’s nothing quite like an inspirational, toe-tapping swell of an orchestra to convince people to buy, or horror movie tension to make them back off a sure thing. Face it—people are emotional creatures and make emotional decisions. So while you may not have access to a brass band, a laugh track or the mood directing tricks of Hollywood, you can still “cue the music” by ensuring your prospect feels the power of their decision. Your tone of voice, hearty support and a smile go a long way in making someone feel good about their decision. You don’t have to be so animated that someone mistakes your actions for too much coffee or a personal quirk. However, don’t hesitate to let your emotions show in appropriate ways at appropriate times in your talk, presentation or when closing a sale. Customers may not hear the music track, but they do hear and notice your tone, mood and emotions.

As I always remind salespeople, they may not remember what you said during your sales call but they will remember how they felt.

Quote:
“People don’t ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.” ~Robert Keith Leavitt