Sales is not about Selling

Hi everyone

What does that mean - Selling is not about selling? It means simply the art of selling has moved on from the 'always be closing', 'sell anything to anyone and to hell with the consequences' era.

My thesaurus says selling is about 'persuading someone to buy'. Persuading? Not in my book. No one should be 'persuading' anyone to buy. For me selling is a two way process of questions and answers, information sharing, finding common ground between buyer needs and the product - and the buyer ultimately making a decision based on the match of the product NOT how persuasive the sales person was.

The sales person will ultimately be successful more often that not when they truly understand the client's perspective. When they understand that every buyer is different, they can then drop the standard sales pitch and do some proper selling - where the welfare of the client is paramount.

Consider most car sales people. They have their speech ready and waste no time in delivering it - itemising the spec of the car, its top speed, mpg etc the list goes on. They have no idea about me, my previous experiences, my previous cars, my car buying motivation, where I am in the purchasing cycle, nothing. They're in their own map and assume that if they throw everything and the kitchen sink into their pitch, enough will hit the target and I'll buy the car. Right? Wrong!

The right way would be for the sales person to acknowledge that, though themselves might be speed junkies, they appreciate that only a relatively small proportion of car buyers are. By finding out about someone's car buying map they would quickly ascertain that space is needed for the children, extra body strength for safety and security, superb in car entertainment for the family as they take lots of long journeys together. Oh and what about the son who is 6'4'' tall at 17 years old so needs space in the back. I could go on but the message to all sales people is - please realise everyone of your potential customers will be different in many ways. Just acknowledging that will give you some empathy with the customer you would not have had previously

Sales is a massive subject and what I have touched upon today is a very small although significant area of selling. If you would like regular sales tips then please register for our Tricks of The Trade eshots and we'll send you sales and marketing tips directly to your inbox. Click here to register.

In the meantime enjoy your day and remember - less persuading, more selling please!

Until next time

Leigh

Are Your Fees High Enough?

Hi everyone

Midweek - Are you half way through your goals for the week? A challenge isn't it?

I try to catch up on business, sales and personal development reading whenever I can - and I sped through several 'Business' sections of The Sunday Times last weekend. There's always some great snippets of tips amongst the news, stories and profiles. One particular feature always catches my eye, called 'How I made It' which features business owners' success stories.

The thing that stands out the most in those profiled is their ability to bounce back, to be patient for success, to learn from the knocks, to learn from anything in fact!

The guy featured in one particualr week was Ed Reeves, founder of Moneypenny, a telephone answering service that has annual turnover of £7m.

I going to quote a passage from the article now... 'He returned to Britain at 23 and settled in London. TIS offered to pay him commission if he was able to sell outdated land line phones for £5 each. After finding no takers, he raised the price to £25 - and promptly sold a thousand. He made £20,000'

I hear this type of thing so many times. So - are the prices you are charging down to your 'stuff' rather than what the market thinks you're worth?. Now there's a thought.

Until next time.

Leigh

Have you got your Red Dot?

Good morning sales team

Well well well. All morning I keep hearing on the radio about the golfer Louis Oosthuizen and his wonderful winning weekend at the British Open Golf Championship. This morning he, and others, have been talking non stop about the little red dot on his glove. He presses the dot at the precise moment he needs to garner maximum resources and get maximum concentration.

This of course is the classic NLP technique called 'Anchoring' - where one can lock in a required state and instantly recall that state by 'setting off' their anchor.

Anchoring can be an extremely powerful technique in sales. Whether you're doing a presentation, sales pitch, cold calling, the list is endless, setting up an anchor and recalling it on cue could be the missing link in your tool kit.

If you want to know more about NLP and Anchoring, click the link or get in touch and I'll be happy to talk about this more.

Passion and Perspective!

Hello Everyone and welcome to what I hope is going to be a fabulous Friday.

I watched Question Time last night. It was so fascinating to see passions running high. Passion is a pre-requisite for sales success. If you don't have passion in your job right now, you need to get it - or get out! Winners are passionate. You can get by without passion. With it you can do anything!

Listening to audience and panellist comments also made me realise the differing perspectives available on a given subject. At The Sales Consultancy we had an 'off-site' meeting yesterday to look for new perspectives on how to prosper in challenging economic times. We came away with about twenty ideas to follow up on. So think how you can look at your sales challenges from a different perspective.

Finally thanks to all those who came to our Social Media Workshop on Wednesday morning. It was great to hear everyone's perspective (that word again) and help them understand the potential of these fabulous social media opportunities.

Leigh

Spreading the word

Well Happy Mondays to you all!! Now there's a band from the past.

I do hope you had a fabulous weekend. There's no point in working hard if you can't play hard!. And many congratulations to Spain, world cup winners. This proves that a combination of team work and high skill levels can get you anywhere!

Flexibility too. A group of football players able to adapt to the situation. There are definite parallels with business here. I noticed from the Sunday Times that The Body Shop, founded by one of my heroines Anita Roddick of course, is to greatly expand its Body Shop at Home division. It will be adding a further 3500 consultants to the current 4000. The rumours are that it's reducing its high street presence. Either way, for me this shows an ability to read the market and adjust direction in order to thrive. We can all learn from that.

Don't forget we have our Getting Started in Social Media Workshop this coming Wednesday. Maria has sent reminders out this morning as we have a couple of slots available. Click below for details and to book.

In the meantime have a great week.

Leigh

http://http://www.eventelephant.com/gettingstartedwithsocialmedia

Facebook - Why bother?

Good morning...
Occasionally I detect a divide in the country over social media in general and Facebook/Twitter in particular. It seems half the nation has embraced it, love it, use it, for pleasure and in their business environments.
The other half won't go near it! And, when the conversation gets round to it, as it inevitable does, they dismiss it and profess never to use it.
As someone who has full embraced many social media platforms over the past few years I am intrigued by why people dismiss it. Is it a technology phobia? Is it the occasional bad publicity that arises from these rare cases of misuse? Who knows.
One thing I'm convinced of - as a business tool social media should be a vital cog in your marketing wheel. Your business type will dictate the precise role social media plays in getting you new contacts and business, but for me, you need a social media presence at some level, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Ecademy, LinkedIn etc.
In response to requests amongst my customers and contacts we are holding a morning workshop 'Getting Started with Social Media' next Wednesday 14th July. It's all about taking those first steps to having social media contribute to your marketing efforts and ultimately your profits. It would be great to see you there and we have a few slots left - call 020 7903 5426 for more details or to reserve your space.
In the meantime have a great day!
Leigh

Hold your nerve - There's loads of business out there

Hi everyone.



Well we're mid way through the week so I hope you are halfway to the goals you set for the week!



There's lots of talk at the moment about 'the cuts'. It reminds me of the 80's. True, public spending is going to fall and private households are looking more closely at their budgets BUT please, can we put this into perspective?



If you take into account the actual economic figures, rather than the emotional newspaper headlines, you'll find that, for every £100 spent within the economy at the peak of September 2007, there's £95 being spent now. For me that's still a heck of a lot of business to be grabbed.



So - rather than curl up and wait for this recession to end, get out there and start grabbing some of those batches of £95!! If you don't, plenty of others will.



Until next time



Leigh