What will happen to your business in 2012 if you don't get enough sales?

What will happen to your business in 2012 if you don'tget enough sales?

What comes up for you when you think about selling your services or products?

Do you feel upbeat, positive and ready to share the wonders of what you do? Or do you feel dread, doubt, fear or a combination of negative emotions?

You may have an armoury of selling skills but if you have negative emotions going on inside, this will get in the way of your sales success.

The signs that negativity is working against you are:
- You are busy doing stuff that has little or no impact on increasing sales
- You avoid activities that you know would have a positive impact on your sales success
- You experience negative emotions when you think about sales
- You use the doom and gloom news as an excuse for your lack of sales
- Your inner voice keeps reminding you of your weaknesses
- You're working really hard, putting in the hours...and still not getting the sales results you want

So what do you do?

The first thing you need to do is to become aware that the strategy you currently have IS NOT WORKING FOR YOU! If you continue doing what you're doing, you will not achieve the sales success you want. Once you acknowledge that things need to change, you'll find it much easier to incorporate changes. It's so easy to continue with the habits you've created...it takes conscious thought and effort to create new habits.
So how ready are you to let go off what you've been doing...or not doing...to increase your sales?
Here are some easy steps you can take to get you on the path to sales success:
1.Get rid of the negative language you use about you, the economy, the people you come into contact with and anything else that saps your positive energy. Instead of "Things are really hard at the moment" use "Things may not be easy but the more people I speak to the easier it will get".

2.Start noticing the positive reasons for the situations you find yourself in. When you lose a sales ask yourself "What can I learn from this that will give me a greater chance of getting future sales?"

3.You don't get what you want in life, you get what you expect. So start expecting great things to happen! Henry Ford said "If you believe you can or believe you can't...you're right" Go into every sales interaction knowing that if you can give this person exactly what they want or need you have a great chance of doing the deal.

4.Use more 'YOU' language when talking with your prospective customers. Focus on finding out about their issues, pains and desires by asking well crafted open questions. Only then can you weave your product or service into the conversation as an ideal solution.

5.Focus on IPA...Income Producing Activity. This is the stuff you do before closing a sale. Once you've done the deal it's not IPA - it's customer service. The more IPA you do...the more sales success you will achieve. Typical IPA activities are networking...in person and social media, following up enquiries, meetings with prospective customers, proposals and increasing your profile as the 'go to' person.

6.Prioritising the important stuff. When you have established all the IPA you could be doing, focus on the FBI...Fastest Business Impact. What IPA is going to have the fastest impact on increasing sales? That's what you do first. It's so easy to get that little job out of the way...then that other little task...and before you know it the day has gone and the most important activity remains undone!

7.Make sales FUN. How can you think about sales that would cause you to be more relaxed about the whole thing? It may be that you give activities different labels. I was delivering a workshop recently when one of the business owners said she felt like she was choking when she thought about closing a sale so I suggested that she think of that activity more about the other person realising that she could give them exactly what they needed. I could see a sense of relief as she nodded and said she was much more comfortable with that! How can you reframe the activity to suit you?

Incorporating these 7 easy steps will change your selling experience. You'll be more relaxed and less stressed. You'll be focusing on the activity that increases sales and wasting less time on the activities you used to avoid sales.

Not only will you be having more fun...you'll be having more sales success!

Leigh Ashton

www.sales-consultancy.com

020 7903 5426

results@sales-consultancy.com 

PS; Download my Free Report - The 9 Biggest Sales Mistakes You See Others Making

Decreasing Marketing; Increasing Sales

Most companies I help receive incoming enquiries - via the telephone line, emails, exhibitions, the list goes on.

None of these companies convert 100% of those enquiries into a sale. Of course, 100% conversion is pushing it a bit! However – there’s no doubt that all of these companies had potential to increase their conversion rate, in many cases by a considerable amount.

A company in particular comes to mind. They took enquiries mainly by phone and converted 25% of these enquiries into an individual average order value of £997 – we’ll round this up to £1000 for ease of telling the story.

Sales in volume were slightly over 10,000 a year so we’re talking about a £10m company here.

Having been called in to help, my first thoughts were what a crying shame that a massive 75% of sales enquiries were coming to nothing. Even sadder was that many of the 75% non-buyers were deemed ‘time wasters’ by the staff. I cringe at those words – in my book there’s no such thing as a time waster in sales and terming them as such reflects more on the seller than the potential buyer.

Within six weeks we’d got the conversion rate up to 27%. Now you might think that’s not much of an increase – and you’d be right. BUT – just this 2% increase in conversion rates equated to an annual increase in turnover of £800,000. Needless to say the training was deemed a big success.

The moral of the story? Don’t spend massive amounts of money on marketing when all you have to do is make better use of the leads that you’re already getting - sales success will follow.

How to increase conversion rates?

Here are a few pointers.

1.      Ban the use of the words ‘time wasters’! I’m serious. Using this word in a sales environment engenders an underlying unconscious disrespect for potential buyers. I firmly believe that no one has got time these days to be a time waster – there must have been SOME level of interest for them to pick up the phone – check out a website etc.

2.      Get technology in that can track enquiries and respond to them. This could be web analytics, a more sophisticated CRM, whatever it takes to know exactly who’s showing an interest – and which enables you to have a low cost follow up.

3.      Connect! Yes I know some of this is very basic but...! It works. We found out at the company in question that their company was on average one of three that the potential customer contacted before making a decision. There were about 5 major players in their market at the time – and not much to choose between them in terms of product and price. So who do you think was going to get the business? YES – the one to whom the prospect felt most connected.

4.      Connection is made through general rapport building and lots of curiosity – in sales terms known as good old fashioned open questions.

5.      Structure. I’ll never be an advocate of scripts on telephone calls – I hate them – but a little structure can help considerably. So make sure you give the staff the guidance they need to succeed on the call.

6.      Follow up when you’ve quoted. I can’t believe how many companies quote for business and then never follow up with at least a courtesy phone call. This is not hounding people – as a certain company’s ‘sales’ staff once suggested. This is called customer service, which, if we’re lucky, might catch on! If you don’t fancy following up quotes, you might want to consider an alternative career. Referring to suggestion 3, if you’re one of three companies that have quoted for a sale and you’re the only one that follows up, doesn’t that indicate a level of interest on your part that others haven’t matched?

There are of course another hundred+ tips on increasing sales and following up enquiries – but if you do these and do them well enough, your selling skills and your sales conversions will increase.

Converted yet?

Leigh Ashton
www.sales-consultancy.com
020 7903 5426
results@sales-consultancy.com

PS; Download my Free Report - The 9 Biggest Sales Mistakes You See Others Making