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Sales Skill: Keeping Your Sales Plan On Track

February 8, 2021 By Adriana

So here it is mid-February 2021. Some six weeks into the new year. How are you doing? Great salespeople take time to review their personal sales plan. What’s working? What hasn’t gone according to plan? Take an inventory of recent successes and failures. How do those compare to what you had anticipated for this year?

Great Salespeople Check Their Sales Plan Often
Image from Pixabay

Refine Your Vision

There is a lyric from the song Happy Talk in the Musical South Pacific: “You gotta have a dream, if you don’t have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?”
Vision or dream, whatever you call it, how you want to see the future is important. Your sales plan is written to make your dream come true. Take time every couple of months or so to reflect on and revise your vision. How long has it been since you wrote your vision? Yes wrote it! Of course it’s nice to have the dream but when you commit it to paper something happens. It might be magical but those who have taken the time to write out the vision and step-by-step goals to achieve it are those who succeed. The vision and goals are the substance of your personal sales plan….

Sales Skill: The Telephone

January 21, 2021 By Adriana

Great salespeople know the telephone is a time-tested tool for virtual selling. Even before the COVID pandemic changed the way “road warriors” had to sell, the telephone was the primary tool for salespeople. So now rather than the black phone with pushbutton dialing of years gone by you now have a mobile device. As powerful as these small digital devices are the telephone feature is still a practical sales tool.

Great Salespeople Master The Telephone Skill

The Telephone Is The Oldest Virtual Meeting Tool

Sure there are many ways to virtually contact prospects: direct mail, email, video chats to name a few. But for the great salesperson, the telephone is still the most powerful. And simple to use. Telephone conversations are real time dialogs. You can hear the nuances in the voice. And react to your prospects comments immediately. The phone is a salesperson’s most valuable tool because phone conversations move the qualification and sales process along quickly. You can create interest and desire real time using a phone. Often a successful phone conversation is the beginning of a mutually beneficial, long-term relationship….

Sales Skills: Using Compelling Stories

January 14, 2021 By Adriana

Every great salesperson has a collection of compelling stories. Some stories illustrate positive outcomes from using their product or service. Other stories challenge the status quo by describing consequences of not benefitting from a product or service. Compelling Stories give comfort to the prospect showing how others have benefitted from your product or service.

Great salespeople use compelling stories to highlight benefits

Compelling Stories Create Interest
Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

How To Tell Compelling Stories

Think about all the selling success you have. Each one of them resulted in a prospect changing their behavior in favor of your product or service. And they benefitted from the change. When they purchased your product or service they saved money, improved performance, or avoided a negative consequence.

So tell the story from the point of view of a successful customer outcome. Describe the problem you solved, how your product or service was applied and the benefit the customer experienced. Use words to paint the picture in your prospect’s mind. The story has a beginning which sets the stage by illustrating the current situation. In the middle is how the “hero” (you or your team) took on the “dragon” (the current situation). A strong ending leaves your prospect desperate to hear how you will save them from the “dragon.” Every great salesperson has a personal style of telling compelling stories. So tell stories in your own words, cadence and tone….

Sales Skills: Your Selling Tools Inventory

January 7, 2021 By Adriana

Well, it’s here. 2021 has begun. Are you ready? One way to check is to look at your selling tools inventory. Every one of us great salespeople have a particular skill set we use in each sales pursuit. So take a few minutes to think back over the successes in selling during the past year. What did you do well? What skills need improvement? And most importantly what skills don’t you have?

Great Salespeople Take A Sales Skill Inventory
Image by Claire Dela Cruz from Pixabay

The Successful Selling Process

Great salespeople have a sales process which is proven and repeatable. Here’s mine: first I need to get prospects to like me enough to answer my questions. I call that building “rapport”. Next I want to find out whether they have a significant problem I can solve. That’s the “pain” step. Now I want to know if they have the “budget” to solve the problem. Throughout all of the sales pursuit I want to be dealing with the “decision maker.” When I’m sure I’m dealing with the decision maker and have determined they have a problem they want to solve and can commit funds to do it, I “ask for the order”!…

Sales Skill: Learning From Past Lessons

December 10, 2020 By Adriana

To say 2020 was a different year is an understatement. But great salespeople have always used past lessons to prepare for the future. This past year presented many new lessons. We learned to work in an environment with a pandemic virus. We learned to help customers pivot because of the pandemic. And we found new opportunities. Great salespeople use past lessons finding a way to overcome adversity.

Great salespeople learn from past lessons.

What Are The Lessons You Learned This Year?
Image from Pixabay

The Big Lesson

For most of us life changed in March 2020. Some states shut down “non-essential” businesses. Companies sent employees home to work. Consumer income dropped dramatically. Business purchasing models changed. Sales processes were revamped to meet the changing environment.

We learned to work from home. Instead of meeting in a business setting we watched each other in small squares on laptop screens. We adapted and survived or maybe even thrived during this time. Because not every business was affected the same. Some pivoted to making facial coverings, some distilleries made hand sanitizer, hospitals preserved space for the sickest COVID infected patients. We great salespeople were creative in our approach to business in this disruptive period relying on the experience of past lessons….

Sales Skill: Word Choice

November 13, 2020 By Adriana

Great salespeople carefully choose their words when we speak with prospects and customers. They know word choice affects the outcome of their sales presentation. The language we use and the jargon of our industries changes over time. Think carefully about relevant word choice. And how you relate to your prospects and customers.

Words Choice is Important
Image from Pixabay

Proposal vs. Quote

Great salespeople use word choice to develop long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. Sounds like a marriage, doesn’t it? Do we “quote” to the one we love or “propose?” A “proposal” is rich in detail about the value of the purchase to the customer. A “quote” is all about the price for the item….

Sales Skill: Customer Focused Selling

November 6, 2020 By Adriana

Why is customer focused selling so important? Take a look at any article on why a business fails. Failure to focus on the customer is always near the top of the list. It’s logical. Without income from sales no company can sustain itself, let alone grow. Great salespeople know focusing on the customer and their wants and needs is the most important skill they have.

Great salespeople focus on the customer first

Customer Focussed Salespeople Win Big!

What Is Customer Focused Selling?

The name of the skill says it all. Great salespeople practice putting the customer first. They do it by asking good questions and actively listening to what the customer tells them. I know what you are thinking: The salespersons goal is to get a prospect to buy the product or service. True. But to have a successful outcome, the salesperson needs to understand the customer. That’s where customer focused selling comes in….

Understand The Buying Ecosystem

October 30, 2020 By Adriana

Great salespeople know understanding the buying ecosystem of their customers is key to closing deals. They use their asking and listening skills to find out all the players on the prospect’s team and how their roles affect the buying decision. Then they craft the sales presentation to appeal to the problem in terms of how it affects each member of the buying ecosystem.

Understanding the buyer ecosystem is paramount to winning the order

Who Is In Your Buying Ecosystem?
Image from Pixabay

What Is The Buying Ecosystem?

The term comes from biology: an ecosystem is a community or group of living organisms that live in and interact with each other in a specific environment. Great salespeople know there are various interests in the solution to any problem. Each of those interests has a role in deciding whether to purchase your solution. So the buying ecosystem is composed of all those people who participate in deciding what to buy. In large corporate purchases the buying ecosystem has members from many departments. In family decision making the ecosystem is smaller but no less important….

Sales Skill: Finding The Budget

October 22, 2020 By Adriana

Great salespeople know finding the budget is a key piece to winning the order. Price is the monetary value we place on the product or service we sell. It is important to know what our customer is willing to pay for the solution to the problem they are trying to solve. Once you, great salesperson, understand the problem the customer has then get on about finding the budget.

Finding the budget is a key to sales success

Great Salespeople Have The Courage To Find The Budget
Image From Pixabay

Talking About Money

How do you feel about money? Great salespeople are well within their comfort zone discussing the budget with the customer. They understand the value of their solution to the customer’s problem. And they have the skill to lead the discussion. My mentor, Jim Wilson, would say to a prospect: “At some point we are going to need to talk about money. Why not do it now?” A more sophisticated approach is the one Neil Rackham describes as SPIN Selling. We all know it is better to understand the customer’s budget early in the sales process….

Sales Skill: Dream Big Then Plan To Be Successful

October 15, 2020 By Adriana

Great salespeople have a vision of their future. Call it a dream if you want. And they know how to make dreams come true. It’s not enough to dream. You must plan to realize your dreams. Muhammad Ali one of the greatest boxers of all time and a pretty good philosopher too put it this way: “The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.”

Great salespeople not only dream big but they diligently plan to achieve those dreams.

Dream Big – Plan To Succeed
Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

The Best Salespeople Plan

What Muhammad Ali meant is you must plan and do all the preparatory work before the first contact with a prospect to be successful. Preparing is the key to winning. Great salespeople plan the month, the week, the day and each sales call. In each salesperson’s sales funnel there are prospects at various stages of the buying process. Near the top are those who have just begun thinking about a purchase and at the bottom are the few who are now ready to buy. Great salespeople plan to be successful all along the sales funnel….