Tactic

Launching a discussion about features usually leaves prospective buyers cold. Launching one about the means at your disposal for increasing efficiencies, revenues, and profits . . . or for decreasing inefficiencies and expenses . . . is a great way to connect and begin moving through the sales process.

Don’t involve your customer in your problems and your company’s problems. Your customer has enough of his own problems.

How many salespeople look upon their relationship with their customers as one that should endure regardless of what product is being sold?

Bad prospects do not exist except in the mind of salespeople who are looking for an excuse for nonperformance.

Train yourself to listen to exactly what the prospect is saying. If you aren’t sure of what is being said, ask the prospect to clarify.

Salespeople, in general, frequently move on to other companies. There are many reasons: lack of performance at the former, poor product line, perhaps the former company was poorly run. The list of possible reasons is long.

Reading about selling is like reading about snorkeling at the Red Beach in Hana. Sounds good, wish you were there?

You start. That’s about as complicated as it gets. Instead of you starting, the prospect starts. Or, if you already have a customer with whom you are meeting or calling, tell her to start.

Instead of collecting business cards at an educational seminar, collect index cards.

Absolutes tend to have more exceptions than Swiss cheese has holes. Don’t accept them.

Be a stand-up person and get things done.

What you find out is more important than why you found it out.

How you prospect depends on your customer’s “time to buy again” cycle. Know it. Work with it. Be successful.

If you sound like the run-of-the-mill salesperson, you’ll be treated like the run-of-the-mill salesperson.

Being “invited” to talk your piece puts you in control of the call. Forcing the prospect to listen puts him in control.

It should not be the goal of the salesperson to sell his image. Selling your image doesn’t put money in the bank. Selling product does.

Take your prospect all the way into the future, and put yourself in the future. Now find out your future.

Having the prospect lay out the future with you in it is much better than you trying to lay out the future with you in it.

Tell the truth right from the very first contact with the prospect, and you will have someone who will listen and respect you for it.

Which is better—getting an appointment or calling back in X months?

You have nothing to lose by asking a prospect, who has told you “No, thanks,” to give you one more chance to get back in and do business.

Is it really a disaster, or is it a brush-off? Only the prospect knows unless you ask.