Can you check off these three essential tasks to up your game? Graphic courtesy of Pixabay.com.

Three Essential Tasks To Up Your Game

You have looked at your closing ratio and thought: “I need to do better than this. But how?” Start by considering how well you do the three essential tasks to closing more sales: Prospect, Qualify and Follow-up.

Prospect

Look for those potential customers who resemble your best customers. What business are they in? Which of the products you sell do they use? Is it a seasonal business? If so, when is the best time to sell to them? Then search for other companies with similar needs, which might just be divisions or other locations of your current best customers.  (See Chapter 15)

Qualify

Don’t spend a lot of time with customers who don’t have a current need you can fulfill. Ask good questions to find out whether they have a problem you can solve, if there is a budget to make the purchase, and above all, be selling to the one who can make the decision to buy. (More in Chapter 8.)

Follow-up

Once you have a qualified prospect, be sure to regularly keep it touch. Needs change. Budgets change. People change. Follow-up is very important in selling projects that have long sales cycles. Once you have closed the deal, follow-up to make sure the customer is satisfied, set up the next sale and get referrals. (More in Chapter 14.)

To learn more, see Chapters 8, 14 and 15 in Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling. For even more sales help, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford & Lois Carter Crawford

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Learn to keep your customers happy by asking for feedback. Graphic courtesy of Pixabay.com.

Sales: How to Refresh Your Relationship

How do you think you are doing? Do your customers like you? Why do they keep using your service or business? Or why do they leave? Are you afraid to ask? Do you think that if you ask, you’ll get an ear-full?

Ask for Feedback

Keeping your customers happy requires good communication and feedback. Don’t be afraid to ask your customers how you are doing. You may find out some very valuable information—like why they keep using your services or products, or that they are unhappy with something that you need to fix ASAP.

What Should You Ask?

Here are a few questions to ask good customers:

• How did your company originally select us as a supplier? (This reinforces their decision.)
• What do you like best about dealing with us?
• If you could change anything to improve our relationship, what would it be? (Fix the problems immediately!)
• How can our company increase marketshare? (Good customers are eager to help and like to be asked for advice.)
• How does our company stack up against the competition? (You need to know this.)
• What other products or services should we provide? (Create a pre-sold condition.)
• If you were the CEO of our company, how would you go about holding on to good customers like yourself? (They’ll tell you.)

Keep ’em Talking

Did you notice? These are all open ended questions designed to get and keep the customer talking. Remember, your role as a salesperson is to ask good questions and listen to the answers. Make sure the customer is talking more than you are.

To learn more, see Chapter 22 in Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling. For even more sales help, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford & Lois Carter Crawford

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Be a leader. Help your sales staff learn and grow. Graphic courtesy of Pixabay.com

Be the Best Sales Manager

Sales Manager’s job is to be a leader, mentor and example for the team he or she leads. It’s more than just Rah, Rah, Rah on a Monday morning to get the team fired up for the week.

How to Help the Team Grow

The effective Sales Manager of today incorporates many, if not all, of the following:

• Makes sure everyone understands—and buys into—the overall company mission.
• Involves every sales person in the goal-setting process.
• Gets firm commitments to achieve the goals.
• Evaluates performance regularly, positively and constructively.
• Continually asks, “What do you need?” and “How can I help?”
• Holds each person accountable for reaching the goals they have set for themselves.
• Recognizes superior performance regularly, publicly and loudly.
• Provides ongoing, never-ending coaching.
• Creates an atmosphere to improve performance every day.
• Acts as the team cheerleader and facilitator.
• Establishes an atmosphere of open communication.

Keep on Sellin’

The best sales managers also have a sales territory. It can be a single customer or several. This keeps them in touch with the real world of selling, sets the behavior example for the team and gives the sales manager a sense of the market. When the sales manager chooses difficult customers or new ones and grows them onto the A list, that lets the team know what’s possible. He or she can then turn that customer over to one of the sales team to manage and move on a new challenge. This is leadership at its finest.

To learn more, see Chapter 3 in Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling. For even more sales help, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford & Lois Carter Crawford

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CNN honors Yogi Berra, Yankees’ Hall of Fame catcher, when he dies in 2015.

It Ain’t Over

As Yankee Catcher Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

Sales veterans have come to realize that if something can go wrong, it probably will (good ol’ “Murphy’s Law”). That means you should button up the sale, or “buyer’s remorse” may rear its ugly head.

Don’t take anything for granted. When the prospect says, “Things are lookin’ good,” don’t believe it! It’s just like, “The check is in the mail.” Yeah, right. The deal isn’t over until you get the check…and it clears.

Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse

So, what to do? Use the “rehearsal technique.” Once you know the agony of defeat having lost a sale you were sure you won because the customer changed their mind, you’ll realize the importance of rehearsing to prevent the same in the future.

It works like this: Explain to the customer what will likely happen with buyer’s remorse and invite them to call you once it sets in. When they do call (assuming you haven’t called them first, which is what you should have done), remind them of the reasons they made the buying decision.

Remember, it ain’t over ’til it’s over.

To learn more, see Chapter 14 in Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling. For even more sales help, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford & Lois Carter Crawford

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Prospecting for customers is like prospecting for gold!

Are You a Great Prospector?

Prospecting superstars don’t have some secret formula. And they don’t leave sales up to chance. They put effort into what they do. They give it their best try and they do a lot of things right.

Here are some of the things they do:

• They willingly give referrals.
• They always get referrals.
• They settle for no one but the decisionmaker.
• They confront stalls and put-offs head on.
• They grab the prospect’s attention in the first few seconds of the telephone call.
• They make a lot of calls.
• They have a high tolerance for rejection.
• Their prospecting antenna is always up.

Great prospectors are constantly working on their behavior, attitude and technique.

How Good Are You?

Look at the list above and rate yourself: 5 points if you are expert at a task 1 point if you never do it. 35 to 40 points? I’ll bet you are a superstar. Less than 35 points? Look at the weakest ones for you and practice them one by one until you are expert at each one.

All successful sales begin by identifying good prospects. Who is your best prospect? Get prospecting!

For even more sales help, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford & Lois Carter Crawford

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Plan for success and become victorious.

Planning Is Everything

Plan for success; don’t plan to fail. You have likely heard it said, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Or put another way by President Eisenhower, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

Whatever you are trying to do rarely works out as planned, but the process of planning prepares you for success.

Who Plans?

The best salespeople plan. They plan the month, the week, the day, and each sales call. In each person’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 not ready to buy. And they are distributed throughout your sales territory.

The best companies have an annual sales plan. Each territory is assigned a sales goal and perhaps a goal for each product line or type of customer in the territory. The salesperson’s job is to meet or exceed those goals. The goals are met by following a plan laying out the sales activities to be done each day.

Review & Look Ahead

During the time set aside each week for planning, review what happened the previous week. Look at your sales funnel to see which customers need the most attention in the coming week. If you have a large geographic area for a sales territory, divide it into several compact areas and spread your time among them over a month or several months depending on your business model. Begin setting or confirming previously set meeting times; then build your weekly schedule around them. Remembering what President Eisenhower said, also have other prospects in mind for when a meeting is cancelled.

Get Ready

Once you have a confirmed sales meeting, you need to prepare for the meeting. What is your goal for that meeting? Of course the answer depends on where you are in the sales process for the customer. If they are early in the selling cycle, the sales call goal might be to build rapport and learn more about upcoming needs. Perhaps it is the first meeting with the decisionmaker and your goal is to find out how decisions are made and to review and confirm the discussions you have previously had with others on the sales team. Whatever the goal is, write it down.

Then make a sales call plan which will lead to achieving the goal. Note what you might need to bring to the meeting. Arrange for technical or management support to join you if necessary. List what you know about the customer’s need so far and what other information you might need. Role play the meeting in your mind or aloud as you drive. Be as prepared as you can be.

Being prepared means that when you begin each day you know exactly where you are headed and what you plan to accomplish. Be ready for the pleasant surprises that will happen and unexpected challenges popping up. Don’t get to the end of your driveway only to stop and think, “Is it left-turn day or a right-turn day?” Work your well-planned day.

But remember: only in the movies does life follow the script.

Qualify

If your business model is a one-call-close, be prepared to quickly qualify the buyer and move on if they are not ready to buy. Know the questions to ask and how to build value before discussing price. Make sure all parties involved in the buying decision are present so you know the decision can be made.

And most importantly, get a commitment up front when you ask for the order. Convey to the decisionmakers that the only two acceptable answers are “yes” or “no.” “I want to think it over” is the worst answer you can hear because, in truth, you are the only one thinking it over. Clear up any misunderstandings and again try to get the order.

Without planning, success seldom happens. Plan for success and achieve your goals.

For even more sales help, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford & Lois Carter Crawford

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Forget attitude—focus on behavior

Forget Attitude…Focus on Behavior

I’ll bet you have heard more than one motivational speaker talk about positive mental attitude and how important it is in the quest for success in sales.

Your Attitude Doesn’t Have to be Sparkly

I am more interested in the daily behavior of salespeople, that is, the daily level of activity accomplished. It is behavior—not attitude—that makes all the difference in performance.

• How many calls did you make to prospects?
• How many follow-up calls did you make to customers?
• How many referrals did you request?

Nobody’s attitude can be 100% every day. There are days when we feel a little “down,” and that’s okay. We control our behavior—our level of activity. We cannot always control our attitude.

Surprise Yourself

If you focus on what you do—not how you feel—you’ll find that at the end of the month, you may have accomplished a lot on the days when you were “up” as well as the days when you were “down.”

Focus on Behavior

Tasks done well will affect your attitude.

I remember one blustery, rainy day when I worked in Chicago. The weather forecast wasn’t going to get much better and the traffic conditions were terrible. I left with plenty of time to get to the first meeting with a new potential customer. Walking through the driving rain from my car to the office I must have looked like a drowned rat.

The prospect had invited several of us competitors to a pre-bid meeting for a new project. By the time I got to the company I was a few minutes late. The receptionist said I was the first to arrive, took my wet coat and hat, and invited me to wait in the conference room. In a few minutes the purchaser arrived and we chatted.

One by one the other invitees called to regret not being able to get to the meeting. As a result, the purchaser and I discussed the project alone, and I got the details for which to prepare a proposal. Then he gave me the budget he had in mind for the project and said since I was committed enough to show up, assuming I could meet the budget, we would get the business.

For a day that started with a poor attitude, doing the necessary behavior resulted in success and a wonderful change in attitude. Don’t be preoccupied with your attitude. Do the necessary behavior.

For even more sales help, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford

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