I have just been on my DREAM ski holiday to Heavenly Valley, Lake Tahoe, USA, where I truly experienced “heaven” – powder snow, sunshine and gorgeous views.

Maybe part of the success of the holiday was due to the fact that every time I walked into the hotel, Aston Lakeland Village Inn,  a gentleman called Scott raced out with flair from behind reception to grab my skis off me, put them away and then he offered to help me take off those heavy ski boots. Wow, now that was service!  Not only that, every time I went in and out past reception, he had something to chat about and engage me.  When I think about it, he really made me feel at home in this accommodation.  Nothing was too much trouble. What he did was not his brief.  He just did it for love of his job. His reception would be the reason I would go back to that hotel again and again. He made me feel valued, he made me feel special and I will never forget that.

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SO, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MAKE SURE YOUR CLIENTS FEEL VALUED AND SPECIAL? IT WILL MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE TO WHETHER THEY COME BACK TO YOU FOR REPEAT BUSINESS OR NOT.  PLEASE MAKE YOUR INTERACTIONS WITH THEM MEMORABLE IN A GOOD WAY LIKE SCOTT.

United Airlines, however, did everything but make me feel special. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, I know, it’s hard to get started after a holiday so here are some of the reasons why you might take a while to get going on your calls and some ideas how to get over them.

1.  You avoid doing the calls because you  find a lot of things to do like the filing from last year, the email inbox to sort out, the paperwork to prepare for 2012, meetings to attend., the diary to plan

2.  You fear you won’t be well received because people are only just back at work.

3.  You believe the prospects on your list will never buy from you so what is the point in calling them?

4. You think the calls can wait till next week.

5. You have no goals/motivation so you have nothing to aim for yet

6. You don’t feel good about yourself and have a negative self image at the moment

7.  You need to learn more about your new products you are selling before you feel confident to talk about them. Product knowledge is vital.

All of these avoidance behaviours are not going to serve you if you want to have your best year ever. Think about it this way, one hour of procrastination per day equals 225 selling hours wasted a year (based on working 45 weeks a year). There is a way to get round all of them.

Write down the behaviours you personally act out to avoid the calling? Being aware of those is the first step.

7 Ideas To Kickstart Your Telephone Sales Read the rest of this entry »

I  would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very happy Christmas and New Year. Relax, enjoy, so you are ready with renewed energy to help others to invest in your services next year. Remember, people will buy your energy, much more than what you say so you need to re-energise and take a proper break.

A good colleague of mine, David Penglase invited me to do a webinar with him recently. He managed to extract some great tips out of me so he has invited me to share this webinar recording with my subscribers.

You can listen to it at your leisure on this link.

http://salescoachcentral.com/webinars_november_2011_public.html

You might want to look at the coaching programme on Sales Coach Central’s website over the break.  For your own regular training and motivation, there are some awesome materials in there and if you would like to join for less than $1 a day,  I can offer you a 20% discount.  Just let me know and I will organise a special link for you to get the discount for this coaching programme. Check it out first at

http://salescoachcentral.com/index_freetour.

I will be working in January and am taking the last week of January off to ski in Heavenly Valley, USA.  I have speaking engagements in Iran and Malawi before the end of March so looks like there will be some nice travel for me next year. (It was always my intention to work globally at this stage of my career).

What do you want to have happen next year?  Write it down and if your intention has clarity and focus, it will happen, I promise. It is the same technique you use for cold calling success. Be clear what you want from the call, focus and your call will be much more successful.

Jenny Cartwright meets Sir Richard Branson

What an awesome human being I met in Sir Richard Branson when speaking at the same event as him in Melbourne last weekend.

First of all he is humble.  He does not brag about his achievements but tells you about them in a way that inspires you to play a bigger game too. He advises not to put limitations on yourselves when you come up with an idea of something you would like to do. He says the biggest challenge in life is you holding yourself back (the personal challenge).

Here are the 5 major  tips I took away from his talk we can all  benefit from when doing  sales:-

 1.  Records are made to be broken so aim for an extra sale each week. It can be done. Challenge yourself.

 2. Never dwell on your failures, move on to the next call. The more your fail, the more you learn. (That’s why cold calling takes courage – each time you are rejected, pick yourself up and move on. It’s an opportunity to try a different way next time)

3. If you are a  leader, really listen to your staff with no judgement.  Even the young 19 year old may have a good idea for increasing business. Reward them with praise and attention often.

4.  Look after your customers.  Find out what they are looking for and howspecifically you can best help them.  Ask them the question “What do you need in your business right now?”.  So let me know what you need right now and if I can’t help you, I am sure I can refer you to soemone who can.  that is what I do best.

5.  Constantly be on the cutting edge of knowing what is happening in your industry so you can jimp on opportunities that present themselves every day when you stay aware.

I am constantly on the look-out for little things that can get you a better response from your customer when selling and was reminded of a couple of things at my in-house trainings recently.

1. Change “Why” questions to “How” questions whenever you can

Sometimes “why” makes prospects feel defensive and it can sound interrogating or demanding when you don’t have the right tone in your voice. You can also increase the amount of information you get from your customer if you begin your questions with “how”. “How” sounds less challenging too.

For example:

Salesperson: “Why did you buy from Pilkingtons?”

Could be changed to:

Salesperson: “How did you make a decision to purchase from Pilkingtons?”

Salesperson: “Why aren’t you interested?”

Could be changed to:

Salesperson: “How specifically could we make this of more interest to you?”

2. Avoid using the word “BUT” to counter an objection Read the rest of this entry »

If you were asked to analyse the questions you ask of people before starting to talk about what you have to offer (which is what I hope you do), could you say that you have a good balance between questions that evoke logical answers and questions that evoke emotional answers? What percentage of your questions are logical compared to emotional?  I hope there is a good balance because people buy on emotion and justify with logic. If you never ask emotional questions, then your sales results might not be as good as they have the potential to be.

When you ask logic questions, the emphasis is focusing on talking about price, getting the appointment, the types of programmes and services you have, the technical information. When you ask questions that evoke the emotion, you are getting out of the customer why they would want what you have. You talk about the effects and outcomes of using your service, the peace of mind, the relief, ease, fun and excitement.

Here are some ideas of questions you could ask that evoke the emotion Read the rest of this entry »

Are Your Written Sales Skills Losing You Sales?

Nowadays telephone sales is far more than selling on the phone. It is also about how you write the written copy that follows up your call and appointment.

We are all so busy, we think we can write in short, curt sentences on emails as if we were sending a text message. Oh no, not so, We must still be in sales mode when we are following up with an email.

I have picked up on a common issue with more than one or two of my coaching clients at the moment and it is this ….They are fine on the phone about interesting the prospect in what they have and then they get asked to email everything they are proposing in writing before the client will decide.

Do you know that what you send them could kill any interest you have just generated? Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever you mail information out, only 1% on average will call you back.. You must follow up the mail-out or you will be missing the opportunity to make a sale with 20 – 25% of the people you have mailed. Your job is to inspire them and invite them to buy.
For many sales people, the follow-up call is much harder than the initial cold call, prospecting or lead generation call. It requires the skill of getting the customer into a conversation before asking for the order.
In recent trainings I have done I have heard this kind of thing on a follow-up call; (It’s the postal inspector check which goes nowhere)
Example 1
Salesperson: Did you get the information (or the quote) we sent?
Customer: No, I have not seen it.
Salesperson: Okay, I’ll send it again.
Example 2
Salesperson: Did you get the information (or the quote) I sent you?
Customer: Yes, I did and I am not interested
Salesperson: Oh, okay then bye.

In the first example, the customer could be saying he did not get it, just to get rid of you and he succeeds. What you could do is answer with “That’s okay, if you are online now, we could run through the information together on the website” or “That’s okay, are you sure it is not sitting in your in-tray? If it is, we could run through it together over the phone and I can answer any questions you might have.”
In the second example, the salesperson could have used an objection handling technique like an open-ended question “I’m curious, what would we have to change to make it of interest to you?” By doing that you may get the customer into a conversation about what he is looking for.
THE 2 BIGGEST MISTAKES
The biggest mistake in both examples is that the salesperson starts the call with a closed question which can only get a “yes” or “no” answer so the conversation can never get started.
Another mistake is when the sales person starts the call with “I’m just following up on the information I sent you”. “Just” belittles what you are about to say and you never want to say “follow-up”. Simply say, “I’m calling to get your feedback on the information I sent. What specifically was of interest to you?”
THE FORMULA FOR A PROFESSIONAL FOLLOW-UP CALL. Read the rest of this entry »

Instead of collecting all the business cards at tradeshows and networking functions and doing nothing with them, why not follow these people up? Again they may not want to buy now but they might sometime in the future. For example I am not in the market right now for a new car, but in 2 year’s time, I might be. If a car salesman keeps in touch with me by continuously giving me ideas of cars to choose for the future, who is the first car salesman I am going to go to? The one who is front of mind of course.
I suggest you buy a card scanner to record all those business cards. Then find someone who works in the Philippines for $2 an hour to put them into an excel spreadsheet, send them back and then you upload them into your database. It is a quick way to build your database fast. The more prospects you have, the more you will sell.