50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People Habit #14 – Tell Them What They Like/Love So Far
Continuing with the twelve Sales Skills let's look at Habit 14 - Tell Them What They Like/Love So Far. Use an Initial Benefit Statement, at the very beginning of the sales call, to summarize agreed benefits thus far in the sales cycle. Last month's newsletter talked about telling the customer/prospect why you are there and summarizing the benefits they have accepted so far in the sales cycle. One important skill taught in professional selling skills seminars is the summarization skill, and this skill is used in the Initial Benefits Statement. Initial Benefit Statements are structured in many ways, however, simple is ...
50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #13 – Why You are There!
The June newsletter completed Part One, the twelve Organizational Skills, and it is time to move to Part Two, Sales Skills. Top Performers have developed these skill sets to the point that they are second nature and a part of who they are and what they do. These skills have become habits. For those who are not Top Performers, these are skills that need to be developed. These sales skills provide the basic tools to help salespeople become more successful and get to the customer's/prospect's needs as fast as they possibly can. The purpose of these skills is to save the salesperson's ...
50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People – Habit #12 – Paperwork is a Pain!
Continuing with the twelve Organizational Skills let's look at Habit #12 - Paperwork is a Pain! Update expense reports daily and submit expense reports weekly. Paperwork is a pain, particularly call reports and expense reports. So when is the best time to do them? The answer is immediately. Do not, under any circumstances, wait to do your expense report until you are back in the office. This is a waste of your time and it shows a complete lack of professionalism. The expense report should be done immediately after the expense is incurred. If this is not possible, then an expense report should ...
50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #11 – Target Accounts
Continuing with the twelve Organizational Skills let's look at Habit #11 - Target Accounts. Develop and implement a Target Account strategy that focuses on past successes and the leveraging of those successes. Last month's newsletter discussed having a plan, a plan that outlines what you're going to sell and to whom you are going to sell. This assumes that you have a list of people that can use what you sell. This may be a huge assumption because there are very few people that are actually proactive in determining to whom they're going to sell. Many people go through industrial ...
50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #10 – What’s the Plan?
Write an opportunity plan detailing each opportunity in your portfolio. Top Performers have a written plan for every opportunity and every event in each opportunity's sales cycle. To many, particularly those that are not Top Performers, this seems like a lot of work; however, once you get used to developing a written plan for each opportunity, it becomes second nature, easy and rewarding. These plans are road maps to the close. They will help determine, if in fact, the opportunity will close or if it is a dead end opportunity. Milestones are needed to track success. If success is tracked by the ...
50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #9 – Call Reports
Continuing with the twelve Organizational Skills let's look at Habit #9 - Call Reports. Write a call report, thank you letters/email, assign tasks and assign follow-ups immediately after each sales call. Who does call reports anymore? Does your sales team do call reports? Do they do them every day? Do they do them after each call? Do they do them at night or at lunch? These questions drive most managers and salespeople nuts because they hate call reports. What's the purpose of the call report? There are many options, but let's try this: the purpose of a call report is to summarize, briefly, who was seen, what happened and ...
Habit #8 – What’s a Customer Management System?
Use an integrated customer management system that includes e-mail, contacts, calendar, task manager, opportunity tracker and a report generation system. Does your sales team use a customer management system? Many salespeople believe they are using a customer management system when in fact what they are using is an e-mail and calendar system. A customer management system is a system that includes e-mail, contacts, task manager, opportunity tracker and a report generation system. In addition, a customer management system integrates all of the data so that every opportunity has every bit of data information, related to that opportunity, available at a glance. Customer management ...