50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People – Habit #16 – Do You Know What Questions to Ask?
October 30, 2015
Selling
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Continuing with the twelve Sales Skills, let's look at Habit #16 - Do you Know What Questions to Ask? Probe (ask questions) to determine if the target company has problems that your products or your company is likely to be able to solve. Last month's newsletter talked about understanding how your customer makes money and the value your company brings to their product/service. This month, let's focus on the importance of understanding how the questions you ask your target customer affect the sales process. When you develop your opportunity plan, do you know what questions to ask? More importantly, do you ...
50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #15 – How Does Your Customer/Prospect Make Money?
September 21, 2015
Selling
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Continuing with the twelve Sales Skills, let's look at Habit #15 - How Does Your Customer/Prospect Make Money? Understand your customer's/prospect's processes and the value that you, your company and your product or service delivers to your customer's/prospect's processes. Last month's newsletter talked about using an Initial Benefit Statement at the beginning of the sales call, to summarize agreed benefits thus far in the sales cycle. This month let's focus on the importance of understanding how your customer makes money. Salespeople get wrapped up in the day-to-day, making sales calls, developing, submitting and reviewing quotations and all the stuff they have ...
50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People Habit #14 – Tell Them What They Like/Love So Far
August 31, 2015
Selling
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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!
August 3, 2015
Selling
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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!
June 29, 2015
Selling
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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
May 28, 2015
Selling
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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?
April 28, 2015
Selling
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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 ...
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