Whether you sell face-to-face, by telephone, or in combination, there are eight basic steps in the process. By Helen Berman. Before the sales call, you will want to do your homework: review the account history, their market niche, sales and marketing goals, your current sales position and best initial strategy. by Dan & Erin Sweeney If you choose not to use each of the eight steps in a single sales call: you might break the stages of the sale into more than one call. For a new prospect, the opening and statement of opening benefits may be a part of your initial phone conversation to set up an appointment. Be sure when you need several sales calls, review covered material each time you call. Your prospect may not remember every salient point. You should deviate from the basic rules when it serves you. If your prospect is ready to buy at the beginning of the call - CLOSE THE SALE. Many salespeople miss the buying signals or feel obligated to "give them a pitch." Missing your prospect's pitch is an easy way to strike out. 1. Opening: While stating your name and purpose may sound simple enough, the first few seconds of the call are ...

I could have used this post last week. :) Learn how to ask the right questions that will help you complete each sale like a star. Typically, when I talk with my students on a one-to-one basis, they ask me a lot of questions about how to close sales. That's to be expected because it's the positive end result all salespeople seek in any contact with potential clients. In most situations where sales aren't closed, it's usually because the salesperson didn't ask the right question. In all my training, you'll hear it repeated over and over that every answer you need to get in order to meet someone, qualify them as to their needs, get permission to give a presentation or close a sale will come to you if you only ask the right questions. Sometimes, it's not just the question that matters, but how it's presented. You may have to set the stage or tell a story leading up to the question that helps the client rationalize the buying decision. No matter how good your lead in or story is, however, you won't get the sale if you don't ask for it. Let me give you a few closes that have proven successful for ...

Here are eight steps to make your software sales calls more effective: Before the Call STEP 1. Rethink your role. A software sales call is not an opportunity to “pitch” – a monolog that attempts to convince a customer to buy. Instead, a software sales call is a rapport-building dialog between the right salesperson and the right customer. The subject matter of the call should be how your software can address key business issues – not the software and its features and functions. STEP 2. Do your homework. You’ll never understand – or be able to articulate – your prospect’s business problems unless you do your homework. Before each sales call, learn everything that you can about the potential customer. There is a wealth of information available on the Internet about virtually every company. Here’s a rule of thumb: you should never have to ask the customer a question that’s answered somewhere else. STEP 3. Create an agenda. An agenda positions you not as a salesperson asking for a sale but as a consultant or advisor. This is particularly important for software sales situations, because software sales always deal with business solutions and opportunities. This allows you to credibly position yourself as much more ...

Of course price is important to buyers, but if your product isn’t the cheapest on the market there are ways of getting around the price objection. The next time you hear your price is too high, use one of these strategies to prove that you and your product are worth it. Determine needs to establish value. The better you know your prospect’s needs, the better you can explain how your product will meet those needs. Address price objections at the end of the presentation, after you have already discussed needs, value and benefits. To tackle the price issue effectively, remember to view it from your buyer’s perspective. When the price objection comes up early in the call, you can try to postpone answering it by saying, “I appreciate your concern about price, and I assure you we will discuss it completely, but before we do I’d like to be sure my service meets your needs.” Example: “Can we review for a moment why this is the best choice for you? First, you will have higher productivity. Second, it will save you $75 per hour in service. Third, you will have our three-year warranty. Doesn’t that cover all of your needs?” Use the lowest common ...

Exceptional sales professionals do the opposite of what most professionals do -- and often break the rules of traditional selling to achieve their success. I have devoted 25 years to studying what top sales professionals and their leadership teams do to achieve exceptional levels of success, answering some key questions about what makes them so extraordinary at what they do. How do they develop such strong relationships, how do they build trust and convey the value of their products and services in a way that builds credibility and allows them to avoid last minute pressures on price? by paul goyette One of the most interesting characteristics of exceptional sales professionals is that they often are doing the opposite of what most sales people are doing. The encouraging news is that while their behavior may be different than we expect, it's not super-human or destined for a select few. Furthermore, it's not rocket science and it can be learned. Let's start with two examples of how exceptional sales pros break the rules of traditional selling and achieve success. Exceptional sales professionals... Protect their customer's self-esteem. Many salespeople are unknowingly caught up in a conventional sales approach and inadvertently end up self-sabotaging their best efforts by trying to impress ...

The world of business is changing by leaps and bounds thanks to the growth of the use of technology in everyday life. The emphasis today is on speed, speed, and even more speed. The reason for this great stress on speed? It is the fear that some other competitor might walk off with a lucrative business deal. Photo credit: Paul Hammond As competition continues to heat up in the world of business, as rival companies are born, merged or divided, and as newer and newer innovations lead to the rise of unique business opportunities, the need for better technology keeps on increasing. Sustained growth in business today depends on catching each opportunity at the right time. Technology is one way of doing that. Remember those long-drawn business meetings that went on for hours and ended with no good conclusion? Remember the hours that were spent in waiting for all the delegates to enter the conference room? And what about all that stress over whether you will be able to reach the conference on time because you have gone and got yourself stuck in the mother of all traffic jams? Well, web conferencing is the answer to all your conference problems. Okay, so it still ...

The Top 12 Presentation Mistakes Mistake #1: Overlooking "Murphy" If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. This mistake basically means that you walk into the room where you're going to present and something is wrong. LeRoux tells a story about a multimillion-dollar sales presentation to which "Murphy" paid a visit—in the form of missing curtains and a boardroom window overlooking a huge pool surrounded by bikini-clad swimmers (you can guess what the attendees looked at instead of the presenter). Remedy: Visit important presentation rooms at least a day in advance. If that's not possible, have someone take pictures from different angles and email them to you. Mistake #2: Delivering Split Presentations It's difficult to read the subtitles of a foreign movie and follow the action. When sellers stand at a distance from the screen, they create a similar problem. You probably won't build rapport with someone whose focus is repeatedly divided. Mistake #3: Positioning Yourself Incorrectly Right-handed sellers usually stand with the screen to their right. This allows them to point more easily. However, people read left to right. Salespeople are unable to capitalize on this fact when the screen is to their right. Remedy: Position a screen, flip chart, or easel ...

The words “presentation” and “nervous” have been used so often in the same sentence that many people have come to accept that the two are inseparable. Indeed, with more of the public fearing public speaking than death, presenters may believe they’re supposed to be nervous and that it’s to be fearful when speaking in front of a group. The reality, however, is that nervousness is not a natural by-product of speaking in front of a group – it’s a symptom of a deeper problem,...read more.

Making your big sales presentation too early in the sales process can lessen the likelihood of you making the sale. In many conversations with sales professionals, I am often surprised that even the most sophisticated professionals get caught presenting too early. Historically, everything salespeople do, from prospecting to contacting and qualifying potential customers, seems to be aimed at creating the opportunity to present their solutions. Consequently, sales organizations devote a tremendous amount of time and resources creating verbal presentations and written proposals. The irony is that most of this effort is lost on customers. Presenting prematurely is largely a waste of time. Conventional salespeople hate to hear this because the presentation is usually the key weapon in their sales arsenal. It is their security blanket, their comfort zone, and they don't want to give it up. They seem to be on a mission to relentlessly educate the customer. They believe, "If I can only get them to understand how great my product is, they will buy." In reality, there are two fundamental reasons why people do not buy; either: 1) they don't believe they have a problem (that includes the problem is not big enough to resolve), or 2) ...

Make the sales process a collaborative one and you'll find yourself in the position of trusted advisor instead of just another company trying to make a sale. One of the most difficult and feared situations in selling is getting hit with hard to answer questions early in the sales process. Questions such as: "Why should I buy from you?" and "What makes your product better than your competitor's?" For most salespeople these questions are an irresistible invitation for what I refer to as the "Presentation Trap," an open invitation from the customer to "tell me all about your product." Most salespeople jump at the opportunity and declare why their company is better than the competition's and in most cases this wastes time for both the customer and the salesperson. The exceptional salesperson will turn even the toughest questions into an opportunity to help their customer and themselves more clearly understand the situation and determine if their solution is actually a fit. They recognize the key thought -- "Prescription without Diagnosis is malpractice." To demonstrate this, think about how a doctor would respond to a question from a patient, before the doctor has completed a diagnosis. The patient asks, "Why ...