1) Identify Your Essential Competencies and Performance Metrics

If We asked you to list all the essential competencies that YOU are in control of – the ones that are absolutely critical for you to be successful in your sales position…could you do it?

For example…

Essential Competency or not?

” Converting conversations to appointments? (yes it is)
” What about filling out paperwork? No! (That’s a related task)
” What about closing ratio? (Sure it is.)
” Degree of success in turning a first appointment into an opportunity? (absolutely)

Get the picture?

Now, if you truly want to adopt a self-management system that will work FOR you – not against you, you first have to “access” what is an essential competency and what’s merely a related competency.

To do this, sit down and list any sales metrics and performance numbers inter-related to your competency numbers and your desired revenue results. (Hint: “Sales Cycle” and “Average Revenue” per sale are two.)

2) Diagnose Your Business on a Single Sheet of Paper

If I ran into you on a train or in an elevator, would you be prepared to tell me what you do (and how it benefits me or those I know) – in under 1 minute…That’s called your 30-second commercial. Most people don’t have one, yet everybody needs one.

One way to understand more of the obvious benefits your products and services bring to the table is to start to view and diagnose your business more scientifically. You will also see how the numbers work and which areas are most important to your short and long-term success.

Ask yourself…What happens if your closing ratio reduces by 30% and your average revenue per sale increases by $2500? How does that affect your desired results?

Write your competency measurements and sales metrics on a sheet of paper. Calculate ratios in line with competencies and average numbers in line with your sales metrics. Assign your revenue object or quota. Play with the numbers and ratios to see how they are inter-related and how they affect each other.

3) Calculate your ‘Magic Number’

“Not setting enough new appointments on a routine basis” is like a malignant cancerous growth slowly eating away at the heart of most sales organizations.
The reason for this is because most of us do not identify how many new appointments are needed on a weekly basis based on individual competency numbers and performance metrics.

That’s like diagnosing with blindfolds on.

Every one is different; we all have a ‘Magic Number’. And it’s personal to only you. If you routinely achieve it, you will routinely meet your desired results. Since it is a dynamic number that changes from week to week, it’s important to understand how it is inter-related with other competency ratios, performance metrics and desired revenue results.It’s important to include your ‘Magic Number’ in your self-management system.

4) Train to the ‘Napkin Rule’

The ‘Napkin Rule’ simple means, putting aside all those sales automation systems for 30 days and keep track of your essential competency and performance metrics on a single napkin.

Compute updates daily. Store the napkin in your pocket. When the napkin fills up, transfer it to a legal pad to show month to date. Have nothing else on the legal pad except your essential competency ratios and sales performance metrics. After 30 business days, transpose the legal pad metrics to your favorite computer software spreadsheet, and track it for 90 days.

This simple but powerful “Napkin Rule” will help you become the CEO of your business.

5) Run Your Numbers, Don’t Run after Quota

Concentrate on your numbers NOT your quota so you can diagnose performance trends before a revenue crisis. Then you have the power to institute strategies and tactics for immediate recovery.

Reaching and exceeding sales quotas consistently has very little to do with product, pricing and competition. But it has everything to do with ‘Process’.

Identify the core competencies that are necessary to be successful in your sales routine. Then train to Powerful Routines to increase your ratios of effectiveness. Document these meaningful business metrics and review them weekly. Build a simple but dynamic self-management system and outperform your peers and competition while assuring your revenue success.

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The core of every business is sales. Many of the strategies to increase sales offline are applicable online, but not all of them. On the Internet, everybody can effort to fail fast and learn from it. Better still, after years of testing and tracking what works online, people can just learn from other people’s experience and cut the learning curve tremendously.

Here are 5 of the surefire ways to increase sales:

1. Establish a sound affiliate program

If it is just another affiliate program, then don’t expect to have different results. Focus on building a sound affiliate program, with the tools and materials to support affiliates to promote a program easily. After all, affiliates work like clockwork and should be seen as a team. Provide them with the right promotion tools and they will more likely promote the program.

Give the customers an option to join the affiliate program after purchase. Satisfied customers are one of the best marketing for any business. Spread the good words through word of mouth. Best of all, they are paid just for doing that.

2. Follow-up after first purchase

The hardest task in any business is acquiring the first sale. Make sure that capturing customers’ name and email addresses are the least information gathered from a sale. With that information in hand, follow-up with existing customers, probably through an automated mechanism like timely autoresponder.

This effort has been proven to decrease refund on products and increase customers’ satisfaction. Every once in a while, mention a related product that might be of interest to the customers. Write a review and provide real results. Such promotion is extremely inexpensive, but very effective in practice. The product can be anything, including an affiliate program.

3. Use up-sell technique

Just before a customer check out to the payment gateway, prompt for optional upgrade to the better, bigger, or nicer product for a fairly steep discount, preferably not available elsewhere.

A certain number of customers will choose the option, which translates into additional sales, almost without additional effort.

4. Provide discount coupons

Coupons urge customers to come back and shop. Promotional coupons work for both advertising and some forms of joint venture. Customers love to know that they get lower price for what they buy. Coupons make it so real and tangible.

5. Cross-promote with other related products

There is no limit as to how this could be accomplished. Joint venture with other business or even competitors is feasible as long as it brings a win-win situation.

One example would be to give away sample of other product or service as part of the whole package. As long as the sample is relevant to the customer, this promotion could only be seen as an added value instead of pure advertising.

There are many other tactics to increase sales but above tips have been proven to work again and again. Choose one at a time and take action. Good luck.

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* Getting blocked by gatekeepers and voicemail. When salespeople don’t know how to break through the barriers of gatekeepers and voicemail, they start thinking, “Forget it — it’s not worth the aggravation, and it takes too much energy. I’ll just e-mail instead.”

However, when you try to use e-mail to offer your product or service to someone who doesn’t know you, you can’t possibly establish the natural dialogue between two people that allows the trust level to reach the level necessary for a healthy, long-term relationship.

We all know how much everyone hates e-mail spam, but even so, many salespeople are still sending introductory e-mails to decisionmakers. They feel that, because they’re from a credible organization, they won’t be associated with the negative image of a spam solicitor.

However, these introductory e-mails typically contain the traditional three-part sales pitch — the introduction, a mini-presentation about the products and services being offered, and a call to action — and this traditional selling approach instantly tells the recipient of the e-mail that your only goal is to sell your product or service so you can attain your goals, and not theirs.

If you’re still using email to sell, watch out for these 7 pitfalls:

1. Avoid sales pitches. If you feel you must use e-mail to start a new relationship, make your message about issues and problems that you believe your prospects are having, but don’t say anything to indicate that you’re assuming that both of you are a match.

2. Stop thinking that e-mail is the best way to get to decision makers. Traditional selling has become so ineffective that salespeople have run out of options for creating conversation, both over the phone and in person. However, it’s best to view e-mail as a backup option only, not as a way to create new relationships. Try to use it primarily for sending information and documents after you’ve developed a relationship with a prospect.

3. Remove your company name from the subject line. Whenever you put your company and solution first, you create the impression that you can’t wait to give a presentation about your

product and services. Your subject line should be a humble reference to issues that you may be able to help prospects solve.

4. Stop conditioning your prospects to hide behind e-mail. When you e-mail prospects, it’s easy for them to avoid you by not responding. Also, they get used to never picking up the phone and having a conversation with you — and they may want to avoid you because they’re afraid that, if they show interest in what you have to offer, you’ll try to close them. This creates sales pressure — the root of all selling woes. This avoidance becomes a vicious circle. If you learn to create pressure-free conversations, you’ll find that you’ll start getting phone calls from prospects who aren’t afraid to call you.

5. Avoid using e-mail as a crutch for hand ling sticky sales situations. Are prospects not calling you back? Many salespeople who call me for coaching ask how they can get themselves out of sticky situations with prospects — but the e-mails they’ve sent have already triggered those prospects to retreat. It’s tricky to come up with the correct softening language in an e-mail that will re-open a conversation with a prospect who has decided to close off communication — direct, person-to-person phone calls or meetings are much easier and more human.

6. Avoid using “I” and “we.” When you start an introductory e-mail with “I” or “we,” you immediately give the impression that you care only about selling your solution, rather than being open to a conversation that may or may not lead to a mutually beneficial match between what you have to offer and the issues your prospect may be trying to solve. If you can change your sales language to a natural conversation, your prospect will be less likely to stereotype your message as a spam solicitation.

Finally…

7. If you can, stop using e-mail selling altogether. There is a way to renew your confidence and eliminate your reluctance to picking up the phone and have pleasant conversations with potential prospects. Learn a completely new way of working with gatekeepers that will get you past voicemail and to your decision makers without the rejection and frustration that are inevitable with traditional selling approaches.

For all these reasons, you should think of e-mail as your last resort. If you can learn to pick up the phone without fear, start a trusting conversation with a gatekeeper, learn how to go beyond voice mail and find your decisionmakers, you’ll join the many who have made their own personal selling breakthrough.

When was the last time made a cold call and closed the sales on one call? What if you discovered that the cold calling approach you are using is based on 5 cold calling myths we were taught by the sales gurus?

Here they are:

Cold Calling Myth #1: A Strong Sales Pitch Is Needed

This is one of the biggest mistakes gurus have been spreading the sales gospel about. This is a major cause of sales rejection one big cause for rejected cold calls. This is because it triggers sales pressure and that is the last thing a salesperson would like to experience.

How would that make you feel? Does it make you feel a little like the negative stereotype of a telemarketer?

Instead, try starting a cold call with a conversation where both of you and the prospect can create a natural dialogue together. A good way of starting is discussing a common problem your prospect might be experiencing and how you can use your product as the solution to solve it. You don’t want your prospects thinking, “Oh no, it’s another sales pitch…”

Once you have learned not to use sales pitches, you will easily start making more sales without rejection.

Cold Calling Myth #2: Closing The Sale Is Your Goal

This is another deadly false fact which could kill your sales career in a snap.

The goal of a sales person should not be closing a deal. Instead, you should focus on determining if you and your prospect are the right fit. By focusing on this, you can alleviate the problems of your prospects pushing back on you creating the horrible feeling of rejection. Focus on trust and natural dialogue and your prospect will slowly pave the way for you to see if you’re both the right fit. It becomes a whole lot easier this way.

After you learn that that trying to “make the sale” is not your main objective, you will see sales success almost immediately.

Cold Calling Myth #3: Rejection Is a Normal Part of Selling

The real cause of sales rejection is usually the concealed sales pressure your prospect feels while you are talking to him/her. This is the culprit and it should be eliminated.

Would you believe that the cause of rejection is usually the way you are approaching your prospect?

You bet it is, just takes an open mind to realize that.

You can get past the “wall” that is holding you back letting go of your hidden agenda of trying to make the sale.

More sales require less pressure.

Cold Calling Myth #4: Keep Chasing Till You Get A Yes Or No

This is another myth. Chasing your prospect until you get a clear yes or no is old-fashioned, outdated and painful. The correct approach is having a system to determine if you are both the right fit in an authentic way.

Ask your prospect is solving their problem is a priority. Just that simple question can put you both on the same level of trust.

Asking saves you from spending time and resources in chasing.

Cold Calling Myth #5. Defend Yourself
We all want to avoid sales pressure so we avoid sales rejection. Defending you and your solution is the last thing you want to do.

Rather than focusing on defending your solution, focus on becoming a problem solver.

Less pressure helps you increase your sales mastery.

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Allow us to capture a look at a swift and simple way to immediately increase your revenue from a first time customer.
It is called, upselling, and it is a very effective strategy of offering one or more added products at the point of sale that will enhance your clients main purchases.

You have already persuaded your clients to purchase from you. At this point, you have won their trust and respect. Thus it requires very small extra effort on your part! And by and large, after people have made the decision to buy, they are much receptive to other offers, if you catch them while they are in a buying mood! In fact, our testing shows that a enormous high percentage of people will purchase a second product!

However, in order for this approach to be effective, you must make sure that what you are linked to your main item. By all means, present some specialty coffee if you are selling a coffee pot, but do not try to sell coffee to someone who’s purchasing computer parts! As long as you present something that is directly linked to your main item, you can easily improve your revenue from that sale.

Make the most of the worth of your on hand customer base to skyrocket your revenue. Remember: Your first-time customers always cost you the most. Instead of spending all of your time, money, also energy drawing more first-time guests to your web site, devote more time to the relationships you have established with your current client base!

Your current client base is a gold mine. In fact, backend sales to your on hand clients can improve your revenue significantly. That is why it’s thus critical that you follow up with every person who purchases from you!

So how do you get in touch with your on hand client base?

One excellent follow-up approach is to use programmed sequential offers to pull buyers back to your site. E-mail your clients after the initial sale, thanking them for their purchase, asking them if they have any questions? Also offering a related product.

An alternative strategy is to use e-mail to dispatch new offers and special promotions. You can target your e-mail communications to clients based on their history with you. For example, you can send a special promotion to all your first-time customers. Or, you can send a thank you promotion to your long-term repeat customers. In each e-mail, include and present a product or service related to their initial purchase.

Not sure what you can offer as a backend item? Here are just a few ideas:

• present a linked product they’re likely to be interested in
• present added of the same product
• present an upgrade to the initial product
• offer a service that assists with the use of the product
• present a service to apply the product for them
• present information to improve the use of their product
• present other people’s products for a commission

Make sure you time your offers for the greatest success. send out your follow-up offers 3, 7, also 10 days after the initial buy. These are the times when new clients are most likely to make a SECOND purchase. If you’re not following up with your clients, you are literally leaving a percentage of your proceeds on the table!

Generate massive proceeds by starting an affiliate program. How would you like to improve your search engine rankings and exponentially improve your proceeds? Well, if you start an affiliate program, you can do just that.

Developing an affiliate program is an incredibly powerful way to market your product or service online. It involves allowing other people to promote your products or services for you. And the best part is that you don’t have to pay them a penny unless they send you a sale!

It is not difficult to set up an affiliate program, and the benefits of doing it are enormous. Your affiliates can send you a great deal of traffic. Using banner ads, text links, also e-mail promotions, your affiliates can dispatch droves of folks to your web site. Your site can skyrocket to a top ranking in the search engines. Not only will you acquire a host of inbound links from your affiliates, your content will spread to the far reaches of the internet resulting in a drastic rise in your search engine rankings. You can reduce your advertising costs. Since you will have reams of highly motivated affiliates selling your products for you, you will not have to spend money driving traffic to your site. The key to getting the most out of your affiliate program is to attract the attention of very motivated affiliates by offering lots of incentive: generous commissions, also tools and resources that will help them to succeed.

Form strategic alliances with other businesses to ramp up your profits, expand your skill set, and present your clients high-quality products and services. Forming partnerships and also joint ventures with other businesses for a share of profits is a great way to ramp up your income in a major way. For one thing, when you combine your skills, products, services, and resources with another business, you create new streams of proceeds and profit and expand into new markets. You also bring added worth to your existing clients. The key to getting the most out of a strategic alliance is to seek out products or services that complement yours and will benefit your guests. Then approach the companies that provide those products or services. Ask them if you can recommend their products or services on your web site for a portion of the profits. Generally companies will gladly agree to this arrangement. After all, it is no risk for them if they have to pay you only when you refer a paying customer. It is a win-win situation that is going to generate a LOT of additional revenue!

So, get out there and start selling.

“How much will this cost?”

Many sales people shudder when faced with this question. They stutter, stammer, and hem and haw. This is where the rubber hits the road and when the prospect will either give them the green light to move forward with the sale or say, “thanks but no thanks”. Far too often, sales people feel uncomfortable talking about the price of their offering fearing that their prospect will put the brakes on the buying decision if the price of their product or service is perceived as being too high. They unconsciously flinch—mentally or physically—when responding and this hesitation is quickly noticed by the buyer.

Over the years I have learned that the sooner price is discussed in a conversation, the more of a focal point it becomes. If you have not fully uncovered your prospects problem and determined exactly how your product or service can help them solve a particular business issue, then your price will always seem too high unless you are the lowest priced supplier in the marketplace. The key to responding to this question is to establish the value BEFORE you discuss price. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who sell a product or service fail to achieve this which means that their efforts to move the sale forward often ends up in failure. The most fatal mistake is to state the cost to your prospect too early in the sales conversation.

Here are few strategies to use in future sales calls or meetings.

First, if your prospect asks this question before you are prepared to respond, you need to defer your answer. This sounds easy but in the real world it can be extremely challenging to actually execute. I remember talking to a prospect about coaching services and one of his first questions was, “How much do you charge?” While the price of coaching is relatively consistent from client to client, each person has different motives for utilizing this type of service. I knew that stating my fee too soon would likely cause my prospect to balk so I said, “It would be unfair for me to state a price without knowing more about your particular situation. Let me ask you a couple of questions and then we can discuss the investment.”

Your goal is take control of the sales conversation and you do that by asking high-value questions. The specific questions you need to ask will vary depending on the type of solution your company offers. It is essential to invest enough time learning about your prospect’s situation so you can effectively position your solution. This sounds fundamental; however, after working with sales people for the last fourteen years, I have discovered that most people do not ask enough high-value questions.

In order to establish the value or worth of your solution you need to learn how the problem they are facing affects the performance of the company. This can be expressed in terms of sales, profits, employee turnover, order accuracy, customer retention or satisfaction, time to market, market share, etc. Learn to ask tough, high-value questions that will help you understand the impact of the problem. Most sales people are uncomfortable asking deep, probing because they believe that their prospect will think that they are prying. However, personal experience has taught me that most key decision makers respect sales professionals who ask tough questions. Once a prospect expresses a problem, you can ask questions such as:

“How is that affecting…?”
“What impact is that having on customer loyalty, market share, etc.?”
“What is that costing you in terms of lost sales, profitability, etc.?”
“How important is this compared to other projects you have on your plate right now?”
“If we had an appropriate solution what would that mean to your company or you personally?”

After you have determined the importance and the impact of a particular problem, you can then demonstrate the worth or value of your product or service to your prospect. Not before.

Another challenge with this approach is that it takes time. You need to exercise patience. You need to be able to clearly demonstrate why your offering is worth the investment. If you discuss price too soon then everything you say afterwards will seem like you are trying to justify the cost. However, when you demonstrate how your product will benefit the company and or prospect, your price will appear as a fair and equitable investment.

Remember, there is a significant difference between cost and worth. Here is a simple comparison. A low-end, entry level car will get you from point A to point B. However many people will pay extra to do that drive in a luxury vehicle. Business-to-business selling is no different. Help your prospect see the value and worth of your product, service or solution and cost (or price) will become less of an issue.

Many salespeople give up as soon as the customer says, “No”. Many just aren’t prepared with good sales tactics and don’t know what to do next. This article discusses four good sales tactics to overcome objections. If you practice them until you are smooth, you will close many more sales.

There are two main reasons objections come up in selling and there are sales tactics you need to successfully deal with them. One reason is a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the customer to realizing the close is imminent. They bring up an objection to slow down the process. These objections are the ones you can get past easily by just acknowledging them and carrying on with the close. Let’s assume you are starting to write an order and the customer says, “Hold it, that’s a lot of money for a computer system.” Some salespeople stop here and leave. Did the customer say he wasn’t buying? All he said was it was a lot of money and he is probably right. Try using a sales tactic like, “I understand” or “Yes it is” and keep writing the order. About 40% of the time, the objection won’t come up again because it was just a delaying reaction to the close. But, in 60% of the cases, you still have work to do. That’s when the following sales tactics can help.

Anything Else?

Before you use any sales tactics other than the bypass explained above, you should always ask if there is anything else. “Other than that, is there anything else preventing you from going ahead now?” Never deal with objections until you know if it is the final objection or just one in a series of objections.

Drop A Name, Add Information

One successful sales tactic is to drop a name for assurance and add information. It’s like telling a story. Let’s say the objection is a fear that the warranty is reliable. You might say, “You know, that is just what your neighbor Sam Brown wondered about as well. He did have a service problem two weeks ago and he emailed to tell me how pleased he was with our response. I know you will enjoy our warranty and service as well, I’ll get the paperwork started.” Always end by going right back to the close.

Get Input From The Customer

Another good sales tactic is to get more information from the customer. For example, if the customer says your price is too high, ask them how much they had budgeted for the purchase. Notice this is not asking how much they wanted to spend but how much they had budgeted for the purchase. With that information, you may be able to lower the payments by increasing loan length, you may be able to sell a lower cost model or you may be able to use a “take away’ by asking what features they would give up to get the item for that price.

How’s That Working For You?

When customers tell you they are staying with what they have now, a good question is “how is that working for you?” If you did a good job asking questions in the interview stage of the sale, you should have got them to tell you what they don’t like about what they have and why they are thinking of changing or getting a new one. In the objections stage you use this information to ask how they like what they are doing (or not doing) to solve these issues. For example if they say they are putting off their decision for 6 months, you might say, “You did say your present copier is wasting $700.00 per month compared to our new efficient machine. How do you think putting it off will work out for you?”

There are many sales tactics to handle objections. The important thing is to have several ways ready to handle each objection and to practice, drill and rehearse until you are smooth and confident with your sales rebuttals.

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