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How To
Achieve Excellence In Sales
By
Julia Tang
Most people are always striving to better themselves.
It's the "American Way". For proof, check the sales
figures on the number of self-improvement books sold
each year. This is not a pitch for you to jump in and
start selling these kinds of books, but it is a
indication of people's awareness that in order to better
themselves, they have to continue improving their
personal selling abilities.
To
excel in any selling situation, you must have
confidence, and confidence comes, first and foremost,
from knowledge. You have to know and understand yourself
and your goals. You have to recognize and accept your
weaknesses as well as your special talents. This
requires a kind of personal honesty that not everyone is
capable of exercising.
In
addition to knowing yourself, you must continue learning
about people. Just as with yourself, you must be caring,
forgiving and laudatory with others. In any sales
effort, you must accept other people as they are, not as
you would like for them to be. One of the most common
faults of sales people is impatience when the
prospective customer is slow to understand or make a
decision. The successful salesperson handles these
situations the same as he would if he were asking a girl
for a date, or even applying for a new job.
Learning your product, making a clear presentation to
qualified prospects, and closing more sales will take a
lot less time once you know your own capabilities and
failings, and understand and care about the prospects
you are calling upon.
Our
society is predicated upon selling, and all of us are
selling something all the time. We move up or stand
still in direct relation to our sales efforts. Everyone
is included, whether we're attempting to be a friend to
a co-worker, a neighbor, or selling multi-million dollar
real estate projects. Accepting these facts will enable
you to understand that there is no such thing as a born
salesman. Indeed, in selling, we all begin at the same
starting line, and we all have the same finish line as
the goal - a successful sale.
Most assuredly, anyone can sell anything to anybody. As
a qualification to this statement, let us say that some
things are easier to sell than others, and some people
work harder at selling than others. But regardless of
what you're selling, or even how you're attempting to
sell it, the odds are in your favor. If you make your
presentation to enough people, you'll find a buyer. The
problem with most people seems to be in making contact -
getting their sales presentation seen by, read by, or
heard by enough people. But this really shouldn't be a
problem, as we'll explain later. There is a problem of
impatience, but this too can be harnessed to work in the
salesperson's favor.
We
have established that we're all sales people in one way
or another. So whether we're attempting to move up from
forklift driver to warehouse manager, waitress to
hostess, salesman to sales manager or from mail order
dealer to president of the largest sales organization in
the world, it's vitally important that we continue
learning.
Getting up out of bed in the morning; doing what has to
be done in order to sell more units of your product;
keeping records, updating your materials; planning the
direction of further sales efforts; and all the while
increasing your own knowledge---all this very definitely
requires a great deal of personal motivation,
discipline, and energy. But then the rewards can be
beyond your wildest dreams, for make no mistake about
it, the selling profession is the highest paid
occupation in the world!
Selling is challenging. It demands the utmost of your
creativity and innovative thinking. The more success you
want, and the more dedicated you are to achieving your
goals, the more you'll sell. Hundreds of people the
world over become millionaires each month through
selling. Many of them were flat broke and unable to find
a "regular" job when they began their selling careers.
Yet they've done it, and you can do it too!
Remember, it's the surest way to all the wealth you
could ever want. You get paid according to your own
efforts, skill, and knowledge of people. If you're ready
to become rich, then think seriously about selling a
product or service (preferably something exclusively
yours) - something that you "pull out of your brain";
something that you write, manufacture or produce for the
benefit of other people. But failing this, the want ads
are full of opportunities for ambitious sales people.
You can start there, study, learn from experience, and
watch for the chance that will allow you to move ahead
by leaps and bounds.
Here are some guidelines that will definitely improve
your gross sales, and quite naturally, your gross
income. I like to call them the Strategic Salesmanship
Commandments. Look them over; give some thought to each
of them; and adapt those that you can to your own
selling efforts.
1.
If the product you're selling is something your prospect
can hold in his hands, get it into his hands as quickly
as possible. In other words, get the prospect "into the
act". Let him feel it, weigh it, admire it.
2.
Don't stand or sit alongside your prospect. Instead,
face him while you're pointing out the important
advantages of your product. This will enable you to
watch his facial expressions and determine whether and
when you should go for the close. In handling sales
literature, hold it by the top of the page, at the
proper angle, so that your prospect can read it as
you're highlighting the important points.
Regarding your sales literature, don't release your hold
on it, because you want to control the specific parts
you want the prospect to read. In other words, you want
the prospect to read or see only the parts of the sales
material you're telling him about at a given time.
3.
With prospects who won't talk with you: When you can get
no feedback to yours sales presentation, you must
dramatize your presentation to get him involved. Stop
and ask questions such as, "Now, don't you agree that
this product can help you or would be of benefit to
you?" After you've asked a question such as this, stop
talking and wait for the prospect to answer. It's a
proven fact that following such a question, the one who
talks first will lose, so don't say anything until after
the prospect has given you some kind of answer. Wait him
out!
4.
Prospects who are themselves sales people, and prospects
who imagine they know a lot about selling sometimes
present difficult selling obstacles, especially for the
novice. But believe me, these prospects can be the
easiest of all to sell. Simply give your sales
presentation, and instead of trying for a close, toss
out a challenge such as, "I don't know, Mr. Prospect -
after watching your reactions to what I've been showing
and telling you about my product, I'm very doubtful as
to how this product can truthfully be of benefit to
you".
Then wait a few seconds, just looking at him and waiting
for him to say something. Then, start packing up your
sales materials as if you are about to leave. In almost
every instance, your "tough nut" will quickly ask you,
Why? These people are generally so filled with their own
importance, that they just have to prove you wrong. When
they start on this tangent, they will sell themselves.
The more skeptical you are relative to their ability to
make your product work to their benefit, the more
they'll demand that you sell it to them.
If
you find that this prospect will not rise to your
challenge, then go ahead with the packing of your sales
materials and leave quickly. Some people are so
convinced of their own importance that it is a poor use
of your valuable time to attempt to convince them.
5.
Remember that in selling, time is money! Therefore, you
must allocate only so much time to each prospect. The
prospect who asks you to call back next week, or wants
to ramble on about similar products, prices or previous
experiences, is costing you money. Learn to quickly get
your prospect interested in, and wanting your product,
and then systematically present your sales pitch through
to the close, when he signs on the dotted line, and
reaches for his checkbook.
After the introductory call on your prospect, you should
be selling products and collecting money. Any callbacks
should be only for reorders, or to sell him related
products from your line. In other words, you can waste
an introductory call on a prospect to qualify him, but
you're going to be wasting money if you continue calling
on him to sell him the first unit of your product. When
faced with a reply such as, "Your product looks pretty
good, but I'll have to give some thought", you should
quickly jump in and ask him what specifically about your
product does he feel he needs to give more thought. Let
him explain, and that's when you go back into your sales
presentation and make everything crystal clear for him.
If he still balks, then you can either tell him that you
think he product will really benefit him, or it's
purchase be to his benefit.
You
must spend as much time as possible calling on new
prospects. Therefore, your first call should be a
selling call with follow-up calls by mail or telephone
(once every month or so in person) to sign him for
re-orders and other items from your product line.
6.
Review your sales presentation, your sales materials,
and your prospecting efforts. Make sure you have a
"door-opener" that arouses interest and "forces" a
purchase the first time around. This can be a $2
interest stimulator so that you can show him your full
line, or a special marked-down price on an item that
everybody wants; but the important thing is to get the
prospect on your "buying customer" list, and then follow
up via mail or telephone with related, but more
profitable products you have to offer.
If
you accept our statement that there are no born
salesmen, you can readily absorb these "commandments".
Study them, as well as all the material stated here.
When you realize your first successes, you will truly
know that "salesmen are MADE - not born".
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