Selling

A collection of 95 posts

Sales Management

Referrals and Selling

It is legendary that referrals can be the best method for new business development. Simply put, there is no better sales person than a happy customer. Here is a simple suggestion. Effective immediately, make it part of every customer meeting agenda to discuss referrals. I am not kidding. Make it

Sales Management

Ask for Referrals

Not long after my wife bought a Honda Fit she received an envelope with a handwritten address and a real stamp. Opening what looked to be greeting card from some friend was a card from her sales person at the Honda dealer. The card read: “Our path to success is

Sales Management

Selling in a Down Market

We can argue about what constitutes a bear market, a recession, and when the economy will hit bottom, but it seems clear that 2008 will be a tough year. Oil looks like it might top $100 a barrel, real estate will continue the downward spiral, and we have a lame

Email Marketing

E-mail Campaign or Just More Spam?

Your latest e-mail campaign was supposed to create new leads for the sales team. Sadly, most of the recipients greeted your e-mails with the delete key. All they saw was another piece of spam. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone since most e-mail campaigns struggle to be read

Negotiation

Negotiating With a Cry Baby

When negotiating you will periodically encounter the “cry baby”, which is a negotiator who has learned that if they cry loud enough and long enough, he or she might get what they want. This behavior resembles a two year old screaming until you pick them up to shut them up.

Sales Management

Hunters Hunt and Farmers Farm

Hunters hunt and farmers farm. Both types of sales people are valuable, but which best fits your offering? Which of these sales profiles is the best fit for your industry? Which is the best fit for the territory and the accounts? A hunter is highly tuned-in to his or her

Marketing Mix

The Difference Between Sales and Marketing

I am frequently asked about the difference between selling and marketing. Academically speaking, selling is a function of marketing, as is advertising, promotion, and pricing. Practically speaking, marketing is what happens before the phone rings and selling is what happens after you answer the phone. Marketing is all about understanding

Public Relations

“How to Sense Impending Doom”

The headline above is an actual headline from BusinessWeek Online from August 13, 2007. The story that followed described new technologies which help monitor bridges and how experts who can analyze the results are in short supply. This article was written in the wake of the recent Minneapolis bridge collapse

Sales Management

Internal Selling Can Be the Hardest Sale

You beat the competition. You secured commitment from the customer. And you got the order. Congratulations, but the selling is not over. The next step is to go back and sell to your own company and it may be the hardest sales call you make. To fulfill your commitments to

Negotiation

Negotiate Better: Focus on Interests and Positions

Negotiating seems easy, but actually doing it can be hard. The biggest mistake that people make is to focus on their own position instead of trying to understand the interests or motivations of the other parties. As simple as it sounds, you need to focus on the other party and

Ethics

Coffee is For Closers

“Glengarry Glen Ross” is a riveting movie about selling that will both entertain you and make you cringe at the same time, particularly if you make your living selling. At the very least, it will make you question your own code of ethics. Based on David Mamet's 1984

Sales Management

Common Characteristics of Excellent Sales People

Having managed sales people for many years while being a peddler myself, I have observed how sales people behave, both good and not so good. Sales people that are truly excellent behave the same way, more or less. Said another way, successful sales people tend to exhibit some common behavioral

Sales Management

Objections: An Enabling Sales Technology

Objections. You have heard them all before: “I have no budget”, “I have no need”, “I am not interested” or “We are happy with our existing supplier”. My favorite objection is “Maybe later”. All are the customer’s way of saying “no”. Classical sales training tells us that you have

Sales Management

Selling to Difficult Customers

"He would make a lovely corpse." – Charles Dickens Eventually, we all have to call on difficult customers. You know who they are. They are grumpy, angry, confrontational, cheap, lazy, critical, and picky. No matter how hard you try, it is hard to meet their expectations. Just picking up

Sales Management

Why Customers Buy

"Different isn't always better, but better is always different." * Marshall Thurber, entrepreneur I like this quote because it sums up my thinking about how customers will buy an offering because of its differences and not because it is similar to another offering. This is true even

Marketing Communications

Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

Ever wonder what that expression really means? A current interpretation might be that it is impolite to receive a gift and then question the value of that gift. Long ago when we all rode horses it had something to do with a horse’s age and its teeth, or “So

Ethics

Legal Issues and Selling

Sales people talk or send e-mails to customers and prospects all day long. They make sales presentations, handle objections, quote price and delivery, write proposals, and close orders. After a while it almost becomes automatic or second nature since this is what sales people do. Yet, sales people probably don’

Ethics

How Customers View Ethical Selling

Let’s turn the table and look at selling and ethics from the customers’ perspective. Trust me, buyers know unethical behavior when they see it and they keep score. What does unethical selling look like if you are the buyer? • Misrepresenting the product’s specifications, warranty, or capabilities. • Bashing the

Ethics

More on Ethical Selling

I received a flood of responses about my recent blog on “Ethical Selling”. Most were private e-mails from sales people who have had to defend their ethics. For many, the most frequently confronted issue was the company’s need for more sales versus the code of ethics of the individual

Ethics

Does Your Customer Trust You?

Long term customer relationships are built on trust. Trust is the single most important ingredient in a successful long-term selling relationship. Trust is the belief that you will do your part, that you will deliver what you promise and that you will fulfill your obligations in the relationship. These commitments

Ethics

Ethical Selling

For most of us, knowing the difference between right and wrong is pretty clear, but sometimes doing the right thing is hard to do. Or, let’s say we are challenged to make the right choices. Our government helps us out with our decision making process about right and wrong

Sales Management

Personalize Your Offering

Understanding your customer’s needs is a critical step in the sales process; if you understand this, you are empowered to construct the best possible solution for their problem. Without this information, you are just doing guesswork. With this knowledge, you can personalize your solution by emphasizing the fit of

Marketing Communications

Being Understood

“I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” Robert McCloskey, US State Department spokesman Being understood by your customer may be the most important aspect of selling. If they

Sales Management

No Hurry to Make a Decision

“Let me think about,” says your customer. This is the dreaded “no hurry” response, which is one of the most frustrating selling situations that you can encounter in sales. You have answered all the questions, handled all the objections, and determined that the fit with your offering is good. Still,

Sales Management

Why Won’t My Customers Call Me Back?

A common lament from many sales people these days is the difficulty that they have in getting their customers to call them back or answer emails. This applies to prospects and even regular customers. Sales people worry that if they call too much they will be perceived as a pest