Solid Training Is The Key!

Sales Training:

The on-going recession has changed the economic climate and it is now more important than ever that your company is equipped with expert salespeople. Whereas in some industries the only task salespeople used to have was taking orders, your sales team now need to be proficient in every aspect of the sales process. Selling that is recession proof means that the skills set of your salespeople need to be better than that of your competitors. Solid training is a key advantage for successful sales teams and research has shown that businesses that fail often did not put in the proper amount of time and effort into polishing the skills of their salespeople.

Try A Different Approach:

To decide what type of sales training program is suitable for your company you need to understand a few concepts. Firstly, there is a difference in approach to selling to businesses as opposed to selling to consumers. B2B (business to business) commerce are transactions between businesses where both the buyer and the seller is a business entity, for example a manufacturer and a wholesaler. In contrast B2C (business to consumer) describes commercial activities between a business and a private individual, for example a retail store and its customers. The sales approach is very different and your training provider should be aware of that. Regardless of whether you sell B2B or B2C, there are three modes of selling. Telesales is a familiar method where either a telesales representative calls a potential customer directly to sell a product or service (cold calling) or where a customer calls in to a call centre. The sales representative will go through the entire selling process over the phone. In contrast, field sales involve a sales representative visiting the customer – be it a business or a private individual – on their premises, going through the sales process face to face. Finally retail sales is the sale of goods from a fixed location owned or rented by the seller such as a department store, a kiosk or a boutique which an individual can visit to enquire about the company`s products.

Closing Can Make All The Difference:

When sales training is insufficient there are a number of negative outcomes. Sales people can lack confidence in their ability to sell the company`s service or product offering: a sales team can fall back to a comfort zone of old tried and true selling methods which may have worked in the past but have gotten less effective over time. Management`s expectations relating to products and services are not communicated through the ranks and neither is frontline feedback on the company`s products and service communicated back to management. Finally, closing sales is one of the most difficult steps in the sales process and this is where training can make a big difference: if salespeople are unable to close sales all their effort may be wasted but there are proven techniques to make asking for the sale easier.

Increase Your Revenue:

A good training program will help fix the above problems and cover a broad array of skills: basic communication ability, how to build an understanding of the prospect`s needs and wants, how to present the proposition and how to close a sale by dealing with objections and negotiating. The training provider will tailor the lessons to the way your company sells and to your target audience. New technology is giving salespeople additional tools to the sales process. In addition to well established technology salespeople can now make use of novel methods such as social networking and an excellent training course will teach salespeople how to use technology to reach out to customers. Even though training courses involve some expense the additional skills will give your salespeople a permanent advantage which means a large increase in revenue. Not only will revenue increase, you will also build better relationships with your customers and the turnover of salespeople will drop. Business Marketing Courses are also valuable as this will teach salespeople the basics of running a business, important knowledge for salespeople that do not have a commercial background.

Generating Business Part Three:

Ten more questions you should ask yourself if you want to generate more sales enquiries and turn them enquiries into profit.

1. The best way to sell is to ask questions, are you and your sales staff aware of this fact?
   
2. You should always include a PS in your letters, are you aware of why this is important?
   
3. You should be using up to ten ways to market your business, are you doing this?
   
4. If you follow up a mail shot with a phone call you can increase response rates and increase your profits, do you do this after every mail shot?
   
5. Your existing customers are really important, you should take the best care of them are you and your staff aware of this?
   
6. Your clients all have Birthdays; do you know when these are? Do you send them a card?
   
7. You should be in contact of your existing customers all the time by these methods, Mail, Email and Telephone, this is how they will get to know about your offers, are you keeping in touch?
   
8. Most of your competitors probably don’t do what I have stated above, Can you imagine  how much  better than them you would be if you chose two of these marketing methods and put them to use?
   
9. Would you enjoy life more if your business was doing better?
   
10. Did you know for things to change in your business, you have to change what you do with your marketing?

If you have answered NO to any of the above, implement the changes today and begin to earn those missing profits that your company needs.

Dave Edwards

How To Get NEW Customers On A Tight Budget – And Get People To Do Business With YOU Rather Than Your Competitors!

Try Before You Buy Offer

Using the social aspect of sales:

Sometimes the social aspect of a TRY before you BUY offer can be used to help people make the right decision, making the sales process faster and less stressful.

Quite often your potential customers have already decided to purchase your products/services and your try before you buy offer simply helps them to make a decision.

Don’t let your potential customers make the mistake of taking their business elsewhere, sometimes people want to buy your product/service but they need to remove the risk of buying from you.

Use a ‘Try before you Buy’ Offer,

Find a way to offer your potential customer an opportunity to try your products, let them test it or see if it works, don’t be fooled into thinking your product/service is to valuable to let potential customers try it for free.

Test it out!! it will pay dividends.

BMW or Mercedes will quite happily let you test drive one of their cars, WHY because they know that it works, many customers buy cars from one these two companies this is the same principle as a try before you buy offer.

Here’s what to do NOW:

Firstly: find a way to get potential New Customers to try your product and feel the value it will offer to them, make sure this trial is FREE.

Secondly: ask these potential New customers what they thought about your product or service after using it.

If they tell you they love it, ask them what is it, that they loved

The answer to this question should be the foundation of your sales pitch, remember questions hold the answers let your potential customers sell your product for you. Believe me when I say they will sell your product or service to themselves.

This would be a good time for you to say, I’m really glad you found our product or service useful, then you can use an assumptive close to sell your product/service.

If you ask this question in the right manner and say nothing your potential customer will be motivated into taking some action, this won’t work every time but it will massively increase the number of sales that you make, try it and see.

It makes little or no sense what so ever, that any business even small businesses would not have a try before you buy offer.

Another approach is to let your potential customers take all the risk, putting their faith in you and your product/service ask yourself what you would do in this buying situation?

If you wouldn’t buy your product neither will they.

Thought this might be interesting!!!

In these days of really hard work, uncertainty and crisis (probably more fear and panic than real problems), it’s good to remember the following words from

Albert Einstein:

Let’s not pretend that things will change if we keep doing the same things. A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, to any nation. For all crises bring progress.

Creativity is born from anguish, just like the day is born form the dark night. It’s in crisis that inventive is born, as well as discoveries, and big strategies. Who overcomes crisis, overcomes himself, without getting overcome. Who blames his failure to a crisis neglects his own talent, and is more respectful to problems than to solutions. Incompetence is the true crisis.

The greatest inconvenience of people and nations is the laziness with which they attempt to find the solutions to their problems. There’s no challenge without a crisis. Without challenges, life becomes a routine, a slow agony. There’s no merit without crisis. It’s in the crisis where we can show the very best in us. Without a crisis, any wind becomes a tender touch. To speak about a crisis is to promote it. Not to speak about it is to exalt conformism. Let us work hard instead.

Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it.

I had this sent to me from Carsten pro- Plan interactivo S.L, wwwpro-plan.eu and thought you might find this interesting.

Generating Business Part Two:

The Next 10 Questions You Should Ask Yourself:

Today I want to share with you the next 10 great ways to highlight some instant ways for you to generate more enquiries, boost your profit and grow your business.

The following 10 questions will help you to understand where your business is succeeding and where it isn’t so that you can take the necessary action to produce rapid results. Effort will be required on your part if you wish to take advantage of those extra profits you could be missing out on.

Did you know it takes 99% of effort to launch a rocket but only 10% to keep it flying?

1 How much time each year do your sales team spend learning leading edge sales skills?

2 You should have an excellent lead generation in place, Do you have this in place ?

3 Do you have an ongoing communication with qualified leads consisting of letters and emails and phone calls?

4 Do your customers ever send you testimonials and do you use them?

5 Do you have an effective referrals system in your work place?

6 There are lots of ways of obtaining referrals, can you name three?

7 You should offer something of value to your website visitors in exchange for their contact details; do you make this offer to them?

8 You should know how to write a press release as this will grab the attention of the person reading it; do you know how to do this?

9 You should personalise all emails newsletters and letters, is this something you are doing?

10 You should send regular email communications to your customers and prospective customers do you do this?

If you have answered NO to any of the above, implement the changes today and begin to earn those missing profits that your company needs.

WATCH OUT FOR THE NEXT TEN GREAT WAY TO BOOST YOUR PROFIT AND GROW YOUR BUSINESS.

Dave Edwards www.harlequinsalesandmarketing.com
How To Get NEW Customers On A Tight Budget – And Get People To Do Business With YOU Rather Than Your Competitors!

Generating Business Part One:

Ask Yourself These 10 Questions:

Today I am going to share with you 10 great ways to highlight some instant ways for you to generate more enquiries, boost your profit and grow your business.

The following 10 questions will help you to understand where your business is succeeding and where it isn’t so that you can take the necessary action to produce rapid results.

These questions are what you should ask yourself, give them plenty of time and thought and you will be surprised at the results you can achieve. This would be a good time for me to point out that should you answer NO to any of these questions, these are areas of your business where you are losing out on those all important PROFITS.

All is not lost, don’t bury your head in the sand or crawl under a stone this exercise should motivate you into taking action with your marketing.

1 You should be able to name three things that set you apart from your competition (Can you?)

2 You should demonstrate the benefits your products will have for your customers in all your promotional literature (do you?)

3 You should use telemarketing to attract new potential customers (do you?)

4 You should use Direct Mail to attract new potential customers (do you?)

5 You should have a good relationship with a media so that you can acquire some good PR to build name awareness (do you have this relationship?)

6 You should use Direct Response adverts that will make your potential customers jump to action (do you use this type of advert?)

7 You should not advertise in the media just because your competitors advertise there, you should try something different (do you?)

8 You should always converse with your customers in ways they can understand (do you?)

9 You should test search engine advertising (have you?)

10 You should test Internet Advertising (Have you?)

If you have answered NO to any of the above, implement the changes today and begin to earn those missing profits that your company needs.

WATCH OUT FOR THE NEXT TEN GREAT WAY TO BOOST YOUR PROFIT AND GROW YOUR BUSINESS.

Dave Edwards www.harlequinsalesandmarketing.com
How To Get NEW Customers On A Tight Budget – And Get People To Do Business With YOU Rather Than Your Competitors!

Key Ingredients to Marketing Success

Six Ways to Marketing Success:

It’s FREE and you can do this RIGHT NOW, take a step back and look at your business from outside the box, this way you will see how you can Market your Business in a totally different way, ‘‘in a way your competitors aren’t doing it”.

Most businesses market their products in the same way as their competitors, they are all searching for exactly the same customers. did you know that at any given time between 3% and 7% of people are looking for your products or services.

Let me explain:

If you open your local newspaper (the one you advertise in) yours and your competitors adverts will look the same, sure you all have your company details on your advert which differentiates you a little but on the whole your customers are going to choose you and three of your competitors for their quotation. What you are doing is Marketing in a Vacuum. Have you ever tried advertising for the 93% to 97% of people that have not even thought about your product yet.

Marketing outside the vacuum will remove the competition and make your customers take decisive action. Most businesses are lemmings when it comes to advertising its all follow the leader, like something in their heads saying they have to market in the same way that everyone else in their profession markets. So all the electricians advertise in the local paper, all the hairdressers advertise in the yellow pages and all the double glazing companies use telemarketing and so on.

95% of businesses only market their products in one or two ways, it might be the local newspaper, or perhaps its Direct Mail. Do you know how much potential business you might be missing only using a couple of ways to Market your Business? Imagine what might happen to your business if you used Five or Six ways to promote your product or services, I know your thinking what about the cost (it’s already costing me a fortune on advertising) but i’m talking about ”How To Get NEW Customers On A Tight Budget – And Get People To Do Business With YOU Rather Than Your Competitors”

What will happen, if you use more cost effective ways to market your business is that you will achieve what everyone continually tells me is ‘impossible, ”You’ll increase your profits by 50% or 100%”.

Lets have a look at some cost effective marketing methods you can use to dramatically boost your business:

Here’s my list, of the top six most cost effective marketing methods you can use to boost your business profits, Pick a couple of them and MAKE A DECISION to add them to your marketing mix in the next few weeks ahead:

Direct Mail
Internet Marketing
Email Marketing
Strategic Alliances
Referral Systems
PR

Step outside the box, use, test and measure your chosen methods.

Remember most other businesses are not willing to do this, it’s all too much effort and they’re more interested in moaning and blaming today’s economic climate because their businesses are suffering. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX and get your success story on the road.

Dave Edwards www.harlequinsalesandmarketing.com
How To Get NEW Customers On A Tight Budget – And Get People To Do Business With YOU Rather Than Your Competitors!

Fighting The UK Credit Crunch

When market conditions soften and the recession mongers surface, the solution is not to batten down the hatches, start by asking yourself “AM I HAPPY?’ if the answer is yes tell your face about it then the whole world will get to know.

A friend asked me last week,

“How is the credit crunch affecting you?”

“Its Not!” I said!

We all have a choice YOU, ME and everyone else can choose not to participate.

THE WHOLE WORLD needs to wake up and smell the roses, the last time I looked there were plenty of people buying plenty of products, so the great news is your products haven’t gone out of fashion, just ask yourself, how many of your products you want to sell this month?

Whatever the number you have picked I am sure it will be considerably less than the number of products your competitors will be selling in this market place in your area, ITS NOW TIME crank up the pace!! Stack the odds in your favour and focus on things that really matter, all this talk of a downturn and recession is the best time to re-ignite the passion that is needed to make your business stronger.

Develop an action plan & this time:

Pull the trigger.

Ask yourself:

What do I need to stop doing and what do I need to start doing?

What do I need to do less of and what do I need to do more of?

And Remember this, if your not out there selling your being out sold!!!

So go get em! Absolute positivity sells absolutely anything.

The bottom line is get excited again and start;

SELLING UP IN A DOWN ECONOMY