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John Brennan Articles
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The Price Objection - Click To Read Article If you´ve been probing, listening and solving problems for your customer throughout your sales call, the next step - upselling and cross-selling should come naturally. The idea is actually to resell your customer, not only to increase sales, but also to ensure that your customer has no reason to turn to your competition. Your objective is to become your customer´s sole supplier of your product line. Don´t be reluctant about this phase of the sales cycle. Your customer has already invested time with you, and has decided to buy your product or service. That an upselling/cross-selling message will fall on receptive ears. Demand More Money by Using your Ads to Ask for Action - Click To Read Article Lots of ads are beautiful, almost perfectly written, and quite convincing - yet they fail to ask for or demand action from their reader. If you want readers to have your product, then tell them so and demand that they send their money now. Unless you enjoy entertaining your prospects with your beautiful writing skills, always demand that they complete the sale now, by taking action now - by calling a telephone number and ordering, or by writing their check and rushing it to the post office. Adapt your style to win over the customer. - Click To Read Article Use these six techniques to adjust to your customer’s style, build trust and rapport, and win them over. Create a Campaign with Follow Up - Click To Read Article A “campaign” involves multiple steps and multiple touches with your audience. Frequency is key – you can’t just send out a single email or run a lone print ad and expect great results. You want to hit your market multiple times using different media. Seven Ways to Improve Sales Results Without Hiring New People - Click To Read Article Are you tired of hiring new sales people that never seem to quite work out? Since 1980, we have been helping our clients improve sales results by assessing and developing their people. We’ve learned one or two things along the way. Getting to the Real Decision Maker - Click To Read Article Many of us fall into the "activity trap". We make lots of calls, talk to lots of people, and have an awful lot of sales in the "under consideration" column. If that same level of activity occurred in front of qualified decision makers, our sales would probably double. For tips on getting to decision makers, read on...and enjoy The Secret to Negotiating in Sales - Click To Read Article There's no mystery to negotiating. Good negotiators are not born; they are made! All it takes to be agood negotiator is some upfront preparation and some confidence. And nothing builds confidence like preparation. Tips and Techniques to Improve Sales - Click To Read Article These seven tips will help you improve sales without hiring new sales people. The Power of Ambition - Click To Read Article Probably like many of you, recently I found myself drawn to yet another Horatio Alger story; this time it´s the remarkable story of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Put aside for the moment his politics, whether you happen to agree with them or not. I would ask you also to put aside for the moment, and I do not ask this lightly, his highly questionable attitudes towards women. But for the purposes of becoming better sales people, it is worth reflecting on some of the attributes that have led Arnold Schwarzenegger to a successful career. The Sales Managers´s Toolkit; Role-playing - Click To Read Article Role-playing, whether it is impromptu or a planned part of a sales meeting, is one of the most effective tools a sales manager has to improve sales performance. You can reorganize territories, re-assign accounts, raise the bar, tinker with incentives, hire and fire, and even close the deals yourself, but none will come close to improving the knowledge, attitudes and skills of your sales team. My doctoral level research, and the practical experience of thousands of successful managers indicates that the most efficient way for sales people to acquire new skills and to polish existing ones is by role-playing, followed by skilled coaching. And the key coaching skill is giving feedback. Does A Hard Sell Work? - Click To Read Article As many of you know I have a strong bias towards a consultative approach to selling. I share the values and competencies required for successful consultative selling, and despise those of the “hard sell”. I’ve also assumed that the consultative approach gets better results, that people resist a hard sell, and that a hard sell is not at all effective with large ticket sales. But I recently came across a sales organization that questioned these assumptions. Selling in Uncertain Times - Click To Read Article There is no doubt that we are living in politically and economically uncertain times.I can allow the uncertain times to effect me negatively, or positively. I can slow down my sales activity and wait for tomorrow, or I can recommit myself to finding those prospects who are ready to do business today. It is my choice. Objections are Requests for more Information - Click To Read Article Think of objections as simply requests for more information. In other words, when the customer objects, he or she is simply asking: "Tell me how to justify this amount of money?" "How is this a better buy than your competitor´s product?" "Tell us how your other customers have dealt with their price concerns?" "Tell me why I should buy the product from you, and not your competitor?" How to Read Customers - Click To Read Article Actions do indeed speak louder than words. In sales, our customers actions communicate feelings a lot more clearly than their words do. It is the salesperson´s job to "read" a customer; it´s the sales person´s job to determine how serious the prospect is, if indeed, he/she is the decision maker, and whether or not the prospect has the budget. It is the rare prospect who comes right out and offers this information. More often than not, they prefer to keep this information to themselves. Fortunately for us, their body language often betrays them. Coaching, Counseling and Development - Click To Read Article Counseling is generally considered corrective discipline for serious performance deficits, and can often be avoided with the use of effective coaching techniques. Staff development is a long-term process that´s focused on enhancing people´s strengths and preparing them for the next step on their career ladder. Coaching, on the other hand, is a "right-now" method that helps your sales consultants to improve the work they do today. Its main purpose is to close the gap between the performance standards you´ve set and their actual performance. Customer Body Language: What to Look for - Click To Read Article Reading body language is a skill that can be learned. It requires training yourself to observe the customer closely and objectively, especially when you are the one doing the talking. It requires discipline, concentration and an appreciation for the power of body language. Train yourself to observe movement in your customer's eyes, hands,face, arms and posture. Learning the ABCs of Successful Closing - Click To Read Article Are you familiar with the salesperson´s maxim, "ABC - Always be Closing"? It´s good advice, because salespeople - telemarketers too - must be receptive to the customer´s buying signals and know how to respond appropriately. Closing means coming to agreement with your customer. You should gain agreement - close - periodically as your call progresses. This gets your customer in the habit of agreeing with you and demonstrates that both of you are on the same track. Mapping Out the Successful Campaign - Click To Read Article The backbone of any successful telemarketing program is planning. That means: - outlining your call objectives - preparing your sales message to incorporate phrases that will intrigue and hold your customer´s attention - training yourself to listen attentively to your customer and to probe your customer´s message - expecting and formulating responses to objections that you are likely to hear about your product or company - anticipating the ways in which your product or service will meet the needs of your customer - planning to upsell and cross-sell. Develop Your Positioning Statements - Click To Read Article Your positioning statement is used in literature, your website, and other sales materials. It should capture how you are positioned versus your competitors -- your value proposition, the core of your brand, the critical thing that you stand for. You should have three different lengths; a 25 word , a 50 word and a 100 word statement. What is a Value Proposition? - Click To Read Article Your value proposition is the value your company focuses on delivering to the market. It should be based on your company’s goals and objectives as well as the value provided by your competitors. Value propositions establish the value basis for the business relationship. They describe how your solution will improve your prospect’s business and how that improvement will be measured. Improve Your Sales Process - Click To Read Article A good sales process is structured around the way your customers prefer to purchase your product/service. At each step, you should deliver the information that your prospect needs in order to move that prospect at least one step closer to purchase. Here are typical stages that a buyer for a complex product/service may go through. Check the steps that you think are relevant for your company. What to Do When You Lose a Bid - Click To Read Article It happens to the best of us. You think you have done everything right. You have built the relationships, correctly identified the prospects’ needs, assessed your competitors, written a responsive and persuasive proposal and made a dynamite presentation. You knew it was not exactly a slam dunk but you had reason to feel very confident that you would win the business from this key prospect. Define Your Sales Process by Analyzing your Customer’s Buying Process - Click To Read Article A good sales process is structured around the way your customers prefer to purchase your product/service. At each step, you should deliver the information that your prospect needs in order to move that prospect at least one step closer to purchase. Do You Follow Your Leader? - Click To Read Article Organizations are successful or not partly on the basis of how well their leaders lead, but also in great part on the basis of how well their followers follow. Surely improving the performance of followers should be worthwhile. What is the role of the follower and how does it affect leadership behavior and effectiveness? How can members of the executive team participate more effectively to create a truly dynamic partnership relationship with their leader? Delegating - Click To Read Article Free up your time to focus on higher level issues while developing your sales reps through delegation. Your s team will grow in capability and confidence, and you will spend less time supervising them and checking their work. You and your team will be more productive, accomplishing the important rather than the urgent tasks while feeling increased job satisfaction. Ultimately, you will build a team that runs itself and you will be the envy of every manager in your company. Developing an Outside Sales Force - Click To Read Article By developing and managing your sales process you can more accurately forecast sales, pinpoint problems in the sales process and fix them, gain a better understanding of how your customers use your products, what changes they would like to see and how they perceive quality service and price. Your sales force is more likely to build stronger relationships with your customers when they are face to face with the customer, when they are well-trained and supported by targeted marketing. Your Brand Lives in your Sales Team - Click To Read Article Your best sales reps live & breathe your brand. They connect with your market every day. And when they don't personally convey your brand personality, they negate your entire brand strategy and competitive positioning strategy How to Write Order-Pulling Classified Ads - Click To Read Article Classified ads are the ads from which all successful businesses are started. These small, relatively inexpensive ads, give the beginner an opportunity to advertise his product or service without losing his shirt if the ad doesn't pull or the people don't break his door down with demands for his product. Classified ads are written according to all the advertising rules. What is said in a classified ad is the same that's said in a larger, more elaborate type of ad, excepting in condensed form. Write Better Ads by Mentally Picturing your Prospect - Click To Read Article Mentally picture your prospects - determine their wants and emotional needs - put yourself in their shoes, and ask yourself. "If I were reading this ad, what are the things that would appeal to me?" How to Write Eye Catching Display Ads - Click To Read Article A display or space or retail ad has a headline, layout and room in which to emphasize the "master formula." Most successful copywriters rate the headline and/or the lead sentence of an ad as the most important part of the ad, and in reality, you should do the same. After all, when your ad is surrounded by hundreds of other ads, and information or entertainment, what makes you think anyone is going to see your particular ad? Improve Sales with MAD Prospects - Click To Read Article Qualifying your prospects is probably the single most effective way to improve your sales productivity. There's a simple way to do it: just ask if your customers are MAD? Do they have the Money? Do they have the Authority? And do they have the Desire? They need all three to qualify. Win More Business by Choosing the Right Sales Activities - Click To Read Article The hard work of your sales activity can pay off for you if you take a systematic approach to it. Calculate your sales ratios. Track your activity. Measure your activity against the sales ratios and modify it where indicated. Maintain steady pressure and inevitably you will close sales. Increase Closing Opportunities by Watching your Customer. - Click To Read Article "You can observe an awful lot just by watching" - Yogi Berra Usually, buying signals are given by the customer through their body language. Ignore them, and you will miss opportunities to close. Catch them and respond effectively, and see your closing ratio take off. Death of the Sales Person - Click To Read Article It's a life or death battle in the sales field today. Many will die, but those that live will enter a new sales field, one that promises greater rewards. Focusing on Goals - Click To Read Article Define your goals, strengthen your confidence, overcome negativity and develop positive thoughts and feelings, and sharpen your focus by asking yourself these questions. Eight Steps to Testing a New Pricing Strategy - Click To Read Article Setting prices can be a process that is researched, objective and tested, or one that is reactive, emotional and impulsive. Follow the steps below and feel confident that your pricing strategy will be a success. How to recruit dealers to sell for you - Click To Read Article Everyone dreams of owning a super money-making business where other people do all the work, and their only duties involve the approval of sales and bank deposit slips. It's the only way to go as a business owner. The problem is, however, not too many people seem to know how to "put together" such a business. What you're really talking about is an operation where you supply the product and other people do the selling - A prime source with a dealer or distributor network. The Art of Adaptation - Click To Read Article Your selling style is your habitual, non-verbal communication with customers, determined by your personality and your sales experiences. Your customer’s buying style is his or her habitual, non-verbal communication with sales people, similarly determined by his or her personality and buying experiences. Adapting to customer buying styles is a technique in selling which calls for you to anticipate and adapt your selling style to your customer’s buying style in order to maximize sales effectiveness. Lead Generation Ideas & Options - Click To Read Article Not sure what media to use to promote your business? Email campaigns, search engine optimization, or tried and true postcards? Its important to get it right because you have a limited number of dollars to invest in promotion. Here are the media that are most appropriate for lead generation campaigns – check those that you believe are appropriate for you, and test them out. Don’t forget to track and measure your results. Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Pitching An Idea Or Project - Click To Read Article Business is all about influencing others, and a sale is at the heart of business. You must be adept at influencing prospects, customers, your manager, your team mates and other departments in your company. Don’t hold back; but don’t make the following critical mistakes either. Communication Breakdowns - Click To Read Article Communication on sales team can break down in many ways, sometimes with disastrous results. Sales managers set the tone and the expectations around the frequency and quality of communication. There are many ways you can cause communication to fail. Here are just a few. Overcoming Objections Quiz - Click To Read Article How good are you - really - at overcoming objections? Take this quick quiz and find out! Answers are at the end. Buyers are Liars and other Sales Myths - Click To Read Article Sales people love success stories and we’ve heard plenty of good ones. But there are some bad ones out there, too. Sales Stories may be interesting and not be useful or in fact they may serve to reinforce myths about selling. One of the top five is “Buyers are Liars”. Diagnosing Objections - Click To Read Article Ever wondered why some objections are harder to overcome than others? Or the same objection is hard to overcome with one customer, but easy with next? Or are they all hard? You may have misdiagnosed the objection. Sales doctors tell us there are four types of objections, each one a little sicker than the other, but all are curable. The key is to diagnose correctly and apply the correct treatment. How to use telemarketing to generate more leads - Click To Read Article The phrase “cold calling” sends chills down the spines of many businesspeople. It’s often viewed as an intimidating, difficult, and boring process ... and that means it doesn’t get done as often as it should. However, outbound telemarketing campaigns can be a great way to reach a group of targeted prospects or customers to communicate a message, gather feedback, and determine a next step for the relationship. Marketing and the Complex Sale - Click To Read Article The complex sale presents a set of unique sales and marketing problems that benefits by a shift away from the traditional lead generation mind-set to a new way of thinking centered on so basic tenets. Making your new product launch a success - Click To Read Article For many companies, the success of a new product launch is a life or death event and they usually take pains to see that the sales reps have detailed information about the product features. To this end, marketing produces slick and expensive videos and brochures, while impressing on the reps the importance of pushing the product on anyone they can to attain sales goals and win sales competitions. Focus your marketing campaign on your offer - Click To Read Article Your campaign should focus on the offer itself - don't pack it with everything you want to say about your company and your product. After all, your campaign is a sales process - if you dump all of your info in their lap at once, your message is diluted and your prospect will be overwhelmed. Skill and Knowledge are Telemarketing Partners - Click To Read Article Telemarketing is nothing new. Since early in this century, Wall Street brokers have used the telephone to sell securities, commodities, stocks and bonds to customers scattered across the country. Then, it was primarily a matter of logistics. The world was large, and telephone sales offered a practical alternative to the inconvenience of telegraphic communications. Business Development by the Numbers - Click To Read Article Perhaps it seems like you have plenty of "good" leads to follow up. But maybe you are not feeling any heat from any of them. What other suspects and propects do you have in your pipeline? How many active proposals do you have out there? Taking Your Career to the Next Level - Click To Read Article The voice on the other end of the phone echoed with anxious desperation familiar to any sales pro struggling to make quota. " I´ve just got to get my career to the next level," she sighed. "What level do you want to reach?" I asked. "Do you know the level you´re stuck at now?" "I could tell you how my manager describes my current production level," she answered, "but it wouldn´t be very lady-like." For this sales pro, like many others, getting to the next level is merely a figure of speech. It´s slang for improving sales figures, breaking through one´s current production plateau. She probably won´t attain next level until and unless she knows what the levels of selling are and the impact they have on personal sales productivity Overcoming Psychological Barriers to Success - Click To Read Article You will become the best sales person you can be if you can remove your psychological barriers that interfere with moving the sale forward. Some of us have more of them than others; but we all have some – dysfunctional behaviors that sabotage our success. This article looks at four common dysfunctions and how to overcome them. The dysfunctions are; • Self Doubt • People Pleasing • Perfectionism • Fear of Failure How Marketing Can Support Sales - Click To Read Article When you put on your marketing hat, you have a lot to take care of. You have competitive positioning, brand strategy, distribution channels, messaging, pricing, corporate identity and a million details that go along with them. However, one way marketing can make a substantial difference is in supporting sales. You can improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, and win the hearts of sales people by following these simple strategies. Improving Sales through Strategic Sales Compensation Planning - Click To Read Article Two of the most common questions at sales conferences are "How do you pay your sales people?" and "How can I get my sales people to be more productive?" Your sales strategy, tactics and goals should be the biggest determinant of your sales compensation plan, and the best single way to operationalize your sales strategy! Commissions and incentives have one function only; to reward the sales behavior that helps you reach your goals. Presentation Tip: Create a Storyboard that Sells - Click To Read Article Whether you're trying to persuade one person or a thousand, you need to grab attention, build value and close with something meaningful and exciting. Why You Should Change Your Organization's Culture - Click To Read Article The culture of your company (and yes, your company has a culture now, whether you can describe it or not) is the habitual way people in the company respond everyday to challenges and opportunities. The habitual way of responding can help your company reach its goals, or it can hinder it. Culture can be changed, though not easily, but first you must know what kind of culture you have and what kind you want. Documenting your sales process helps you grow revenue - Click To Read Article How do your prospects buy your product or service? Does a single decision maker buy on the spot, or does s/he go through many steps and approvals first? Or perhaps there are multiple departments involved over a very long period of time? To improve sales and generate more revenue you must first understand what hoops you must jump through to close deals. Prospect to Prosper - Click To Read Article There’s an old joke the rookie sales rep asks her sales manager ”How long do I have to keep prospecting?” Her answer, “Until you want to.” Most of us are like the rookie; we prospect because we have to. In the beginning we have to generate leads to build a good book of business. Then we have to prospect to find replacements for the inevitable 20% of our clients that become inactive each year. Does it ever end? Winning Business from Client Requests for Proposals (RFP)s. - Click To Read Article Government agencies usually issue RFPs for significant projects, and increasingly, so do public and private companies. The deadlines put pressure on your organization which surfaces issues and challenges that can be counter productive if not effectively managed. Here are some that frequently occur, with some tips to manage them. Invest in your Future; Practice Prospecting - Click To Read Article View prospecting as an integral part of your sales pipeline. Prospecting is not something you do when you have time, or something that you rely on others to do, but a routine first step down the road to a sale. Accept that you have to turn over a lot of rocks to find the goodies, and just take one suspect at a time. Add Power to your Presentation through Effective Use of Visuals - Click To Read Article Your customer's retention of information, your credibility, and your effectiveness depend on effective use of visuals during your sales presentation. However, over-used graphics and visuals can become a distraction and be seen by the customer as a "crutch". Managing Sales Reps' Defensiveness - Click To Read Article Defensiveness is a natural and normal response by sales reps to a sales manager's feedback and appraisal. It is important to understand that defensiveness is emotional, not rational. When responding to defensiveness, show empathy for your rep's underlying feelings rather than challenging their perceptions. Counter your Customers’ Negotiation Tactics - Click To Read Article Be prepared for customer negotiating tactics by determining your response before your sales call. Don’t be blindsided into giving away something you did not intend to. Your customers may attempt to improve their outcome at your expense (lose-win). Negotiating tactics tend to turn the focus away from legitimate negotiable items and ask for concessions based on irrelevant issues. Sometimes negotiation tactics are used unconsciously (see example below). Tactics have persisted and are touted in some negotiation books and training workshops because they are effective at least in the short-term. Their long-term effect is to hinder relationship building because your customer does not want to feel that you are taking unfair advantage. What Customers Really Want from Sales People - Click To Read Article It’s a buyer’s market today because there is enormous amounts of money in corporations and in families, with a proliferation of buying channels. Customers like having a choice, and they also like to shop and buy efficiently. A well-trained, professional sales person can help a customer sort through the choices and streamline their buying process. Going Beyond the Sales Lead - Click To Read Article Ultimately, the purpose of B2B marketing is to help the sales team sell. But marketers often get so wrapped up in driving activity that they seem to forget it's about driving sales conversion. A Wake Up Call for Marketers - Click To Read Article Understanding and embracing digital media is critical for today's ad agencies and marketers. Nike has worked with the brilliant creative agency Wieden + Kennedy since 1982. Their founders have a longstanding close relationship. Yet Nike needs more than terrific traditional campaigns. They need to take full advantage of the internet and build a cohesive online strategy to reach their target audience, build their brand, foster their community and drive sales. Apparently Wieden didn't prioritize online marketing to the degree Nike needed. And so earlier this year, Nike announced that they'll move their interactive assignments elsewhere. This wakeup call about online expertise isn't just for big consumer ad agencies. B2B marketers, consultants and agencies should pay attention as well. Seven Steps to a Successful Performance Review - Click To Read Article Whether you are a sales rep or a sales manager, there are a few basic principles that can make a significant difference in your commission check if you apply them. They certainly have for me. (Not that I apply them perfectly; just below my polished surface lurk laziness, arrogance and self-pity that if not kept in check can sabotage my best efforts.) The principles are simple, but not easy; they require self- motivation and self-discipline. But if you apply them, you will see measurable results. So, read on! Like this article? Share it with your friends
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