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Found articles: 49

  • The Added Value - Is YOU!

     If there was a restaurant in your town that was physically attractive and clean, had a pleasant variety of entr?es on the menu, served food that was prepared in an attractive manner, and the service was outstanding--the maitre’d greeted you by name, remembered which was your favorite table, stopped by later to inquire about your needs and satisfaction, the waiters and waitresses bent over backwards to make your dinner a pleasurable experience and always treated you as if you were their most important patron--would you be willing to pay a little more than other restaurants charged?Many of us will pay a more to obtain better treatment.More

  • Cliche-Ladened Presentations

     Do you know people who talk in “buzz words” or “catchy cliches”? (Even the term buzz word is a cliche now because it’s another way of saying, “words or expressions that have become popular .”) Buzz words can sometimes aid a presentation, but often they tend to confuse a prospect, customer, client or co-worker.More

  • Canned Sales Presentations Just Don't Work Today

     Flip charts and slides shows (“canned presentations”) make the best sales product or service promotions because, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” right? Well it depends!Stanford University’s Research Institute’s VALS study (values, altitudes and life styles) lists five distinct psychographic categories (personalities) or buying decision-making modes.More

  • Is Your Message Getting Through?

     As a sales coach, I often hear a sales representative make the excuse for a lost sale, that their prospect just did not listen to their presentation. Most psychologists suggest that, “Effective communication occurs when the receiver receives the message the sender intended to send.” From this definition, it is clear that the responsibility for effective communications rests with the sales professional.More

  • Impress People With Your Message

     Sometimes sales professionals feel insecure about presenting various products or services that they represent. To overcome the discomfort that naturally occurs when you feel unsure about certain features or benefits, often you will instinctively upgrade your language, believing that doing so will help you sound more professional and more knowledgeable. Actually, however, this practice can hurt you rather than help you in the sales communication process.More

  • The Two-Hour Sales Presentation Vs. A Seven-Minute Attention Span

     The average decision-maker has an attention span of just a little over seven minutes. I’m convinced that adult attention spans have been carefully programmed by network television, by the seven to eight minute time segments of entertainment, wedged between commercial breaks. On the other hand, the average sales presentation in the United States runs from one and a half to two hours in length.More

  • Top Sales Professionals Ask "The Right Questions"

     In a survey of 10,000 sales executives conducted for Sales & Marketing Management magazine by Simmons Market Research, participants maintained, seven to one, that top sales representatives are “made,” not born. Many of them went on to suggest that one of the most important skills to be learned by a sales professional is the ability to match products and services to customers’ needs. Asked to define “greatness” in a salesperson, one respondent said, “Foremost, it’s understanding the needs of each customer and, after recognizing each customer’s need, matching it with the appropriate selling approach.More

  • Wearing Two Hats Costs A Sales Professional Sales

     In many businesses and professional service organizations today, sales team members are asked to wear two hats--the “sales promotion” hat and the “customer or client service” hat. In some organizations this dual responsibility for the sales staff can not be avoided, but in those organizations where this sales and service function is not set in stone, you would be wise to off-load the service responsibilities from your sales professionals to members of a service team.Sales managers don’t need built in structural excuses for poor sales performance.More

  • "Cold Calling Is Dead" Is A Lie!

     There is a website that trumpets this notion (myth) in ads all over the Internet. The primary argument is that cold calling is a time consuming prospecting technique that has seen its day and in our modern age, today’s technology gives sales professionals new and better approaches to finding prospects to sell. Sounds good if you’re selling a book on the subject.More

  • Converting Sales Training To Sales Success!

     The goal of all sales training is not just to teach solid selling principles and techniques, but to actually help participants increase the number of new accounts (products and/or services) they sell and improve their multiple sales ratios. Unfortunately, many sales and service industry professionals gain an intellectual awareness of the methods of selling from the sales training they receive, yet fail to improve their bottom line sales results by systematically using the concepts in their daily transactions. See my article, The Processionary Caterpillar Syndrome Costs You Sales?More