Want to be a more Effective Salesperson?

We all strive to improve our skills on a daily basis. From asking our managers to come on coaching calls with us so we can learn from their unique perspective and feedback to  sales training, webinars, books & articles, sourcing self motivation, and setting personal goals to measure our success and growth. I read one such article many years ago that guides us with the nine top habits of highly effective salespeople. I had to hunt to find the content from “Benchmarking the Sales Function” (a report based on a study of 100 top salespeople from small, medium, and large businesses, conducted by Ron Volper Group, White Plains, N.Y.) but I believe you will agree that it was worth it…

Nine Habits of Highly Effective Salespeople

Top Salespeople...

1. Spend 60% to 70% of a sales call letting the customer talk.

2. Are better than others at recognizing and responding to objections--even silent ones.

3. Are more effective than others at identifying and prioritizing customer needs.

4. Typically wait to offer product or service recommendations until after 40% or more of the time has elapsed in the call.

5. Present recommendations more in terms of customer benefits than in terms of product features.

6. Are more enthusiastic than others about attending sales-training seminars.

7. Listen to motivational tapes in their cars and read inspirational books at home.

8. Talk more frequently about what they've achieved than about what they haven't done.

9. Smile more than others do.

Simple truths we all can learn from…

For more conversation on advertising sales success check out our AIM2 “Building on Media Sales Success” course on Tuesday June 5th (9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.).at the Vaughan Press Center, - 1 Century Place, Woodbridge ON L4L 8R2.
To register, email Melanie Facchini at mfacchini@metroland.com or check our complete list of sales courses and webinars on http://www.mymetroland.com

If you want your conversations to have a real impact, you need to simplify your message.

Great article on Inc.com by Tom Searcy on sales lessons learned from his 9 year old daughter.... That we all can use...

http://www.inc.com/tom-searcy/what-a-9-year-old-can-teach-you-about-selling.html

What a 9-Year-Old Can Teach You About Selling

I recently read a study that confirmed my suspicion that most people don't remember what we present to them in a sales call. The data suggested that the average buyer in a meeting will only remember one thing–one!–a week after your meeting.

Oh, and by the way: You don't get to choose what that one thing is. Sigh.

So what have sales professionals done about this? They have worked on "honing the message," developing a "compelling unique advantage" and, of course, the ultimate silver bullet: a surefire elevator pitch.

But here's what you're fighting: A world cluttered with information, schedules, packed with more meetings and work than a person can handle. A decision-making process with more people involved in every choice–many of whom know little about your product or service. No wonder so little is remembered; often your audience doesn't even understand much about what you're offering.

What Kids Want to Know

I have a 9-year-old daughter with spring freckles, long brown hair and blue eyes the size of silver dollars. She asks the kinds of questions that on the surface seem so simple:

· Daddy, what do you do?

· Why do people decide to hire you?

· Why don't they hire somebody else or do it themselves?

One of the great things about 9-year-olds: Like many buyers these days, they lack context. Any answer that you provide has to be in a language that they can understand.

What does a procurement specialist know about what you sell–or the IT person, or the finance person? The challenge is this: Can you answer the three questions my 9-year-old asked, for your own business?

Hint: There are right and wrong answers for both.

Daddy, What Do You Do?

· Right answer: "I help companies to grow really fast by teaching them how to sell bigger companies much larger orders."

· Wrong answer: "Our company helps develop inside of our clients a replicable and scalable process for them to land large accounts."

Why Do People Decide to Hire You?

· Right answer: "We have helped lots of companies do this before, so we are really good at it as long as they are the right type of companies."

· Wrong answer: "We have a proven process for implementation that allows organizations to tailor the model to their market, business offering and company's growth goals."

Why Don't They Do It Themselves?

· Right answer: "Just like when you learned to play the piano: Mommy and I could teach a little, but we don't know as much as your teacher, and teaching you ourselves would take a long time and be very frustrating. Daddy is a really good teacher of how to make bigger sales, and people want to learn how to do this as fast as they can."

· Wrong answer: "We are the foremost expert in this field with over $5 billion in business that our clients have closed using this system. Usually our clients have tried a number of things on their own before we work together and have wanted outside help to get better results."

In these cases, both answers are accurate, but that doesn't make them right. In a world in which more decisions are made with less information and context, our responsibility is to get to as clear and memorable an answer as possible for all of the buyers to understand.