Sales Tips – Words of wisdom for this week.
“Ruin and recovery are both from within.”
– Epictetus
The following concise list represents 40 critical sales ideas for your consideration that can contribute to your consistent and long-term success. There are obviously many more than 40 – sales do’s and don’ts – that could have been included. This list contains what I believe are those actions, that when practiced, will help you rise above the rest of the field and beat the competition, while successfully serving the needs of your clients and yourself.
DO-
- Compartmentalize the issues in your life.
- Spend regular time in self-improvement.
- Ask for the business.
- Close a relationship, not just the sale.
- Study the competition.
- Know your product/service better than anyone.
- Set goals and monitor your progress.
- See rejection as a tool to learn about yourself.
- Sell value not low price.
- Keep accurate and consistent sales records.
- Cultivate your support staff.
- Work hard to keep the business.
- Listen more than you talk.
- Tailor your sales message.
- Listen between the lines.
- Carefully observe early prospect/client signals.
- Let poor prospects go earlier rather than later.
- Get information before you give it.
- Focus on what you want not what you don’t.
- Keep your ego out of the sales process.
DON’T-
- Talk too much.
- Give information before you get it.
- Give redundant presentations.
- Assume everyone buys for similar reasons.
- Be afraid of rejection and failure.
- Waste time on unimportant non-sales issues.
- Promise a little and deliver less.
- Sell low price.
- Assume all sales resistance is negative.
- Act desperate.
- Give product focused presentations.
- Deal in negatives; what you can’t do.
- Spend time with poor prospects.
- Advertise your willingness to make concessions.
- Assume selling and negotiating are the same.
- Lose control of the sales process.
- Only cultivate your client organization’s primary contact.
- Cold call before you have done some research.
- Assume a verbal yes, means yes.
- Assume you will have the business forever.