Four Questions that will Change Your Life

Ho To Sell Coach

As you know, I like to keep things simple. So here are four questions that will Change your life. Now I'm not one for New Years resolutions. They're far to easy to break. It's much better to keep track of your progress on a regular basis.

If life was so easy and the path to success in selling, your business, your life was straight and true then we would all be multi millionaires, have a perfect family life, be happy and healthy. But, it doesn't work that way - you have to work at it.

It's all about understanding where you want to go and making regular, small adjustments along the way in order to get there. If you go off course, that's not a problem. Just make a small adjustment to get you back on line.

If your in a canoe, as you pull with your right arm, the nose of the canoe will pull to the right. When you pull with your left arm, it will pull to the left. So at those moments you are going slightly off course. But if you fix your sight on a point in the distance, where you want to go, your mind will make these slight adjustments for you and the canoe will ultimately go to that point.

It's the same with achieving success. Understand where you want to go and focus on that point. Make the slight adjustments you need to make to get there. But always focus on your goal.

Here are the four questions to ask yourself to keep you on track:

What did I do well?
What could I improve upon?
What do I need to do more of?
What do I need to do less of?

Ask yourself these four questions and write down no more that three answers for each. You may have more answers, or fewer (which is fine) but remember, this is about making small adjustments. The for each on the fours questions, pick the one answer that if you make a small adjustment to this, it will make the biggest difference to you.

Then focus on this, understanding it, come up with some solutions and work on only this until you resolve it and move on to the next one. It is key that you focus on one area or answer at at time and work this through to completion.

Very often we have so many problems to resolve, it can all feel like too much and therefore we just become overwhelmed by the seer size of the tasks - all the things we need to put right. So what happens? We either put them off or try to change too many things at once and end up not seeing them through to completion. We do not make the small adjustment.

Taking small steps towards your ultimate goal on a regular basis works better than trying to change your world all at once. By giving yourself little tasks to complete (and completing them) you are making progress - and reward yourself for the progress you are making.

Take 20 minutes now to ask yourself these life changing questions, start making the small adjustments required to achieve your goal. It doesn't matter which aspect of your life you want to change or improve. This simple exercise will work.

Selling Just Got Harder

How To Sell Coach

I just read an article saying that selling today is much harder than it used to be. Why? Because:
Buyers are smarter and better informed.
Their secretaries are better trained to stop you getting to the decision maker.
The internet means they can find out about what your competitors have to offer.
Customers know all your sales techniques.

Well we better all give up now. What chance have we. Ah, don't worry. The person writing the article is selling a sales course to make all these problems go away. Phew! So let's have a look at what he's selling. Basic selling skills! And good luck to him, I hope he does well and it got my attention any way.

Well let's get some things straight. Let me tell you for sure that customers and buyers 20 plus years ago were pretty smart too. They did not say, "Well I never knew that and thank you so much for calling." They were very well informed without the benefit of the internet. They knew who your competitors were and what they were offering. Why? Because it was their job to know.

Their secretaries or receptionists were pretty good at fending off sales calls too - so that hasn't changed. And yes they had a fairly good understanding of selling techniques. So let's not go down the road that life is harder. What about the economy I hear you say? Well the world has had recessions before - so that's not new. Times are challenging now, they were then and will be in the future.

So let's not worry about what we can't change and concentrate on what we can - YOU.

The only thing that I see which definitely is different is the internet, social media and the ease of the availability to getting information. Yes, that's new and what an opportunity it presents to showcase you, your company and your product.

Sites like Linkedin, Google+, Facebook, Twitter offer a wealth of information about your potential customers which is something we'll talk about later because it's such a massive subject.

While the sales call is all about your customer - the preparation for that call and how you present you, your product and your company all all things that you influence. Are fewer sales being made throughout the world because people are smarter and better informed? No. Likely the opposite as technology has made (and continues to make) it easier than ever to communicate with potential clients and approach new markets.

Is selling harder than it was? Tell yourself often enough and it may become so but I just don't see it.

It's a Wonderful Life

Christmas greetings to all from How to Sell Coach.
Enjoy this time with your family and loved ones but............................rather than watching the re-runs of "It's a Wonderful Life" or "The Sound of Music" how about taking a couple of hours out to review the year? Where are you up to? What's the competition up to? What do you need to do next year to get you to where you want to be?

Sales Improvement

How many sales calls did you make last year?
What was your percentage conversion?
How does that compare to your target?
Where did your most successful leads come from?
How can you generate more sales from your existing clients?
What are your goals for next year?
What is the one thing you will do differently to improve your results?

Self Improvement

What did you do well?
What could you do better?
What will you do more of?
What will you do less of?
What key learning did you take from this year and what are you going to do about it?
Which courses will you book on this year?
Which books are on your reading list and which CD's will you buy?

What are they up to?

What did the competition do well this year?
How does their market share compare?
What have they got planned for next year?
How can you better their offering?
What's their on-line presence like and how can you beat them?
What differentiates you from them?


What about your customers?

What's happening to the market for your product?
Are there any new opportunities?
Are there any new markets for your product?
What are the likely new objections and how do you intend to handle them?
What new ways can you find to add value?

While you're spending a couple of hours thinking about these thing, very likely your competitors won't be - so give yourself a head start.
Best of luck and much selling success in 2012. Go and create a wonderful life.

How many sales calls should I make in a day?

How To Sell

How's that for a question? I'm good at asking good questions. I was reading a sales forum the other day and this was the question that was being asked.

The person asking the question said that he did 500 calls a day. 500 CALLS A DAY! My first thought was WOW, is that possible. My second thought was WHY.

Digging a little deeper, it turned out that he worked in a call centre so the why was that he was expected or told to make 500 calls a day. Any time you may be feeling sorry for yourself, just think of our friend in that call centre and I'm sure things won't seem so bad.

I'm also sure that our friend won't be working in that call centre for too long because he has recognised the importance of seeking out mentors and learning from their experiences. He's asking questions.

Back to How many sales calls should I make a day. Well that depends on a number of factors:
What's the nature of your business.
What are you selling.
What is the size of your potential market.
Who and where are your customers.
What is the best way of contacting your customers.
And that's all fine. But lets get to the important questions.

What are you goals and how many sales do you need to make to achieve these goals?
What is your vision for your future and what do you need to do to achieve this?
What is your current percentage conversion and how can you improve this?

Whether you are self employed and therefore setting your own sales targets or you have a Sales Manager who sets targets for you the basis of calculation is exactly the same.

Your goal or sales target times your percentage conversion = The number of calls you need to make.

So if you need to make 100 sales and you convert 3 sales in every 10 contacts then you need to make 333 calls. Now depending on the average time a sales call takes will determine how many calls you need to make in a day. If you make 10 calls a day then it will take 33 working days to reach your sales target.

Now this throws out all kinds of questions. If your monthly sales target in 100, then based on the example above, there are not 33 working days in a months and therefore you won't meet your target. Clearly here there are only tow options:

1. Increase the number of calls you make a day.
2. Increase your percentage conversion. If a colleague is converting 4 in 10, then spend time with them to find out what they are doing that you're not.

As with any goal setting, you need goals that are realistic but stretch you. One of the biggest mistake that new businesses  make is over estimating their sales projections and underestimating the time that other functions of running a business take.

So if you want to make a million - that's all good and I hope you do. But, understand your numbers.

Knowledge, Skills and Attitude.

Success in Sales can be measures in a number of different ways, The number of sales you make, your percentage conversion, the profit that you contribute to your company, All are a measure of your ability to sell.

To achieve the require level of sales however, you need to have all the selling tools and techniques in your bag and more importantly - know how to use them.

How To Sell Coach

A simple but effective way to do this is with a Knowledge, Skills and Attitude Chart. This is also very useful if you're running sales teams and want to identify areas of training needs.

Here's how. Get a sheet of paper and at the top put the three headings:

Knowledge                               Skills                               Attitude

Down the left hand side, list each element of your sales presentation or the selling process. For example this may include the following:

• Area Planning
• Pre-call preparation
• Customer knowledge
• Product knowledge
• Opening the sale
• Open Ended Questions
• Establishing the need
• Features and Benefits
• Overcoming Objections
• Closing the Sale
• Following up the order
• Administration

As with any form of self-assessment, you have to be brutally honest. This is for you remember - nobody else. Just mark a tick or a cross in the appropriate box.
So what are you measuring?

Knowledge
Do you understand the processes and techniques?
Have you had the training?
Where can you get this knowledge?
Is there a course you can go on or a programme or book you can buy?
Who can you ask?

Having the knowledge is one thing but having the skill to apply and use it to best effect is something different.

So you know 101 ways to close a sale - but can you use them? Do you know which ones work for you? Do you know which bring you most success and which one to use in a giving selling situation to bring you most success?

Developing the Skill comes with practising and applying the Knowledge. Yes, you can practise the various sales techniques in a live selling situation by just making sales calls. Real life is always a wonderful teacher but by practising the skills through role play you can help avoid making mistakes, wasting sales calls (and therefore potential customers) or not presenting yourself as a sales professional to the client.

Find someone to role play with. Your Sales Manager, a colleague, and experiences salesperson whose opinion you trust and Practice, Practice, Practice until you are comfortable with that Skill.

Now that you have the Knowledge and the Skills to apply them but what is your Attitude to the Knowledge or Skill? People who are new to sales for example usually have the knowledge and have the right Attitude to use that knowledge but lack the skills because they haven't had the opportunity to put the knowledge into practice. Does that make sense to you?

Also I have met many sales people who can quote chapter and verse on how to do a sale. Put them in the training room and they'll deliver a perfect sales presentation. Put them in the field, on live calls and that's a different matter. Because they don't believe in a particular skill or technique - they don't apply it. Now it also has to be said that I have seen many exceptionally salespeople to don't do it by the book. And that is absolutely fine and they can to this as over a period of time they have worked out what really works for them.

Let's look at an example where the Attitude is wrong. "Sales people are bad at administration!" Are they? Well I've never met a salesperson who can't fill-in their expenses form. Why? Because they understand the importance of this to them.

If they don't understand the importance of completing an order form correctly so that the order can be fulfilled and the customer receiver the order on time and as promised - them clearly there is a training need there. The sale is not completed until the paper work is done but the salesperson needs to understand why. If the payment of their commission was based on the completion of the paperwork and not the getting of the sale, then the education process would be quick. But its better that they understand the why.

So try the Knowledge, Skills and Attitude Chart - it works!

What's the Most Stressful Thing About Selling?

Often people have asked me, "David, what do you think the most stressful thing is about selling?" Well, that's a good question and one I've given a lot of thought to over the years. In that time my view as to the right answer to that question has also changed.

At the beginning I used to believe it was Opening the Sale. How do you get in, establish the need, create desire. Yes that's it. Once I'm in, I can sell my product but then you've got to get to the close. Ah, The Close - now that's the most stressful part of the sale, The Close. And so it went on.

Having worked with sales people and interviewed many, there is a common trait that underlies every thing that can seem to be stressful in selling and it is this:

Not Taking Action.

You see, selling, sales techniques or the ability to sell is about three things - Knowledge, Skills and Attitude. If these three things are not right, then you would be as successful in selling as you could be and your making the whle process of getting a sale more stressful than it need be.

So here's a How to Sell Coach Top Tip or making selling less stressful. Selling can be stressful if you don't equip yourself with the right knowledge. Have you been on the courses, read the books, done the research, asked for information? If not you're not going into the call sufficiently prepared. You know it and your client knows it.

OK so you now have the knowledge but do you know how to use it. Have you practiced it in the classroom, with your manager or a colleague, are you doing the calls to perfect your skills. Finally attitude. Do you feel right about yourself and your product. So much so that you can't wait to get out there and take action.

Get these things in place and you'll take the stress out of selling.

Are you asking for Referrals?

How To Sell - Referrals

If I was paid everytime a small business owner said to me, "Word of mouth is to most successful marketing for Me. Our business grows by referral" - I'd have retired years ago.

The fact is that referrals are seriously important to any business, of any size, but it can't be your only marketing activity.

Referral work does yield a higher percentage conversion because the potential client has already been 'warmed up' by the referer. You have a foot in the door and yes you still have to make the sale but you have been referred by someone the potential customer trusts. Therefore the likelihood of getting an appointment is high.

So are you asking happy clients, business contacts, suppliers for referrals? You should be! But somethings that you need to think about.

How To Sell Coach Top Tips on Referrals.

1. Ask!
2. Be specific.
3. Be alert.
4. Take every opportunity.
5. Always follow-up.
6. Always thank the the person who gave the referral. 
7. Always look to return the favour. 

There's more detail on this if you check out the tab at the top of the page: How To Sell Coach Referrals.

Get A New Job.

Now this I found interesting. While having a look round some sales guru type websites and blogs, I found one from some selling a book and dvd set - and that's absolutely fine. Out of interest I read through the usual sales stuff and, because I'm the easiest person in the world to sell to, I was beginning to believe that I couldn't do without what he was selling.

Further down the page, he offered the opportunity for readers of his blog to ask him questions. Now this is where it gets interesting.

Two people who work in business to consumer environments as his advice to improve their sales performance. It would appear from what they had written that their jobs involved some level of cold calling. Love it or hate it, agree or disagree with it as a way to make a sale - many people need to make a living. Fact. And some have to take the job that presents itself, for what ever reason.

Anyway, his answer to both questions was basically, "Get a different job, one in B2B sales." Now how can that be helpful and if your selling yourself as an expert, is that really the best you can do?

Well, if he's selling some books them good luck to him but all it did was help get me focused on populating the How To Sell Coach blog with as much free sales technique information as I can write and further encourage others to add to and improve this.

So I'd better get writing, and hope that you do to.

Always leave them laughing!

How To Sell Coach

Is there a place for humour in a sales call? Well I think there is but it's a difficult thing to get right. As with any form of humour, you have to know your audience and it generally helps if it is actually funny but I think caution is the word here.

Many years ago, in my first position as a Sales Manager, I was given what was considered to be a difficult team to manage - likely because I was young, didn't know better and so keen to have my first management role.

I was actually younger than everyone else in the team and to say my appointment was not welcomed with open arms would be a gross understatement. So what to do? Well in my wisdom I decided to spend two days dual calling with them on their areas. My thought process being clearly to see how they were at selling, meet some customers and get a feel for what was going on but also you get to know a lot about someone if you spend two days on the road with them.

One of the older reps. Walter had been with the company literally man and boy. If you bit off his head, you would see the company running all the way through - he was also a genuinely funny man.

He could mimic all his collegues and had a joke or comment for every occasion. His customers loved him, he could basically go in whenever he liked and they wouldn't dream of giving the business to anyone else in case it upset Walter.

He also played every trick in the book to put me off thrack of actually doing a structures dual call with him (a great lession to get so early in my career.) At one stage I while we were driving between calls, I had to get out of the car and take a walk, I was laughing so hard and needed to get myself together for the next sales call.

So it worked for him - but he had 30 years to know his audience!

The How to Sell Coach Top Tips for Humour in a Sales Call

1. Caution, caution, caution!
2. Take your lead from your customer.
3. If you not naturally funny, don't try to be. Just being a professional sales person will serve you well enough.
4. Keep any humour in the context of the call.
5. Know your audience.
6. Never, never say or do anything that could be inappropriate - ever.
7. And if you hear yourself saying the words, "Did you hear the one about...." STOP. He will have done and will likely be too polite to tell you so.

You don't want to be in the position of a potential customer saying, "That's a good one but you'll have to excuse me. I have an appointment with this guy who keeps selling me stuff - you know the type!

He's a born salesman.

I've heard that said about some people I've met. He's a born salesman or he can sell anything or he's got 'the gift.'

Well, I don't buy that. I have never heard of any child being born wearing a nice suit and carrying a presenter. This whole 'born salesman' just puts a picture in my head (perhaps wrongly) of the smooth talking steriotypical flash types that give professional salespeople a bad name.

OK, I'm probably wrong. Yes, I could be convinced that some are better disposed to selling than others, that some may be naturally more confident or articulate or passion for it. But, I absolutely believe that you can take someone with no selling experience and teach them how to make an effective sales presentation. If this is not true (and please argue the point)how have the many brilliant people, inventors, engineers and innovators ever taken their product to market.

Did they just go and hire a sales team on day one? No. But what they did have was a passion and belief in their product and from that, the need to be able to and desire to sell it is born.

Zig Ziglar puts it like this, "Selling is about making your customer as passionate about your product as you are."

I like that.

Time - you can't buy it.

Or can you? Certainly you can't increase the number of minutes in a day or days in a week but you can make best use of the ones you have. What are the things that eat your time? Who are users of your time? What can you do to increase the number of productive hours you have in a day?

This is a massive subject and one that is personal to each of us. One exercise I do regularly (but not so it starts to eat my time) is to keep a Daily Time Log. Even if you do this one day each month, it will highlight areas for you to work on. Keep it simple - a lined sheet of paper with the day broken down into half hour intervals then write a one line description of what you did in that half hour.

Don't try to remember it later in the day - you won't so write it there and then. Later that evening, break the log into areas that are important to you. The heading could be Face to face sales time, Telephone sales time, administration, (now here are some interesting suggestions) Interuptions (and by who), Meetings, Unscheduled meetings, Incoming sales calls, non-work related time on the internet. Whatever works for you.

See what I mean, but you have to be honest with yourself. From this if you are not spending at least 50% of your time selling, likely you need to change something. The log will tell you what.

If you can get to 50% or more (particularly if you are a Start-up Business), you're getting ahead of the competition.

Jack Canfield tells a wonderful story in his book "The Success Principles" about when he hired a gardener from his home. The message here, for me, was - what value to you put on your time? For him, while he wanted to enjoy a beautiful garden, it paid him to delegate the responsibility to this task buying him more time to spend writing or with his family or exercising or recreation.

While I may not be ready (yet) to hire a gardener, I can see clearly that in time my money would be better spent delegating tasks like this so I can spend my time working on the business or just taking time out. Something to work towards. So perhaps you can buy time.

But how about making best use of your time. As a sales person, time is money. For the How To Sell Coach Top Tips for Effective Time Management - have a look at the tab at the top of the page.

Send Me A Brochure

Has anyone said this to you just to get you off the phone? Have you said this to anyone to get them off the phone? And here's the strange thing - income tax forms arrive in the post, as does you membership renewal for the gym but sales brochures seem to go missing, really!

Emailed sales brochures go missing too! There must be a Bermuda Triangle where all sales information sent out disappears to. So you call back, having sent the information and ask "Did you receive the information I sent?"

"Oh, comes the reply. Just tell me what it was for again. Right, I'll just check my inbox. No, nothing there. Could you send it through again."

If he checks the deleted box, no doubt he'll find it there.

So what to do? Clearly if someone requests that you send information, you should send it. Not everyone will bin it. But how about trying this:

"I'll happily send you the information, we have loads of good material available. But to be sure that I send you exactly what you require, can I just ask you a couple of questions?"

Your back in! Good open ended questions at the ready and the conversation continues.

Try it, it works!

Walking is good for you.

My first ever sales manager taught me a much but one thing that has stayed with me was: "If you want to find out what's happening, get out of your car and walk."

I haven't got time for that, I thought. I have appointments to be at, targets to achieve - I can't just spend my time walking about. But because I trusted him, I thought I'd give it a go. So one Sunday, I drove to my sales area, parked up the car and went for a walk armed with a notebook and pen.

I was working on retail sales at the time for a publishing house so my job was basically to increase the subscribtion sales of our publications. So what did I see in an hour.

• New housing development scheduled for completion in 3 months.
• 7 For Sale signs therefore 7 potential new customer soon to be moving in
• Our main competitor had renewed their point of sale material
• A planning consent notice for a new mini market shop
• A poster for a summer fair in 2 weeks time

So in all around a dozen new opportunities for me to follow-up.

• I posted welcome to you new home leaflets in the new development and the 7 for sale homes
• Put new point of sale material up
• Wrote to the owners of the mini market to take our publications
• Set up a stall at the summer fair

Think about it in your business, what are you missing that's there to see if you just set aside an hour a week. By the way following up on that hours walk about, I was asked to do a 20 minute presentation at theweekly sales meeting.

Anyway, it's Sunday - so I'm going for a walk!

Cold Calling - What's in a Name?

I've been out networking again (great way to get warm referrals but more of that later) and overheard this conversation. True by the way and as best I can remember - it went something like this:

"Hi, how's your week in business been? Making money?"
"I've had a terrible week. Three days cold calling. It's just sole destroying."
"I used to do that and just hated it."
"Total waste of time, might have made one sale from it."

Sound familiar? Now so called Cold Calling is a subject all on its own and there are a whole heap of views on that one. But before we deal with that more fully on How To Sell Coach, just do one thing for now - call it something different.

The image we have on cold calling, the way it can make us feel, how it makes others feel can be very negative. You feel low at the very thought of picking up the phone. So make up a new name - on that's positive and works for you.

Instead of joining the "Isn't life bad" club, how would the conversation have gone if you change the name?

"Hey, how's your week been."
"Good thanks, I'm looking to take on some new business by generating some new leads."
"Cool, business must be good."

Now I hear you say "if only it was that simple." And your right but why make it more difficult and depressing for those around you. Go on, find a new name. Mary perhaps?

Joking aside, Cold Calling is a big subject which I'll give my thoughts on in a later section. Come back soon.

Features and Benefits are Dead

Are they? Nobody said - I would have sent some flowers, perhaps a card.
While at a networking meeting last week, this is what our guest speaker said. What rubbish! No, let me think about that again.....................no that is rubbish.
If you don't know the features and benefit of your product, how are you suppost to identify which are going to be of most interest to your customers?
I thought I'd better understand what our guest speaker meant so I asked.

He replied that being able to list through countless features and benefits in a sales presentation doesn't work. What he didn't realise is that it never did work. That one sure fire way to either send- your potential customer off to sleep or you off to the car park.

What is missing here is not the Features or the Benefits but what I call the Personal Benefit or what some call "What's in it for me."

With good pre-sale planning and question technique you will be able to establish the need or needs specific to that customer. He may not want or need to know ever feature and benefit of your product (but it's important that you do) but just the ones that give him a Personal Benefit.

So are Features and Benefits Dead? I think not but your sales presentation may be if they're not used correctly.

Wake Up Call!

Some years ago I decided to leave the comfort of someone putting moey into my account every month and start my own business. I thought I was ready. I'd research the market, prepared a budget, set out the marketing plan - I was good to go, or so I thought.

Looking round for places and people who could help, I registered for a number of 'set up your own business' courses. I sat, I listened, I took notes - all was good until one of the course leaders asked the question,

"Which of you here believe you can sell?"

Looking round the room, there were various reactions. Some nodded wisely, fear and puzzlement. I fell into the last category. My thought process went like this:

• Yes, I can sell - I've made a career doing it. That's no problem.
• I used to teach selling for any sake. Of course I can sell.
• Hmm. That said - it's been a while.
• In fact, I can't remember the last time I face to faced with a client. I've had other people to do that.

My mind was now running at full speed. Panic was setting in. No sales, no customer, no business. With one question, my not yet luanched new business was in tatters. Woah, stop right there.

Self doubt had crept in, just for a moment, because I was out of practice. With the panic over, it did serve to remind to get all my notes out, book on a training course and get back into the one thing that likely before all else would be essential to the success of my business - selling.

Ever had that feeling?