The Blog For Entrepreneurs

1. Not listening.

This has to be the number on cock-up a sales person can make. Online this may seem a little out of place, but your online readers are telling you things all the time. Take a look at your stats for example. If you are getting loads of hits on the one post you did about the latest widget or the latest solution to a problem, then this is telling you that maybe that is what people are looking for from you. Also read your comments and start a dialogue that way… feedback is everywhere.

On the phone sales people often want to get to the end of their script and don’t even pay attention to what a client is saying, it is the same face to face. I have an estate agent who showed me around a house I had already looked at… even though I told him several times about the houses I had already seen.

Not listening makes you look bad and, ultimately, will lead you to being a poor performer.

2. Ask intelligent questions.

You may have a great product, you may have a super web site, you may have great relationships with your clients or readers, but as a sales person you need to be constantly asking questions of your prospects. Online this may be a survey or a forum, if you can ask intelligent questions you will get valuable information to be able to build an effective sales page.

For offline physical sales, asking questions is crucial. Lets say you are selling satellite subscription over the phone. You could call and say “we have several packages that may suite you from movies to sports to home and living… are any of these of interest?” – This is actually what one company here said to me and it is not a bad script, it is a little bland and is a shotgun approach, but they obviously make sales with it. Better to have said something like this:

“…Can you tell me what you primarily watch? – (I would have said entertainment and documentaries)… and is there any show or program that you just can’t miss? (I would have said the Formula One – I am a racing freak)… If the sales person had then told me that they could include that channel and had told me the package I needed to get it I would have signed up right then and there. It actually took me to see the F1 being replayed in a bar with the name of the channel that carried it and then I called another company and asked if they could give me that channel with one of their packages.

You have to understand, as a sales person, online or offline, there is always a ‘hot button’ if your prospect is even slightly interested in your product. Your job is to find it by intelligent questioning.

3. Great Service.

Problem with most people who sell, or companies for that matter, is that the follow up and service is woefully inadequate. Banks are the worst offenders in my opinion, by a long chalk. Anyway, I digress… As a salesperson the best possible sales ‘technique’ you can use is to look after your clients better than everyone else after they have bought, even if you do not think they will ever buy again. This is because, sure as eggs is eggs, if you do this people will be calling you, not the other way around.

Online this service is turbo charged by some. Yaro Starak, for example, always gives massive value for free, I mean really, really good stuff for nothing. His blog is informative, his courses popular and profitable and his follow up service in the form of more free info is fantastic… and guess what? He earns plenty of cash from being that way.

The best prospecting tool you will ever have is a customer who recommends you. Remember this, how man times have you said something like “.. oh you are looking for a XXXX, you should see my guy at XYZ company, he will sort you out”… I must have said something like this a thousand times, and you know why? Because anyone who gives me a service that I perceive as above and beyond their job (whether it actually is or not is immaterial) I feel obligated to help them out in some way… and I do that by referring people. Concentrate on your service and selling will become much, much easier.

4. Ask for the business.

Everybody knows you are selling something, try to deny that and you are sunk, nobody wants to hear the words “I am not trying to sell you anything but….” if you are looking for business be proud and be upfront about it. You will save yourself time and you will be perceived as more professional.

There is a caveat to this of course, if you have not asked great questions to make sure that your product fits in with the clients needs, then asking for the business at the end of some ramble on the phone or on a web page will yield few results.

On the phone or in person you should have asked enough questions that your final closing statement can be tailored to your customer eg. “OK, we can include the Formula One channel in your satellite package, I am assuming you would like this installed before the next race?…”OK, then I will just need to take a few details before we set an installation date…”

Online things are a bit different, which is why you see these massive sales pages. They are trying to take you down a sales funnel asking questions of you to move on to the next part of the sales page. A lot of these are well written, some are trash, so if you are looking to write a sales page study some of the more successful ones. You can join clickbank and see which pages are selling the best in their marketplace, this will give you a good idea.

Bottom line is that you still have to close, you have to ask for the customer to take action, to buy your product or join your site and the point that you do that at needs to be when you have built enough of a case for your product by asking questions and giving answers. A line that says “..If you want to be rich and drive expensive cars, buy my product” would be better as “..Do you dream of luxury, wealth, and security, I did and now I have it. Let me show you how, buy today and let’s get started!”

Now I know neither of these are great, but you see where I am coming from? Imagine you had an ideal prospect in front of you, write the page with questions based on the answers that ideal prospect would give, focus on solving a problem and logically and progressively lead the prospect to come to a conclusion that your product or service is just what he needs right now, and at that point, ask for the business.

5. Deliver what you said you would.

Overselling something is a killer. I have read on soooo many websites about Forex trading ‘robots’ that have ‘never’ lost money and ‘always’ make money… what a crock. If I had a robot that I could install to trade money and never lose, I certainly wouldn’t be telling everyone about it, I would quietly become the richest man on the planet…. but these forex trading products sell, in huge volumes because the sales pitch is very good in most cases. The problem for these companies is that they are constantly re-inveting themselves, as one crumbles under customer complaints another (remarkably similar) rises from the ashes to sell more rubbish…

Just make sure you deliver what you said you would deliver. A great thing to remember is “Under promise, over deliver”. If you are selling this should be your mantra.

These five things are just some of the areas that you might want to take a look at if you are not performing as you should, let me have your feedback in the comments section. If you would like to get in touch on Twitter, use the Tweetboard app on this page… it aggregates all tweets so I can answer questions and keep the thread going…

Regards
David
@OneLifeNoFear