Category: Sales

My end objective
when I market is
to make a sale.

I’d love
to go straight
to the
‘Buy my product’ step.
That would be super easy.

But it isn’t effective.
People normally don’t buy
from people they don’t know.

So I have some intermediate steps
for folks who don’t know me.
I’ll give them a sample
of my product
or
I’ll ask them to Friend me
on Facebook.

After they’ve sampled my product,
THEN I might suggest
they buy it.
After we’ve chatted a while
on Facebook,
THEN I might mention
my product.

Neal Schaffer
shares some more
intermediate steps.

“If you want to generate leads,
that link goes maybe
to an e-book, a webinar
or a white paper.

If you want to make more sales,
that link maybe goes
to your product catalog
or a special discount
for Twitter followers.”

Consider easing your way
into sales
with intermediate steps.

A salesman loved one
was given a patch of very large companies.
None of these companies
had an existing relationship
with his employer.

His employer expects
sales to close within months.

That’s not possible.
Large companies buy slowly.
Large deals close slowly.

There are other vendors
they’re required to look at.
There are layers of decision makers
who need to sign off on the deal.
It could take a year, two years,
five years.

If your company needs
business-to-business sales immediately,
look to smaller companies for these.
Smaller companies can make
decisions more quickly.

Big deals take time to close.
Give them that time.

One of my loved ones
recently started a new sales job.
He was given no existing clients.
His task is to secure huge deals.
These huge deals take
months, perhaps years.
For a long time,
he’ll be making no sales.

This creates two issues.
His manager will be challenged
by executives
as to whether or not
my loved one is adding value
to the company.
And my loved one
won’t have sales
to keep his confidence and excitement
pumped.

One of the ways he’s solving
both issues
is by logging the clients
he contacts
in his schedule,
noting which stage
the possible sale is in.

The manager can see
at a glance
that he’s progressing.
My loved one
also can celebrate
moving to the next stage
in each possible sale.

When working on huge sales deals,
break the process down
into stages
and celebrate each stage.

A salesman loved one
recently switched companies.
Most of his customers
switched with him.

This is why salespeople
are often paid more
than other employees.
This is also why
companies try to force
salespeople to use systems
that record their customer information.

In the romance publishing industry,
there’s a constant battle
between booksellers, publishers
and writers
over who ‘owns’ the reader.

Publishers will take sales-suppressing actions
like disallowing live sign up links
to a writer’s newsletter
in their books
as an attempt to force
the reader to contact them.
(This doesn’t work.)
They KNOW this costs them
short term sales
(sales of the next book in the series)
yet they still do this.

As Seth Godin
shares

“The reason that
Uber drivers will always struggle”

They don’t have
a relationship with the customer.
It turns out that finding a customer
and knowing where he wants to go
is almost as valuable as
having a car
and knowing how to drive it.
Because Uber and other middlemen
are earning permission
to connect with their customers,
the driver will always get
the short end of the stick.

They can easily replace the driver,
but the driver can’t easily replace Uber.”

If you have ANY opportunity
to directly contact
a customer,
take it.
This connection is
one of the most valuable assets
your business has.

When I first started building
the writing business,
I was eager for ANYONE
to review my books.
Any exposure was good exposure,
right?

Wrong.

By sending my book
to reviewers
who I suspected
would likely hate it,
I dimmed my own enthusiasm
for my product.
I didn’t promote it
as heavily as I would have
had I NOT sent the book.

Shabnam Azadeh,
Co-Founder of
Adhesive&Co,
shares

“I’ve found that it is healthy
to say no.
You have to know your worth.
I once put together
an estimate for a client
and she responded
by laughing.
I knew then
that the relationship
would always be unhealthy.
I had a choice to take the gig
or walk away.
I chose to let it go.”

If the customer
(or in my case, reviewer)
isn’t right for you
and your business,
let them go.

According to ringDNA,
“sales prospecting is
the process of reaching out
to potential customers
in hopes of finding new business.”

I won’t blow smoke up your a$$.
Sales prospecting is painful as hell.
It is much easier
to concentrate all of our efforts
on customers we already have
some sort of a relationship with.

However, prospecting is often necessary
to truly expand our businesses,
to reach new customers.

And it takes time.
As ringDNA shares,
“The best sales development reps
are following up with leads
multiple times
as it often takes
more than 4 contact attempts
to initiate a conversation
with a prospect.”

Because it is painful
and often slow,
we can’t wait
until we need the new customers
to prospect.

It is best to do a little prospecting
every day.

Have you reached out
to a brand new client today?

I was interested in
working with a marketing company
for a specific promotion.

The marketing company
would be responsible for one part
of the promotion.
I would be responsible for the rest.

According to the marketing company,
they had provided this program
to many other writers.
I had never participated in one.
I didn’t know what would be involved.

So I asked what the estimate
of my total costs would be,
suggesting they use another writer’s costs
to base this estimate on.

They came back
with merely the list of things
I’d be responsible for,
something that had already been
communicated.
No price estimates were attached.

Which told me what I needed to know.
They didn’t know
what they were doing.

Even if your company isn’t responsible
for all of the costs,
you should know what the total costs
of the previous projects you sold are.

If a prospective client asks,
you should be able to give them an estimate
(noting exactly that
– it is an estimate
based on the previous client’s numbers).

Know the total costs
of any project you’re selling.

In the writing community
we have a saying–
“Show. Don’t Tell.”

Most of our communications
are nonverbal.

The Nonverbal Group
shares

“Dr. Albert Mehrabian,
author of Silent Messages,
conducted several studies
on nonverbal communication.
He found that 7% of any message
is conveyed through words,
38% through certain vocal elements,
and
55% through nonverbal elements
(facial expressions,
gestures, posture, etc).”

What this means
is
even when we’re not speaking,
we’re sending messages.

Seth Godin
shares

“What we choose to do
(and what we choose not to do)
turns into a signal
to the people around us.

These signals aren’t universal,
they are interpreted in different ways
by people with different worldviews.”

Your actions,
your facial expressions,
your body language
are sending signals.
Make certain they are the signals
you want to send.