Category: Sales

How you shake hands
says a lot about you
and your relationship
with the other person.

If your hand is slightly on top,
you’re taking control.
You have the dominant position.

Eliot Hoppe,
shares in
The September/October
The Costco Connection,

“This is OK in some circumstances,
like if you want to close a deal
with a client.
In that case,
turn your hand up just slightly.”

If your hand is turned
so your hand is underneath,
you’re following.
You are submissive to the other person.

If your hand is vertical,
you’re communicating
that you’re equals.

Know what your handshake
is saying about you
and your relationship.

Want people to agree with you?
Agree with them first.

Matthew Kohut,
co-author of
Compelling People
shares

“If you want someone
to agree with you,
the best way to make that happen
is to agree with them
about something first.

When you agree with people,
you’re confirming their view of the world,
and that feels good to them.

When you express familiar sentiments,
you also seem more familiar
and less likely to upset them
or threaten their worldview,
so their anxiety level goes down
and they feel more comfortable.

People like it when you make them feel good,
and then they associate
that good feeling with you,
so they like you.

And that makes them
more likely to agree with you.”

Find a common ground,
an agreement first.

A big publisher distributed a call
for a certain type of story.
My writing buddy didn’t want
to write this type of story.
She pitched them something else.

I don’t see anything wrong with this.
It’s a long shot
but it doesn’t cost anything to pitch
and you never know.
I’ve pitched different stories in the past
and garnered interest from publishers.

Except when I pitched these different stories,
I KNEW the odds of the publisher being interested
was low.
These were bonus sales,
nothing I counted on achieving.

My writing buddy didn’t understand
her pitch was a long shot.
When it was rejected,
she fell into the depths of despair.
She hasn’t been writing.
There was a cost associated with her wild pitch.

If the prospect asks for something
and you pitch her something else,
it IS a wild pitch.
Pitch it anyway
but don’t count on the sale.

A month ago,
I sent out a rush query to agents.
I had a big contract coming
and I needed an agent to represent me.

One agent responded to my rush query
the very next day.
(She was my preferred agent
even before she responded quickly).
She not only responded
but she had read my manuscript.

Another agency responded to my rush query
in a week.
The assistant requested
the first three chapters of the manuscript
and said she’d put it in the queue
for one of the agents.

One of the agencies responded to my rush query
today,
a month after the query was sent.
She also requested the first three chapters.

A month to reply to an email
is NOT a rush response.

As Brent Leary
shares

“According to a recent
University of Massachusetts study,
if a video hasn’t started streaming
in five seconds,
about 25 percent of potential viewers
will bail before viewing,
and if it doesn’t start in 10 seconds,
that number almost doubles.”

I couldn’t wait for a month for a response.
I doubt your customers/business partners
can wait for a month for a response either.

How ‘rush’ is your rush?

In a recent interview on CMT,
High Valley shared the story
of how they first landed a gig
on the Grand Ole Opry.

They were studying the schedule
for the Grand Old Opry
and they realized
there was a gap
in performances.
They called their agent
and asked the agent
to look into booking that empty slot.

The agent was successful
and, next thing they knew,
High Valley was making a dream come true.

They saw an opportunity
and they ASKED for that opportunity.

Have you asked for an opportunity today?

You’re going to f*ck up.
That’s a guarantee.
And sometimes
you’re going to f*ck up
and hurt someone.

How do you apologize?

Bruna Martinuzzi
shares

“Even with our best intentions,
it’s easy to slip on occasion
and commit a major verbal blunder.
It’s best to rectify the situation
with an immediate, private, face-to-face apology.
If face-to-face is not feasible,
pick up the phone.
If the verbal transgression
was witnessed by others,
the apology must be public.
By making it public,
we help the offended party save face.
Above all,
the apology must be genuine,
and expressed with care.”

When you f*ck up,
apologize.

You have a lot of traffic
coming to your site
yet
you don’t see the corresponding sales.

What is going wrong?

One of the issues might be
that searchers
aren’t finding what they’re looking for
right away.
They click on an ad for your mobile product
and are directed to a home page
filled with all of your products
or worse, a page for an unrelated product.

As Ken Lyons
of the search-engine marketing company
MeasuredSEM
shares

“If visitors click on your ads,
social media posts or blog links
expecting to find one thing
—but instead are led to a seemingly irrelevant page,
they end up confused and frustrated.
You might even lose their trust
in the process.”

Your website has pages for a reason.
Send viewers to the correct page.

(When I have a huge ad campaign,
I also put the book/product I’m promoting
on my home page.)

I receive emails
from readers all the time
about how they can’t afford my stories,
about how romance novels are overpriced.

Then I promo a story they can’t resist
and suddenly they can afford it.
(They can also afford $5 coffees
and $50 manicures.)

It isn’t about price.
It is about perceived value.

As Andrea J. Stenberg
shares

“In these troubled economic times,
price may very well be an issue.
However,
objections about price
are usually code for
“I’m not really sure
I need/want your product”.

If someone really wants
what you have to offer,
it’s amazing how quickly
they’ll figure out how to pay for it.”

Price objections are
perceived value objections.
You can lower the price
or raise the perceived value.

(In my case,
I raised the perceived value
by writing better blurbs
i.e. marketing copy)

Small business owners,
whether they are artists,
accountants,
or
widget makers,
are salespeople.
They represent their businesses.
They sell their products.
They deal with customers.

Whenever someone talks to me
about starting their own business,
I advise they first
take a sales class
or volunteer in a sales position
or work in sales for someone else.

Angie Mattson
of
Your Organized Guide, Inc.
shares

“I wish someone had warned me
that “small business owner”
is the same thing
as “salesperson.”

I would have gotten
professional sales training
much, much sooner!

It would have helped me
figure out
what I was offering,
how I was offering it,
how to overcome common objections,
and to be more confident
about my rates/fees.”

If you’re a small business owner,
you must learn how to sell.
No buts
No excuses.
You must learn how to sell.

Even a great product
needs a base of sales
to build word-of-mouth promotion.

That’s why
one of my publishers
has layered pricing.
My July releases were priced
at 99 cents for pre-orders
during May.
Once the stories had a base of pre-orders,
the price increased to $2.
Ironically, this price increase
also increased sales.
I suspect there will be another price increase
once the stories reach
the next level of sales.

Pricing doesn’t have to be
and often shouldn’t be
stagnant.
Use it as a tool to increase sales
(the pricing doesn’t have to be decreased
to accomplish this)