Category: Sales

One of my editors
doesn’t like to say no
so she doesn’t.
She simply doesn’t respond.

I know if I pitch her an idea
and she doesn’t reply back
within a week,
she doesn’t like the pitch.
I then pitch her something else.
I’ll keep pitching her ideas
until she responds.

Many of our prospects
don’t like to say no.
There are hints, however,
that they won’t buy.

Mike Michalowicz
has a great post
on these hints or tells.

One tell?

“When you hear
someone is waiting on a deal
somewhere else
to happen in order
to close on your deal,
whether that’s true or not,
the chances are really good
your deal will fall through.

You see this happen in real estate,
where your potential buyer
is waiting on someone
to buy their house
before they can buy yours.
True or not,
the success of your deal
is contingent upon a third, uninvolved party,
greatly hurting your odds
of closing the deal.
If you experience this,
try negotiating terms
until that deal comes through,
or, even better,
try to make the third party
irrelevant to your deal.
If they balk, there’s your “tell.””

Learn how to recognize
a dead deal.

Yesterday,
we talked about
how communications,
especially marketing messages,
should have a call to action,
the next steps for a prospect.

The calls to action
shouldn’t stop with the sale.
Your least expensive customer to obtain
is often a returning customer.

Before the feature presentation
at a movie theater,
previews of upcoming movies
are shown.
This is a call to action.
See the movie you purchased a ticket for
and THEN return
to watch this next movie.

I try to have the next story in a series written
before the current story releases.
When readers and reviewers talk about
how much they like a current release,
I tell them
they won’t want to miss the next release.

A real estate agent sold a friend
a great starter house.
She told this friend
that when she wanted to upgrade,
she’d be happy to handle her business
(upgrading being the call to action).
Every six months or so,
the real estate agent contacts my friend.

If you want customers for life,
the calls to action
shouldn’t stop with the sale.

A survey in a professional magazine
had the headline
11% Of People Don’t Know.

When I looked at the survey results,
I discovered
this figure consisted of
people who didn’t know
AND
people who didn’t respond
to the question.

I see this often in sales.
A saleswoman will ask
a question.

If she receives no response,
she assumes
the prospect doesn’t know
the response
when the reason
could be
the prospect doesn’t care enough
to supply an answer.

This is dangerous
because
when a prospect doesn’t know,
we engage them
with information
and
when a prospect doesn’t care,
we engage them
with emotion.

Know why your prospect
doesn’t respond.

My reading buddies laugh
because I often tell them
how much I love my stories.

I wouldn’t have the stories published
if I didn’t love them
and
I certainly couldn’t sell them.

I’m the main salesperson
for my stories,
not my publisher,
not my editor,
I am.
And usually the more I love a story,
the better the story sells.

Jim Koch,
founder of Sam Adams,
shares

“Nobody loves your product better
than you do.
Nobody is more passionate about it.
You are going to be
— like it or not —
you are going to be
the best salesperson
for the product.”

YOU should be your product’s
number one fan
and best salesperson.

Recently one of my publishers
changed their submission requirements.
They eliminated the short story category.
Although I had 40 plus stories published in this length,
I received the same announcement
every other writer did.

When I let the publisher know
I would no longer be submitting monthly to them,
they were surprised.
They assumed I’d switch to writing novellas.

We might scoff
but isn’t this what many companies do?
We eliminate a product
and we assume the customer will choose
another product from our offering.
Many times, the customer simply leaves,
never to return.

The first step to reduce these losses
is to acknowledge,
if we can,
the customers who are using the eliminated product.
This publisher has less than one hundred writers.
It would have been easy to send customized emails
to the dozen or so writers
writing in this length.

When eliminating products,
don’t assume customers will choose another product
offered by your company.

I’ve worked collections
for other companies.
It isn’t a fun job.

Working collections for our own companies
is even more challenging.
We’re worried about
upsetting and losing
these late paying customers.

Erika Napoletano
talks about how she solved
her collections challenge.

“Some clients will
never (ever) pay on time.
Knowing this,
I was faced with two choices:
get rid of the slow paying ones
or make it worth my while
for them to pay in their own sweet time.

Given that I truly love working
with all my clients
(I’d already long ago purged
the ones who were more headache
and less awesome),
I established early pay discounts
and late payment penalties.
Now I’m offering a reward
for those slow-to-pay clients
that step to the plate and pay early.
I’m also getting paid for waiting
when they go beyond
our agreed upon payment terms.
Either way, I get paid.
And now I’m getting paid early
more often than not.”

If you have a collections challenge,
consider early payment incentives.

Post sale customer service matters
yet many businesses
don’t allocate many resources to it.

As Barry Moltz
shares

“According to an infographic
from Help Scout,
the most common complaint
from customers
is not that they are dissatisfied
with the product or service they bought,
but rather the post sale customer service.
This is why 86 percent of customers
take their business elsewhere.

Making matters worse,
most small-business owners just sit back
and think that dissatisfied customers
will contact them.
Unfortunately, according to Help Scout,
only 4 percent actually do.”

Are you allocating enough resources
to post sale customer service?

Disagreements rarely lead
to sales
so how do you disagree with a prospect
without getting into a disagreement?

Mike Michalowicz
advises

“If you ever say
“You’re wrong,” or “the truth is” or “no,”
you’re starting a confrontational dialogue
and you will probably be perceived
in a negative light.

Practiced self-promoters give
the other side
an escape hatch.
They use language that starts with,
“That’s really interesting. My experience is …,”
“I once observed …,” or
“I have heard of a situation…”
In every instance,
they are giving the listener an opportunity
to hold on to their own story
while deflecting the potential for conflict.
This allows the listener to “save face,”
to still have confidence in themselves,
to be non-defensive and
be influenced by or
integrate their experience
with the speaker’s knowledge.”

Give your prospects
an escape hatch
and keep the sale alive.

One of the first rules of sales
is “Don’t be late.”
An appointment is a commitment
to a prospect or customer
and when a saleswoman is late,
that saleswoman is breaking her commitment.

As Ross McCammon,
in February 2013’s Entrepeneur,
shares

“People might smile
and say, “Oh, that’s OK.”
But the price has been paid.

Morale is lower.
You’re trusted less.
They’re frustrated.
And they’re going to take out
that frustration
in ways you can’t quantify.

The whole basis of business is trust.
A meeting time is a commitment
and when that commitment isn’t honored,
bad things happen.”

Honor your commitments.
Be on time.

Some romance writers
have been bashing 50 Shades of Grey.
They talk about how it is written poorly,
and
how they can’t understand
why anyone would like 50 Shades of Grey.

I’ve never bashed 50 Shades of Grey.
I’ve never bashed Twilight.
I don’t bash any stories.

Why?

Because 70 million copies
of 50 Shades of Grey
have been sold
and I can guarantee
that at least one of my superfans
has read and loved the story.

By insulting the story,
I insult my superfan’s taste.
People don’t buy
from people who insult them.

Think before you bash the competition.