Category: Sales

A store in Australia
is charging a $5 fee for customers
who are ‘just looking’.
This $5 fee is refunded
if a purchase is made.

I hope this was a play
for media coverage.
If it was,
it was successful.

If it wasn’t,
then I question the management’s knowledge
of their customers
because
40% of consumer spending
is impulse buying
and 20% of everything people buy
at a grocery store
(the fee charging store’s industry)
is impulse buying.
Impulse buying happens
when people are ‘just looking.’

The store management’s official reason,
that they’ve been unsuccessful
at converting precious foot traffic
(what every other store struggles to gain)
into sales
so they’ve decided to reduce their foot traffic,
really makes them look like dumb a$$es.

If impulse buying is important to your business,
encourage people to ‘just look.’

When I sold vegetables
at a roadside stand
as a kid,
I would say just about anything
to get prospects to stop
and listen to me.
I knew if they stopped long enough
to listen
to whatever foolishness
I was yammering on about,
I could get them to listen
to my sales pitch.

When writing blurbs for my romance novels,
my first goal is to grab the reader’s attention,
to get her to pause for a moment
and read more.

Cold calling is even more challenging.
But as Sara Blakely,
founder of Spanx,
shares
“Try to make them laugh or smile.
If you can do that,
you always get another 15 seconds.

Spend it saying
why you’re better than the other options.
Differentiation in those first moments
is crucial.

When I invented Spanx
I heard ‘no’ for two years.
It didn’t faze me.
I didn’t have a special ability,
it was sheer drive
and telling myself to keep going.”

An extra 15 seconds
of your prospect’s time
can make a big difference in your sales.
Do what you can to earn it.

I receive an email a day
from bloggers
asking to write a guest post
for Clientk.
I hope this is spam
because I can think
of no other viable excuse
for NOT doing research
on a web-based venture.

Actually there’s no other viable excuse
for not doing research
on ANY venture.

As Mike Michalowicz
shares
“When you go to pitch that big prospect,
are your first words to them,
“Tell me about your business?”

If so,
you just offended them
because you didn’t make the effort
to learn about them.

They won’t tell you that.
They simply won’t hire you.

Go in with all the research
under your belt
before you start talking.
Then tell them what you know about them,
and ask them to correct you
where you may be wrong
(which you won’t be,
because you did the research).”

A salesman buddy has Google alerts
placed on all of his customers
and on key words in his industry.
It really is THAT easy.

Do your research on your prospect.

A friend was recently advised
not to bother with accepting cash
from her small business’s potential customers
as
“no one uses cash anymore.”

Is this true?

Nope.

As Carlos Arango,
principle researcher
with the Bank of Canada,
shares in
March/April’s The Costco Connection

“Cash is the most frequently used payment method
at the retail check-out
and accounts for 54 percent
of all transactions in Canada.
With transactions under $25,
the percentage jumps to
70 percent.”

Society is not cashless,
not yet.
If you are selling in retail,
investigate
before eliminating cash transactions.

Recently I was in a store,
waiting in a long line
for customer service.
The employees manning the counter
would answer phones
as soon as they rang,
leaving the customers
who were actually IN the store
to wait in the line.

Finally, I called the store’s
customer service number.
I watched as the employee
picked up the phone
and answered my question.

Ridiculous, isn’t it?
Yet this happens ALL the time.

As Jeff Mowatt,
author of
Becoming a Service Icon
in 90 Minutes a Month,
shares in
March/April’s The Costco Connection

“Walk-ins take priority over phone-ins.
Don’t interrupt a visitor
to pick up the phone.
That’s what voice mail is for.
If you must take the phone call,
ask the visitor’s permission.
Then tell the caller
that you are with another customer
but will look into his or her request
and call back.”

Service the customers
IN your store
first.

Most of my romance heroines
have brown eyes and brown hair.
Why?
Because most romance readers
have brown eyes and brown hair.

I am very aware of my target readers
and I tweak my product to appeal to them.

45% of all students
in K to 12
in America
are non-white.
And this percent will increase every year.

What does this mean?

If you’re marketing to kids,
you should understand the non-white demographic.
You should consider hiring employees
who represent this demographic.
You should consider designing products
to appeal more to this demographic.

I can guarantee that
the face of your target customer
is changing.
Is your product/marketing/sales force changing also?

One of my buddies
is perverse.
If I say the sky is blue,
he says the sky is green.

This creates challenges for him.
Why?
Because selling is an essential part of any job
and selling can’t happen
without agreement.

As Grant Cardone
shares
in
Selling: The Secret To Success

“If you want agreement,
you’ve got to be agreeable
with your customers.”

By saying
“Yes, I understand your concerns”
or “Yes, that is a valid point”,
we’re aligning ourselves with
our clients/coworkers/employers
and making it easier
for them
to say yes to us.

Say yes.
Be agreeable.

When selling
products, yourself, anything,
confidence is key.
If you’re nervous and unsure,
your prospect will be nervous and unsure.
Nervous and unsure prospects
don’t buy.

How do you project confidence?
Hold eye contact
for three to five seconds.

Cara Hale Alter,
author of
The Credibility Code,
shares*
“Eye contact is
a key indicator of confidence.
Yet there is a difference
between making eye contact
and holding eye contact.
Duration is critical.
In the Western world,
holding eye contact for
three to five seconds
is optimal.”

Look your prospects
in the eyes.

*The Costco Connection
January/February 2013

I went with a loved one
to a car dealership.
The car dealership offered a $50 gift certificate
to anyone test driving a car.
My loved one was interested in buying a car
and used the gift certificate to bribe me
into going to the dealership with him.

When we arrived at the dealership,
the salesman asked us
if we were interested in the gift certificate.
We, of course, said ‘yes’.
He gave us the gift certificate
and walked away.
We had to ask for the test drive.
We had to ask for details on the car
(even though my loved one rattled off specs on the car,
having clearly done his research).

The salesman assumed we weren’t there to buy
because we were interested in
the gift certificate.

We had arrived expecting to buy
but by the end of the encounter,
we had no interest in doing business
with that salesman.

My point is…
we should do our best ALWAYS.
The tire kickers
or the freebie seekers
could be customers in disguise.