Category: Sales

A literary agent
told authors on the weekend
that sales numbers
on their previous novels
are everything.

It used to be that agents
could finesse publishers
about the sales numbers.
They could pitch the book
and then answer (or evade)
the question about sales.

Now, publishers don’t need
to ask the question.
The moment the agent
mentions the author’s name,
her sales are looked up on BookNet
(or some other tracking system).

The publishers know the numbers.
The booksellers the publishers
must sell in the book to
know the sales numbers.

That is true
in almost all industries.
Your buyers know exactly
how your last product launch did.
You can explain the failure
but you can’t hide or lie about it.

A writer’s conference
was to be held soon
in Nashville.
Nashville is currently under water.
The conference site is flooded.

The conference
was then moved to Florida.
This meant rebooking flights and hotels
and incurring more costs for attendees.

Attendance was down
before the move.
With the move,
it will likely be dismal
especially as the organizers
didn’t drop the very steep entrance fee
AT ALL.

At all.
Not even a token gesture
showing they felt for
the participants’ pain.

If you have to inconvenience prospective customers,
give them something to compensate,
even if it a small something.
It shows empathy and appreciation.

If I had only $1 to spend
on marketing and sales,
I would spend 100%
of that $1
on sales.

Marketing is important
for tomorrow’s growth
but sales…
well…
sales is critical for today’s survival.

Marketing and public relations consultant
Michael Shepherd
shares that
“At the end of the day,
advertising doesn’t sell,
it just creates a predisposition
on the part of consumers to buy.
Ultimately, salespeople sell.
Advertising creates the opportunity
for them to do it more efficiently and effectively.”

And that wisdom
comes from someone
who makes his $’s from selling
marketing programs.

Focus on sales first,
marketing second.

When I did a stint at telemarketing,
I was given a script.
It had an opening,
a pitch,
answers to objections
and a standard close.

What I noticed though
was that the top earners in the room
didn’t use scripts.
The information imparted may have been the same
but the words were personalized
for each prospect.

As Margot Bartsch explains
“People want to be treated as individuals
and will turn off in a heartbeat
if they feel they are being treated otherwise.
We have basic information
to deliver to the customer
that should be pitched
in a different manner
based on somebody’s personality,
age, occupation and energy.”

Personalize your pitches.
Leaved the canned closes
on the shelf.

My manager likes to be in charge.
She likes to make the decisions.
She likes to come up
with the big ideas.

I, of course, prefer
these decisions jive with mine.

What do I do?

I present two solutions.
If I want the solution to be gray.
I present black
and I present white.
I talk about how neither is ideal.

Then I wait.

I’m batting 100% with my current boss.
She always suggests gray
(maybe not at first,
I’ll nudge her a little).

The downside to this ploy
is I have to be happy
with black or white
if these solutions end up chosen.

But it still beats the random solutions
this type of decision-maker
will toss at you.

There is a way to sell
to everyone.

Jennifer Brown has a great article
on the differences
between men and women
when they sell.

One surprising difference
is that men talk about potential,
what they could possibly do
for the client,
while women talk about experience,
what they have done
for other clients.

The best solution
is, of course,
a mixture of the two.

Sell potential
on the base of experience.

Where should you hold sales meetings?
The simple answer is
at your customer’s place of business.

As Shaun Rein states
“Clients don’t want
to come to your office.
They don’t want to waste their time.”

You also want to spend
as much time in the customer’s operations
as possible.
The more time you spend there,
the more knowledgable you will be
about their business
and
the more you become
part of their team.

Some of the top consultants
have NO real office
(real = a office you can host client meetings at).
They don’t need one.
They are always consulting.

Hold meetings at
your customer’s place of business.

Salespeople often talk about
‘filling the funnel’,
ensuring that they have
active leads at all stages.

It is a funnel
because in order to get one sale,
you need many, many prospects.
In other words,
you’ll get more rejections
than you do sales.

And the funnel helps you
maintain the optimism
you need
in order to sell.

For example…
Last week
I received a rejection
on one of my manuscripts.
One of my manuscripts
went to the next level of consideration.
One of my manuscripts
was contracted.
I had even more stories submitted.

If I had only the first story
in the funnel,
the rejection would have hit me hard.
I would have moaned and groaned
and wasted precious writing time.

As I had many stories in the funnel,
I shrugged the rejection off.
I was able to maintain the optimism
I need to write happy, happy love stories.

Is your sales funnel full?
Are you nurturing new leads?

During the lighting of the flame
at the Olympic Games opening ceremonies,
there was a mechanical failure.

That failure resulted in
a two minute delay.

Two minutes.
One hundred and twenty seconds.
Yet it is being billed as a ‘disaster.’
That is how impatient tv audiences are.

Do you have two minutes of dead air
in your sales presentations?
If your projector broke down,
could you seamlessly switch
to manual
within two minutes?

Because corporate executives
are part of that tv watching demographic also.
They have zero tolerance for dead air.

Scary… I know.

One thing I’ve learned
after three years of being
a published author
is that people will complain
about everything.

I’ve heard complaints
about character names,
about character beverage preference
(one hero likes orange juice
but the reader felt
he should be drinking apple juice),
and,
of course,
about typos.

There are complaints that I listen to.
U.S. readers have complained
about the use of foreign words.
I now severely limit those.

There are complaints that I ignore.
I cannot change a character’s name
after the book has been published.

I don’t read complaints
while in the product development creative space
(i.e. writing).
Nothing kills creativity like criticism.

I also know that
a reader receiving a book for free
is MORE likely to complain
than a reader buying a book.
I keep that in mind
when I give books away.

Complaints can be a wonderful source
of improvement
and future products
but they should be managed properly.
They should assist you in DOING,
not prevent you from taking action.