Category: Sales

I always ‘test’ charities
with small donations
or donations-in-kind
before making larger donations.
Only a rare few pass this test.

(Great because I can
focus my efforts)

A friend needed thousands of pens.
She ordered 100 from a manufacturer
as a test.
They failed,
delivering late
and with a sloppy product.

Very rarely will you
receive a huge order
as your first interaction
with a customer.
They will test you
with a small order first.

Treat your ‘small’ customers well.
They are tomorrow’s large customers.

I take the bus.
Sure, I don’t like to drive
but even if I did,
I would still take the bus.

Why?

Because my customers take the bus.

It is the same reason,
I listen to radio
(including the commercials)
and eat in family restaurants.

It is very challenging
to sell to someone
you don’t understand.
The best way to understand your customer
is to BE your customer.

It also immediately gives you
a common base
to leverage off of.

Commute with your customers.
No one sells product
from an ivory tower.

Want to be above average?

Keep your word.
Do that
and you’ll always have people
willing to
work with you,
give you contracts,
set you up with projects.

A loved one volunteered
to be part of a 24 hour relay.
The day of the relay,
it rained heavily…
the entire 24 hours.

Most people canceled on the organizer.
My loved one didn’t.
Sure, he went
because he keeps his own word
but he also wanted to know
who else kept theirs.

THOSE are the people
he wants on his project teams.

Being too aggressive
is a common fear,
especially amongst women.

We want people to like us.
People don’t like aggressive people.

Bullsh**

People don’t like people who aren’t nice.
You can be aggressive
and still be ‘nice.’
You can be aggressive
and be polite,
good natured, kind, giving.

I am an aggressive person.
Some people don’t like me
because I’m aggressive
but then,
some people don’t like me
because I write romance novels
or because I wear suits
or because I’m a woman.

Being afraid of someone not liking you
is a silly reason
to let your dreams die.

Darren Hardy has a post
on how you lose 1 out of 5 sales
if you’re too aggressive
(but you land the other 4).

Every month on
http://businessromance.com/
I give away free eBooks.
Often I give away multiple copies
of the same eBook.

With my May contest,
I gave away 15 copies
of the same book.

I wanted to order them directly
from the publisher.
I didn’t.
Why?
Because I’d have to click buy 15 times.
Instead I bought
(at the same price)
from a reseller
because I could simply adjust the quantity.

But not any reseller.
I bought from a reseller
that allowed me to download only once
and resend copies of that same download.

If you want multiple sales,
make multiple sales easy for customers.

To test this,
try buying 100 of your product.
It should be as easy as buying 1.

I’m guest blogging on a certain site.
I offered a selection of topics
I could cover.
None of them were acceptable
to the host.

No problem.
I obviously didn’t understand
what the site’s goals were.

But then she quoted her readership numbers.
Low.
Very low.
Lower than the site I was promoting.

Of course, I’ll still guest blog
(I made a commitment)
but now,
I’m a little less anxious to please.

If you want to impress someone
with your numbers,
make sure those numbers are impressive.

Everyone likes to hear (or read)
their own name
and this rule holds true for assistants.

Tony Parinello and David Mattson,
authors of
Five Minutes With VITO,
(Very Important Top Officer)
says
“The first thing you want to do,
in any correspondence,
is you want to salute
the uniform of the private assistant.
The private assistant’s name
has to be in any correspondence
you send to VITO.”

And by any correspondence,
that includes email.
Acknowledge the gatekeeper
and you will be more likely
to get past.

In the upcoming horror flick
Drag Me To Hell,
the heroine is billed as
‘a nice girl.’
She may be a nice girl
(I don’t know,
I haven’t seen the movie)
but her customer service skills suck.

First
she ‘fires’ a customer publicly
(were there no private meeting rooms vacant?).
Then she fails to provide
that customer with alternatives.

There are ALWAYS alternatives.
To simply cut a customer off
without providing them
with other sources
IS cruel.
(Here’s a hint…
If you have to call security
when you fire a customer,
you’re doing it wrong.)

Is it cruel enough
to warrant spending an eternity in hell?
I don’t know…

Four weeks ago,
Invisible, my second novel,
was number 18
in sales for my publisher.

I then took 3 weeks off,
during which time
I didn’t do any promotion
or fan response.
It sunk to number 43.

A week after I came back
(back to promoting
and back to talking to readers),
Invisible is number 21 on the list.

Promotion works.
Selling works.
Responding to customers (readers) works.
Stop doing all that
and your sales will stop also.

We’ve all had it happen.
A laptop dies in the middle
of a presentation.
The product we’re demonstrating
doesn’t work quite the way
we expect it.
Something happens on CNN
that distracts the buyers we’re pitching.

Most people try to
continue on
like nothing happened.
The best salespeople, however,
address the interruption.

Stephen C. Lundin and Carr Hagerman
talk about this in their book
Top Performer.

“Yet even in the West End
when a baby cries
or a cell phone rings,
the best actors make a witty comment
that flows from their character
and then continue with the script unperturbed.
Any other approach creates
negative energy and tension
in the audience.
The audience is more upset
because of empathy for the actor
than for themselves
and a good actor understands
that he or she
needs to relieve the tension.”