 |
April 2009 |
REACH! – How Do You Sell More? |
If you own your own business you are a salesperson. Improving your sales effectiveness has rarely been more important. Your ability to make sales and deliver outstanding customer service is what will sustain your business. Growing your top line is critical to your business success. This means growing your sales. Competition is hot and customers are becoming more demanding as budgets are squeezed. So, when you are faced with a sales opportunity how do you increase your chances of gaining the commitment of your customer?
Ask yourself these very important questions:
- How many sales opportunities do you convert?
- How effective are you at using your selling time?
- How good are you at identifying your customers' needs?
- How receptive are your customers to your products and services?
- How easy (or difficult!) do you find closing the sale?
- How effective are you at handling customer concerns?
- How do you differentiate yourself from your competition?
If you recognise that you have development opportunities in any or all of these areas, you are not alone. Lately, I've been meeting a lot of business people who really need to improve their sales results but don't know how to go about it and certainly don't want to waste their money on something that may not be of any value. Are you, or one of your clients or colleagues, one of them?
If so, you should consider joining our new Going for Growth programme of workshops for SMEs. The first of our programme of six monthly workshops starts on 1 May, at The White Hart in Nettlebed, from 9.30am to 12.30am (materials and refreshments included).
In addition to acquiring new skills, you will have the opportunity to gain insights from practising and sharing experiences with others as well as identifying performance improvement actions to implement in between our workshops. From a revenue generating, personal development and networking point-of-view, I think you'd get a lot from it and I'd love to have you on the programme. This is an essential investment for you and your business. Take a look at the info below and, if you need to know anything else then please do call or e-mail me.
In the meantime, as ‘spaced repetition is the mother of learning', I'm sharing with you my 7 tips for improving your sales results again.
Best wishes
|
- Have clear sales objectives
If you haven't defined exactly what you want to achieve in a customer interaction, whether on the phone or face-to-face, your chances of success decrease considerably. Research shows that knowing what the desired outcome of a situation is increases the likelihood of it occurring. So, don't miss sales opportunities just because of a lack of proper planning.
You should aim to understand your customer's current situation, their goals and objectives, their problems and challenges and, ultimately their needs and opportunities. Start with open questions to gather general information and then follow up with probing questions to gather specifics.
An opportunity is the potential for gain. It's the difference between where a customer is now (actual performance) and where he/she wants to be (potential performance). As a salesperson, your role is to find out what your customer's opportunities are and to quantify them where possible, in terms that will appeal to your customer, e.g. revenue, profit, time.
So, you're great at explaining what you or your products do. You can even describe the benefits and not just the features of what you're selling (Remember the phrase, ‘which means that…'). But, make sure that the benefits you're describing match the needs and opportunities of your customer. Don't mention what's irrelevant and of no interest, no matter how great you think it is! Remember, So What?
Keep your customer engaged. Ask commitment questions to solicit your customer's agreement throughout the sales interaction. Questions like, ‘Are you happy with that?', ‘Is this something you'd be keen to do?' will also help you to understand your customer's point of view and ‘flush' out his/her concerns. The more ‘yes' responses you get, the more likely you are to make the sale.
This is just more of the above really. If you are genuinely interested in helping your customers, why be so reluctant to close the sale? If you follow all of our tips and leave this one out, then your chances of success plummet. If you don't always ask, you don't always get…
- Keep your records up to date
So, you've been asking great questions and you've identified some customer opportunities, but what do you do with the information? This last point is so obvious but so easily overlooked. The information you gather could provide valuable clues that will help you shape your customer interactions and proposals. |
 |
Reaching Further
So, these are our 7 tips for increasing your sales effectiveness. Why not bring them to life by joining our Going for Growth programme? The investment needed, apart from your time, is £85 plus VAT per month, with a one-off £85 plus VAT booking fee. Even if you can't make the next programme, starting on May 1, there will be others, so get in touch and register your interest: info@amplia.co.uk or 01491 871 203.
|
|
|
