Its All Sales
Its All Sales
Its All Sales
There is the old popular saying in sales, "Always Be Closing". It's true. If your website is the point of sale then you have to be selling and closing at every opportunity on your site. Now I never took classes in selling. I did read a few books years ago on the psychology of selling and "Needs" motivated selling and how to make your product "Sexy" and all of that. Its true in Hollywood as well as Madison Ave and Silicon Valley. I started as an actor and I can tell you that in order to get paid to act you first have to sell yourself. Your picture has to sell you, your demo reel has to sell you, your cover letter has to sell you, you have to sell yourself at the audition.
When I opened my own communications and entertainment company I threw away all my books. I have determined through my own personal experience over the years that sales comes down to these basic factors: Likability, Knowledge and Authority, Honesty and Enthusiasm, Urgency & Closing, and Trust. Let's look at each of these factors, a little closer and I'll demonstrate what I mean.
First Likability. In Hollywood movies and plays we even have to like the villain even though we hate him. Its the same in sales, even though you should never be the villain in sales. Not everyone is charming and dapper or drop dead gorgeous. Still, one of the factors in the prospect's decision to buy is "Do they like the salesperson".
My wife and I went and bought a new clothes dryer yesterday. We wound up spending double what we had budgeted for the appliance, simply because we liked the salesperson. So work on being likable. Be pleasant, be curious about the prospect, be respectful, smile, enjoy your work, be clean, neat, presentable, and smell good. Be humble, and be someone that others want to be around. Avoid being pushy or needy. These ingredients added together equals Likable.
Next: Knowledge and Authority. You have to thoroughly know your product or service inside and outside, backwards and forwards. It needs to be abundantly clear to the prospect that you are an authority on the subject. That way they will TRUST your expertise. Some professional sales people will argue with me on this point. They say they sell the person and not the product or service. I disagree. People who think they can get out there and start hustling something they don't know anything about are prone to say anything to make the sale including ,making wild claims and gross inaccuracies. This eventually leads to dissatisfied clients which undermines the bedrock of trust and goodwill which is crucial to future sales.
That brings me to the next factors, Honesty and Enthusiasm. You must be so excited about what you are selling and believe in the product or service so much that you can always be absolutely 100% honest at all times with your prospect. You have to be jazzed about what you are talking about. You have to fall in love with what you are selling. It is contagious. If you can't get excited about what you are selling than you should sell something else, plain and simple. This is paramount to your success.
Urgency and Closing. This is what separates the experts from the amateurs and makes the difference between stellar success and mediocrity. You have to give the prospect a compelling reason to buy right now and then you have to (gulp) ask for the money. If there is no compelling reason to buy right now, your prospect will leave to think it over and then the excitement fades and you wonder how you lost the sale. Many items have built in urgency to the sale. My wife and I bought the new clothes dryer because the old one quit and we had laundry sitting in the machine needing to get dry. We had to get this dryer business done right away so we could get back to our routines. Car sales often happen the same way.
My company deals with corporate events, private parties and promotions. The urgency is clear. The date of the event will pass, the company party will be over, and the promotion will come to end. Find the sense of urgency in whatever you are selling and then ask for the money.
Finally: TRUST. My father was in sales for his whole working career and he told me the two most powerful words in sales are "Trust me". If you implement all of the above and ask your prospect to trust you, they will.
If you are likable, if you have spoken from a place of authority and knowledge, if you have been completely honest and filled with enthusiasm, and there is a sense of urgency, and you ask for the money, you will get the sale as long as you have built trust between you. If the prospect walks at that point and all of the above factors were present than don't worry, they weren't buying from anybody today. They weren't a serious prospect.
Some salepersons' approaches make things so unpleasant as they grind down their prospects, that the prospect buys because they just don't want to go through the same situation with the next salesperson. I abhor that approach. It leads to resentment and dissatisfaction and even if I do buy from that source I won't go back. Don't give in to the temptation to use "Hurt and rescue" tactics if you want to build a happy client base who will continue to buy from you. Just follow the steps set forward in this article and watch your revenues grow.
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