Selling to Consumers | Sales Training Blog by Skip Anderson

Inspiring Ideas to Help You Sell Through the Retail Slump

The Customer Collective asked eleven leading sales experts to contribute to a fantastic free eBook to help sellers through the recession. The brand new eBook, "Selling Through a Slump: An Industry-by-Industry Playbook" is available at the Customer Collective site starting today. With authors like Charles Green, Jill Konrath, and Dave Stein and other respected selling authorities, I'm proud to be part of the author group.

Each author gives inspiring advice for overcoming the economic slump in one specific industry. My contribution is for the retail industry (although the information might also be helpful to those who sell in customers' homes or to those who sell real estate, financial products, and insurance). Many retailers have been hit hard during this recession, but there are still incredible opportunities for sales growth.

See the complete list of authors and the sales topics who contributed a sales strategy to the book. I've read the entire book and it is excellent. Thanks to Oracle and the Customer Collective for sponsoring the project.

Download the Selling in a Slump free eBook now!

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Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Marketing Gets it Wrong, SWOT Analysis, and Ben Stein Sells Shoes

Here are three nice articles I recommend:

1. Sean d'Souza writes about why marketing gets it wrong most of the time at Psychotactics.com.

Sean says it's all about wants. I prefer to use the term "desires" instead of "wants", but I agree with much of what Sean has to say here. Most of my client companies have some salespeople that sell as if it's all about their product, their company, and their expertise. But it's more about the prospect's needs and desires. Desire is a strong motivator. If you can identify and magnify desire, you can then position your product to meet that desire, and that's when prospects become customers.

2. Read "SWOT Yourself to Success" at FreelanceAdvisor.com.

Many of you are already familiar with SWOT analysis, the self-evaluation tool that helps you understand your:

-Strengths

-Weaknesses

-Opportunities, and

-Threats.

This article is intended for freelancers, but a SWOT analysis is an excellent tool for business owners, managers, AND salespeople to do. You have to be willing to be a analytical to pull this off, but a SWOT analysis can help shine a light on your business that can help you be a more successful salesperson, business owner, or manager.

3. The actor, writer, and lawyer Ben Stein wrote an interesting article in the New York Times about the sales profession (thanks to Guy Kawasaki and his practical blog "How to Change the World" for calling my attention to it).

Read "The Sales Profession: Attention Must Be Paid." It seems Mr. Stein is a bit nostalgic for his first summer job as a teen selling shoes at "Shoe Giant." You'll have to register at the New York Times site to view the article.

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Leverage Resources to Avoid Missed Selling Opportunities

Your resources are valuable. Collecting resources takes time, money, and energy. Some of the resources you may already have are: employees, positive brand equity, service capabilities, location, sweat equity, history in the marketplace, cash, etc.

As a salesperson, you need to leverage your resources, too. Your resources might be selling skill, high energy, product knowledge, likability, experience, technical knowledge, work ethic, etc. It's one thing to have those resources, but quite another thing to leverage those resources to create revenue with them. Leveraging your resources means you're using your resources to create revenue (sales). 

How do some salespeople and companies not leverage resources?

- Spending many hours to complete an intricate and highly customized landscape design that the prospect didn't buy because the customer didn't comprehend the value of your design. [Resources not leveraged: time, energy, design skill]

- Having a tile and stone showroom in a prime location, but not staff the showroom sufficiently to serve the foot traffic that is generated by the prime location. [Resources not leveraged:  location, expenses related to establishing and keeping the location]

- Getting your prospect to have fun laughing and joking with you during the "free market analysis" real estate meeting, but then not asking for the listing. [Resources not leveraged: likability, time, energy]

- Hiring good sales candidates for your insurance business, but then not training them how to sell. [Resources not leveraged: time, energy, money, people]

- Being hired by a well-respected wine shop, but than not bothering to read a few books to learn how to sell. [Resources not leveraged: reputation, prospects, time, opportunity]

- Spending hours attending networking functions that result in no creation of corresponding revenue. [Resources not leveraged: time, energy, gas, mileage, network]

- Being the most experienced person in your industry in your city, but only achieving mediocre sales results. [Resources not leveraged: experience, time, knowledge]

- Consistently working sixty hours per week while only achieving average sales results. [Resources not leveraged: time, energy]

- Having excellent sales skills, but not making enough prospect contacts to use those skills. [Resources not leveraged: sales skill, ability, talent, the market]

- Working in a men's clothing store spending your time stacking inventory in the stock room when customer traffic on the sales floor needs you there. [Resources not leveraged: time, customer traffic, marketing, shoppers]

What resources are you failing to leverage? What resources do you see others around you not leveraging?

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

After Installation or Delivery, Sell More!

If you sell products that require installation or delivery, use this event as an opportunity to have another sales interaction with the customer. Of course you want to find out if the installation (or delivery) met the customer's expectations, but after doing so, ask your customer...

..."What else do you need?" or

..."What else can I help you with?" or

..."When will you need more [insert product here]?"

Or ask for referrals. By asking the right questions, you may uncover additional needs, or additional information that will help you serve your customer in the future. Asking only, "Did your installation go okay?" won't give you the information you need to generate additional revenue.

Ask questions. Learn. Explore. Investigate. Sell more!

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Think Outside the Sales Rut

We all get into ruts. This happens without us being aware of it. Ruts are bad. Perhaps you'd like to try some of these anti-rut sales suggestions:

1. If you're a waiter in a restaurant, step out of your rut and take the dessert order first.

You don't have to serve dessert first, but elevate the importance of your fabulous desserts presenting the dessert tray after taking your customer's drink and appetizer order. That dessert tray will look glorious when presented to your hungry customers.

Say something like this: "I don't know if you love dessert as much as most of our customers do, but I find that when we order dessert first, we can anticipate it's arrival throughout the dinner, and that makes for some excitement. What can I bring for you at the end of tonight's meal?"

Would you rather have people order their dessert when they're stuffed, or when their famished?

2. Nobody watches a flat screen TV standing up (at least for long).

Yet, most electronics stores require their prospects to stand in front of TVs to view them. I propose you place a bunch of very comfy chairs on wheels throughout your TV showroom. I suggest you place a single row of TVs at normal viewing height instead of stacking 2 or 3 rows of TVs on top of each other. Let your shoppers sit in the comfy chairs and move them around your showroom to help them emulate how TVs are really viewed in their homes.

Customers will enjoy the tactile experience of jockeying chairs to and fro, and they'll definitely enjoy sitting down. It will increase the engagement of your customer in the buying process and you'll sell more TVs.

After they've made their TV selection and committed to the purchase, give them an opportunity to purchase the comfy chair they've been sitting in for hour. Some will.

3. Car dealerships seem to go out of their way to make shoppers uncomfortable. Why not make it comfortable instead? And easier?

Anybody who has read much of my material knows that I'm a fanatic about engaging your customer. But when a salesperson at the auto dealership tries her best to get the prospect talking and yet the prospect insists he just wants to browse, let him browse. In fact, encourage him to browse. And make it easy for him to summon you to ask you a question or get help.

Hand him a small handheld paging device. When the customer needs you, he simply presses the button. The receiver in your pocket vibrates or dings, and you go outside to assist your prospect. This is good for the customer and good for the salesperson. And it will help minimize the omnipresent row of hungry salespeople lined up and staring out front window of the dealership waiting to pounce on their victim.

Since the customer needs to return the paging device before they leave your dealership, you'll have another opportunity to engage them in your showroom before they leave...without following them around the car lot and making him extraordinarily uncomfortable for their entire visit to your establishment.

4. Give your massage customers a choice of music...or no music.

I don't like the sound of dreamy sitar music (with the sound of waves and birds in the background) being played during my massage. It lessens my massage experience.

I want music that I like to be massaged to. Give me some downtempo classical chamber music and I'm in heaven. So offer your customers a dozen music options (solo guitar, new age, environmental, downtempo classical chamber music, electronic chill, etc.) and let the customer select one. Or make it easy for her to select no music. Doing this will help engage your customer and involve their senses in the experience, thereby giving them a fuller, richer experience with you.

Increase your customer's engagement by inviting them to bring iiPods to their next massage appointment. Play their preferred playlists through your sound system. Your invitation will cause some of your customers to go home and prepare a special playlist especially for their next massage. How great is that? Your customer is at home thinking about their next visit to your spa! That's customer engagement!

Think outside the sales rut.

What ruts are you in in your business? What can you do to give your customers a more fulfilling experience? To create improved sales performance? To better engage your customers? To close more sales? To increase your dollars per transaction? Please share your thoughts.

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

The 300th Sales Blog Post

Wow, there are now three hundred posts on the Selling to Consumers Blog! I can't believe it. I started out with one post just a year-and-a-half ago. Many thanks to my readers, subscribers, commenters, and supporters. I appreciate you very much.

Do you care to look at some of my favorite posts? (I'm not saying they're the best, just some of my favorites). Here they are:

Most musical post

Most inspirational post

Most helpful post

Post with the biggest bonehead management mistake

Most interactive post

Most irritating post

Least sucky post

My wife's least favorite post

Most quoted post in other blogs

Post which best illustrates why companies need Selling to Consumers Sales Training

Why not subscribe to this blog, either in a RSS reader, or via Feedblitz so you don't miss the next 300 posts?

See you at post #301...and thanks again.

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

You Must Watch These Business Videos

Today I have two must-watch videos for you. If you haven't seen these videos, you must watch them now. Really.

1. The first is a TV ad for Red House Furniture in North Caroline. This is unlike any furniture store advertising I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them (I used to work in the furniture industry).

I definitely have some thoughts about it, but I'd much rather hear your comments (maybe I'll comment at a later date). Watch the vid, then click on comments below to weigh in. What do you think?

2. Here is a video from a talk given by Seth Godin a few years ago (via the marvelous Seth Godin's Blog. Every single person who works in an organization should watch this video titled "This Is Broken." I'm not kidding. It's great stuff. It's twenty minutes long. Watch it now.

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

What Your Customers Want To Buy

Overheard statement from customer to salesperson:

"I don't want to buy something that you think is worth it,
I want to buy something I think is worth it."

This statement was made by a prospective customer of one of my client companies to a salesperson for that company. It was during a home improvement sales call in the customer's home, but this statement applies to sales of all kinds of products and services and customers in all industries.

How brilliant it was that this customer summarized so well one of the tenets of selling.

Customers don't care what we think unless it's congruent with what they think. Our words lose their value if we try to sell something to the customer that he doesn't want. If we want prospects to value our words, we have to work tirelessly to make sure all our words have value. Please: no more wasted words.

Yet I see this frequently: salespeople pushing a particular product or model or option because they want to sell it. Maybe it's because they like the product; or they get a spiff from the manufacturer for selling it; or their manager told them to push the item this week.

Pushing (aggressiveness) shouldn't have a place in selling. Customers resist pushing salespeople today more than ever.

But I'm a big proponent of assertive selling.  Go ahead and present your premium option to your client, but if they aren't interested, let it go. Go ahead and show your customer the product you think is best for them, but if they aren't buying it, figure out what you're missing, regroup, and have another go at it with the right product this time. So you get a spiff for selling the maintenance plan? Great! Present it convincingly and ask for the order, but that's different than pushing it.

You'll have a much more successful sales career if you sell your customers what it is they want to buy. Find out what that is and then give it to them.

Your customers want to buy what they want to buy. They don't want to buy what you're selling, unless what you're selling happens to match what they want to buy. Sell accordingly.

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Deliberate Practice & The Pursuit of Sales Excellence

Thanks to Ian Brodie, I recently learned about the work of psychologist K. Anders Ericsson from Florida State University. Dr. Ericsson studies expert performance, especially as it is created by what he calls "deliberate practice," i.e. focused practice aimed at improving a particular skill set or desired outcome.

Dr. Ericsson's studies have concluded that expert performance derives mostly from two factors:

1. Regularly obtaining concrete and constructive feedback

2. Deliberate practice

This is fantastic knowledge to have! Now we know what we need to do if we want to achieve expert performance! Read Practice Makes Perfect to learn more about these concepts. 

According to Dr. Ericsson's research, experience alone does not result in great performance (practice is fairly benign as a technique to achieve maximum human performance), but deliberate practice is. This is why accurate, focused, role-playing and other practice tools are effective human performance enhancers for the sales professional.

Sales managers: keep role-playing with your people. Practice deliberately. Do it often, and provide constructive, direct feedback, even if your sales team doesn't like it (One of my favorite compliments to get is when one of my clients or former employees tells me, "When I was with the customer, I could hear your voice in my head, telling me what to do! That's the power of deliberate practice). Direct, constructive feedback should be a priority for all sales managers in their day-to-day work.

If your sales manager isn't providing this kind of feedback, or isn't providing it with the frequency you desire, consider hiring a sales coach or find a mentor who will give you time, attention, and direct feedback. Then listen to it.

Only deliberate, perfect practice makes perfect.

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

It's Fearless Friday - Sell Without Fear Today!

It's Fearless Friday!

What does that mean? It means today you go out into the world and sell without fear. No fears are allowed on Fearless Friday. What are you afraid of?

- Failure?
- Success?
- Your prospects?
- Angry customers?
- Asking for the sale?
- Change?
- Challenging yourself?
- Picking up the phone?
- Asking for referrals?
- Networking?
- Cold calling?
- Door-knocking?
- Looking "like a salesperson?"
- Being a salesperson?
- Paperwork?
- Your boss?
- Your colleague?
- Doing something differently to get a different result?
- Learning?
- Working hard?

Many salespeople have a fear that is holding them back from the next tier of success. What is the fear that's holding you back?

Once you identify it, make today the day that you confront your fear head-on. Be fearless today. It's time for a new, better, more fearless you to make an appearance.

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

The Perception of Value: Salesperson's vs. Prospect's

Customers buy when the value of a product or service is greater than the cost of that product or service (assuming they have a corresponding need and corresponding resources to pay for said product).

The determination of value is solely in the hands of the prospect. We may think our product is extraordinarily value, but if the prospect doesn't share our thinking, the customer isn't going to buy. That can be challenging for salespeople to understand.

And once we accept that, the even more challenging part of this value thing is that different individuals define value differently. We often sell with our individual value biases at the core of our selling methodology. But the next ten prospects we talk to may very well have ten different value points-of-view. Our message has to resonate with each of those ten prospects, not just the ones that share our value perspective.

Therefore, it's important for salespeople to know what value looks like to the customer. Sometimes we can simply ask the prospect, and sometimes the prospect will give us an accurate answer. But because a lot of people confuse value with price, we can get sidetracked and end up discussing price, when a discussion about value would be more helpful (price is a separate component of a buying decision). Salespeople who can get a clear picture of value from the prospect will have an advantage over their competition.

How do you do this?

- Advanced questioning skills
- A high degree of perceptiveness
- Wisdom developed through experience and learning
- Customers' verbal and non-verbal clues
- Changing the course of the selling interaction when necessary
- Skepticalness

To be more successful, strive to understand value from each prospect's s unique point-of-view.

How do you determine value from your customers' points-of-view? Please share your thoughts.

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Book Review: The Race to Success (Time Mastery = Sales Success)

I picked up Cheryl A. Clausen's new book, The Race To Success: The Master Guide to Sales Success Through Time Mastery to read on the plane on a recent trip. Always looking for new ideas, I was not disappointed with Cheryl's book.

High performers in many different fields of endeavor, including sales and business, must treat time as one of the most precious resources we use.Time is the one resource we can never replace; once time is gone, it is gone forever.

Cheryl makes a compelling case for proactive time management in her book. Using the analogy of a race, she guides the reader through a well-conceived plan of getting control of time to achieve sales success.

I wish I would have been able to recommend "The Race to Success" when I was a sales manager. I worked with several people in my management career who had tremendous sales potential, but absolutely horrible time management skills. This book would have been a valuable centerpiece for the time management coaching I was doing with those individuals. I will continue to recommend this book to my corporate clients and individual coaching clients who would benefit by cleaning up their use of time and making sure they utilize every day wisely.

The Race to Success is a 99 page paperback and a fairly quick read.

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Excellence, Not Perfection

"Perfection is usually not attainable;
but excellence often is."

Skip Anderson

Some people spend their careers trying to achieve the unachievable: perfection. The pursuit of perfection wastes time and resources, and causes missed opportunities. Why seek perfection if it's usually not attainable? For most people in most situations, excellence is good enough.

I propose that we in business focus on excellence, not perfection.

What does dysfunctional perfectionism look like? Here are examples of business people seeking perfection instead of excellence:

• A kitchen designer who includes a half-dozen intricate custom products in his design for his prospect that go far above and beyond typical custom cabinetry. In an effort to wow his client and pacify his personal need for perfection, he has to retrieve special pricing quotes from his production department and require the installation team to do intricate work that is beyond their scope of expertise. And if the prospect never buys, all the design effort was for naught. An excellent design within the comfortable capabilities of his company would probably have been good enough. 

• A business owner who spends months crafting his marketing campaign, but then never does anything with his creation. Her perfectionism got the best of her.

• The salesperson who spends eighteen hours researching his prospect before he cold calls them. Some research is often an excellent idea. Too much research is never a good idea.

• The retail manager who expects merchandise to be displayed perfectly. She has made it clear to her staff that this is her priority. But shouldn't selling that merchandise be the first priority? Excellent merchandise displays are very helpful in achieving business goals; perfect merchandise displays are unattainable (especially when customers are involved in your displays).

• The salesperson who rehearses his presentation to an important prospect ad nauseum, and therefore puts all his eggs in this one basket. If you have other prospects to sell to, other customers to serve, other prospecting to do, and other tasks on your to-do list, spending too much time on one presentation is not a good idea, especially if the customer doesn't buy from you.

When our focus is on perfection, we force ourselves down a path that  will almost never make the best use of our resources. Some people wear the badge of perfectionism with pride, but for most in business, perfectionism is a roadblock to success, not a route to it.

Strive to be excellent, not perfect.

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Your Sales Stimulus Package

With the economy in turmoil right now, sellers everywhere are facing major challenges. We all hear stories about:

-Sales opportunities that grind to a screeching halt or disappear altogether.

-Declining business from existing customers who are also struggling with the economy.

If you are responsible for prospecting to find your own customers, you need more high quality prospects in your pipeline now more than ever. That's why I wanted to let you know about the Sales Stimulus Package, an online sales training event created specifically to help you with the challenges of selling in a down economy.

The goal? To stimulate your sales. To give you a massive dose of fresh, highly effective strategies you can use today and tomorrow to find more prospects and close more business.

Sales expert Jill Konrath has gathered thirteen of North America's savviest sales gurus together to share their highest impact ideas and strategies. I personally know many of these experts and I can recommend them to you. Take a look at all the speakers' bios here.

The Sales Stimulus Package is an intensive two-week program that requires just one hour a day. It's designed to immerse you in new approaches, concepts and skills.

The Agenda

Take a look at what's on the agenda. Could you benefit from this information starting May 4th?

-Exactly what you need to create a full pipeline quickly, despite the longer sales cycles and fewer buyers.

-Get great advice on using LinkedIn, social networking sites, Sales 2.0 resources and online intelligence sources.

-Strategies you can use to speed up your sales, even when your prospects are slowing down their decision process.

-How to quickly build relationships where you're positioned as a trusted, high integrity advisor who's committed to your customers' best interests.

-What deadly mistakes are causing you to lose sales and how to avoid them.

-How to overcome sales objections and - even better - prevent them from happening in the first place.

-Plus, you'll also get a chance to ask live questions and get answers from the speakers. Each one-hour session has 10+ minutes set aside for Q&A.

Go here to see all 12 sessions.

Session Recordings

Each session is recorded so if you have a conflict, you won't miss anything. And you can listen to the experts over and over again for the rest of the year, ensuring that you're constantly at the top of your game.

This Sales Stimulus Package is your chance to learn from some of the best. Make sure to check out all the details and sign up right away. The Sales Stimulus Package is a one-time only event. 

40% Off NOW!

You can get 40% off if you act now. There are twelve information-rich sessions on how to get more prospects and more sales in tough times. Be sure to check them out.

 

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Sales Manager, How Are You Going to Spend Your Time Today?

"The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership."

-Harvey S. Firestone

Outstanding sales managers create a learning environment. Their workplaces become laboratories of sales education, or experiential learning, of human development, of human nature and psychology.

Great sales managers are always looking for potential in their people. When they find it, they develop it - not just during initial training upon hire, but always. They look for learning opportunities for their employees at every juncture. They are perpetual sales trainers and role models.

When teaming up with another salesperson during a customer sales interaction, they observe so they can identify points of success and opportunities for improvement, then they coach the salesperson on those points and opportunities. They only take over the selling role for the salesperson when they want the salesperson to observe and learn, but would prefer to let the salesperson sell so they can observe and then coach.

Great sales managers have confidence in their salespeople, even to the point of allowing them to experience instances of failure so they can learn valuable lessons in that failure and themanager's coaching that goes along with it.

They are not merely paper-pushers, administrators, or yes-men (or women). They don't spend all day in their offices with the doors shut, noses firmly planted in the space between their computer keyboards and monitors. They don't spend their time selling.

They are teachers, doers, cheerleaders, motivators, nurturers, disciplinarians, recognizers of achievement, back-patters, shapers, and social workers. They remove barriers to success, run efficient operations, have fun, foster teamwork, create respectful work environments, and challenge their people. They identify their salespeople's strengths andfind ways to use those strengths. They spend time with their people, walking around, observing, talking, asking, noticing, rolling their sleeves up and getting busy.

They provoke, inspire, help, and develop. They create success in their people, and experience their own personal success as a by-product of their team's success.

Sales managers, how are you going to spend your time today?

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Selling Now

We're in constant transition. We live our lives in at the junction of our past and the future. That time is now.

Now is fleeting. Time marches on. In the sales profession, how we us our nows are important. What we accomplished a month ago or a year ago or twenty years ago really doesn't matter in the sales profession. And the future will matter when you get there, but it's not important in selling. In sales, it's what we do now that counts.

What are you doing with your now? Today will never happen again. Once it has past, it will be gone. Right now, you have an opportunity for sales success, and you will never have that opportunity with that moment in time ever again. Honor now and take action in whatever manner will bring you the career success you're looking for.

Your time is now.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Special thanks to Jeffrey Sartain for inspiring today's post.

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Learn More, Sell More

I've had three recent mentions in the blogosphere (that I'm aware of). I think you'll find these links valuable.

1. Brad Trnavsky and Jerry Kennedy interviewed me for the Sales Management 2.0 Podcast. The topic was one of my favorite sales training topics: prospect engagement. I'm on an ongoing mission to encourage salespeople to do a much better job of engaging their prospects, because when prospects are engaged in the sales process, more sales happen. [My definition of "customer engagement": The active participation of the prospect in the selling/buying process (as opposed to passive participation)].

The interview is really a sales seminar (almost an hour long), and of course it's free, so if you want to learn more about how to sell, don't miss it. 

2. I was interviewed for an article on examiner.com. Read "Are You Prepared for Second Interview Questions?' The article has advice for both the interviewer and the job candidate during those all-important second interviews. It's not specifically a sales-focused article, but it applies to second interviews for all types of companies and positions.

3. Niall Devitt, Founder of Beyond the Boardroom in Ireland, chronicles an online debate I was having with another sales trainer in the sales training forum at www.SalesPractice.com. I disagreed so much with what was being said by the other trainer, and I pursued a hot and heavy debate online. Niall apparently observed the debate and wrote this post. Read The Sales Trainer Debate.

Here are a couple of other fantastic learning opportunities:

- Tibor Shanto is offering another "The Ultimate Appointment Making Workshop" in Toronto on March 10, 2009 (two days from now!). Tell your B2B sales friends about this workshop...it's fantastic. Click here to learn more.

- Colleagues and fellow members of TopSalesExperts.com are presenting an online roundtable called "The Future of Professional Selling on April 14, 2009. You'll hear Linda Richardson, Jill Konrath, Dave Stein, Jonathan Farrington, and Nigel Edelshain. Click on the banner below for more information.

-

If you like this post (or don't!), please consider leaving a comment, or subscribe to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Connect The Dots for Your Customers

"Connecting the dots" for your prospects helps them to move comfortably through the sales process. When you connect the dots, you show the relationship between various bits of information that collectively play a role in the prospect's buying decision process.

Selling is all about creating sales momentum, which is building inertia throughout the selling process that provides the motivation to keep moving forward to a closed transaction. But sales momentum is difficult to develop when the dots aren't connected.

But there's another benefit to connecting the dots for your customers. Connecting the dots prevents vital bits of information from being ignored or covered up by bigger bits. When dots are connected, everything falls into place. No dots are bypassed, and everything is kept in proper perspective.

For example, if you're selling a riding lawnmower,and you end up talking about one feature of the machine at length, that one feature can overpower your presentation and prevent you from talking about other "dots" that are important to your prospect.

When you connect the dots for your customer, you're providing a great service. You're not only presenting valuable information, you're taking the prospect's hand and leading them on a path of discovering how your product or service will meet the specific needs of your prospect. When random bits of information are presented (rather than connected bits of information), you run the risk of losing your prospect or leaving gaps that can kill your sales opportunity.

Connect the dots for your prospects and sell more.

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Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Who Decides What's Better?

I read Seth Godin's most recent post, "What Does Better Mean" and found my head nodding affirmatively in agreement with it. Seth's post is aimed at marketers when he writes, "You don't get to decide what's better. I do." [Meaning the consumer gets to decide what is better.]

Seth says this is a tough lesson for marketers to learn. I say this is also a tough lesson for sellers to learn.

Salespeople get stuck in "my product is better" thinking, but when they do, they self-limit their sales reach. To be a successful salesperson, you don't need to sell the "better" product in your product category. It's difficult to determine the better product in any category anyway, because there is usually no universal and definitive criteria for determining what product is better in any particular product category. And even if there was, customers would continue to buy many other products in the same product category. Why?

Because customer needs are complex and not singular. Therefore, products to fit those needs are varied, not singular. "Better" is in the eye of the beholder.

In sales articles and blog posts by salespeople and even sales trainers, I sometimes read advice similar to this: "You've got to believe your product is the best if you want to excel at selling it."

But I disagree with this premise. I believe you have to believe your product can meet customer needs. And I believe a salesperson is setting him self up for failure if he acts on his belief that he has to believe his product is better than his competitors'. What if his competitor introduces a new product with some dazzling new feature that meets many customer needs better than his product? Does he have to switch companies to be successful? Then, what happens when his former employer releases their improved product in four months? Does he have to go back to working for them? No, of course not.

If you want to be successful in selling, focus intently on your prospect's unique needs and desires. Then show your prospect how your product's features will benefit the prospect within the context of those unique needs and desires. Every product has potential value. Top sales performers understand this, and translate this potential value into real real value for their prospects.

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Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Sales Training Advice: Selling Door-to-Door

Spring is finally upon us here in Minnesota (at least I think spring is here; sometimes it's hard to know for sure in Minnesota). I saw one sign of spring earlier this week: I had a door-to-door canvasser ring our doorbell at our home.

I admire door-to-door canvassers; they experience massive amounts of rejection, and yet they still get out there, walking the streets and by-ways of the community, to identify prospects to whom they can sell. For most, it's not an easy job, but it can pay big dividends, especially if you know what you're doing.

So I admire the guy who came to our home the other night. He had a pleasant and sincere smile, and he was working hard. But he could have done a much more effective job.

Here's what he said when I answered the door: "Hi, I'm with _____________ Painting, and I'm wondering if you have any painting projects planned in the next year."

I said, "No."

He then gave me a door-hanger and asked him to call him if I decided we needed any interior or exterior painting. The was the end of the interaction.

What follows are some suggestions that, if implemented, would improve this salesperson's success rate.

1. Stand back from the door 6-8 feet after you ring the doorbell. Many people feel a twinge of uneasiness when somebody they don't know is at their door. That feeling of uneasiness is magnified when the unknown person at the door has their mug mere inches from it. Give the homeowner some breathing room.

2. Wear a large ID badge attached to your clothing or hang it around your neck. It should show your company's name and your name in large letters, and it should have a picture of you on it. When you introduce yourself to the prospect, left up the id badge to call attention to it. This helps the suspect feel at ease.

3. Rarely, if ever, should a door-to-door salesperson start with a closed question (one that can be answered with yes or no, or a multiple choice question. Start with an open-ended question. A perfect open-ended question for the gentleman who visited us the other night would have been, "I couldn't help but noticing the patch of rotting siding on the side of your house. It made me curious; What happened?"

It's a long story about why we have a patch of rotting wood siding on the side of our house, so I won't go there, but we certainly need to have some siding replaced, and after it's replaced, it will need to be repainted. So why did I tell the salesperson that I didn't have any painting projects planned in the next year?

Like a lot of customers, I took the easy route. His closed question made it too easy for me to say "no." But if he would have engaged me in a more effective manner, I probably would have shared this information with him. I've also been avoiding thinking about the rotting siding; so my psyche is in denial mode. He question let me continue in denial mode.

The key is customer engagement. Closed questions are notoriously poor engagement instruments. Open-ended questions, on the other hand, are fabulous for this purpose.

4. Ask for referrals after a suspect shuts you down.

"You know the people in your neighborhood much better than I do. Who would be the 2 or 3 people that you think it would be most important for me to talk to?" Some people will refuse to answer your question, but some people will give you some neighborhood intelligence that may be helpful in finding viable prospects to talk to.

Even if they shut you down again, follow up with another question: "I would love it if you would give me the names of two or three people you know who might possibly want to talk to me about painting...even if they don't live in your neighborhood."

Hand the prospect a referral sheet and a pen and see what happens. You'll definitely get some referrals if you utilize this approach consistently.

Happy canvassing!

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Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Be Like an Oak; and a Willow

Oak trees are strong and mighty. They grow slowly. They withstand most storms, and live a long, productive life.

Willow trees grow quickly, with very long roots. They're flexible. They withstand many storms too, because of their flexibility.

As salespeople, we need to be both like an oak and a willow. We must be sturdy and strong so we can withstand any negative effects that come our way. But this is also a time to be flexible. The economic winds are blowing, and being too rigid can be detrimental.

Be like an oak...and a willow.

How have you been like an oak? And a willow? How has it helped you become a better salesperson. Please share...

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Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more.