Selling face-to-face: consultative selling

OVERVIEW OF OUR SALES TRAINING BOOKS

SELLING 101 -- THIRD EDITION

  This third edition of SELLING 101 is a revised and refocused look at the practical how-to, taking the user through the process of finding viable prospects; working with gatekeepers and screens; getting appointments; making face to face sales calls; using a consultative selling approach to build the prospect's awareness of needs, and how your product or service will best fill those needs; handling objections and questions; and closing the sale.

SELLING 101 is based on a sales training workshop developed for experienced sales professionals, and contains significantly more detail that the Survival Guide.

This third edition SELLING 101 is currently available in E-book format for Kindle, Nook, i-pad and others.

READ SAMPLE CHAPTERS -- SELLING 101

To order via Amazon as either e-book or paper version

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SALES TRAINING TUTORIALS

Sales Training Tutorials is a larger book (235 pages, 8.25x11  inches).  The 25 tutorials include more extensive worksheets, templates, checklists, and sample scripts to help structure your work in each of the various tasks in selling.

While the coverage in this Sales Training Tutorials overlaps with many of the same areas as How to Sell Face-to-Face: Survival Guide, the coverage in Tutorials is in more depth. Survival is for starters; Tutorials is for more advanced use.

Tutorials can be used either self-instructionally by an individual working alone, or as the core text in a class or group setting, or for sales-team meetings.  (An accompanying Sales Manager/Instructor Guide will be released shortly.)

235 pages, 8.25x11.   ISBN: 0-9768406-5-0   $19.95

 READ SAMPLE CHAPTERS   

To order via Amazon as either e-book or paper version  (Note: e-version will be available shortly.)

 

Note:  Amazon a offers free apps that enable you to read on other e-readers including i-pad, i-book, BlackBerry and others.

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SALES PRESENTATIONS AND DEMONSTRATIONS:

Self-Instructional Handbook

This focuses on the practical how-to of presenting or demonstrating in front of the prospect, as well as the very important matter of reading (and sending) non-verbal messages.

It also addresses the essential point that demonstrations, presentations, proposals, free-trials, discounts and other special deals are "proof sources," given for a specific, defined purpose, agreed-upon in advance with the prospective buyer. Unless the prospect is willing to make that up-front commitment, then it usually makes little sense for the sales person to proceed.

 

P-book edition:  80 pages, 6x9.  ISBN: 0-9768406-3-4 

READ SAMPLE CHAPTERS  

 To order via Amazon as either e-book or paper version

Note:  Amazon  provides  free apps that enable you to read on other e-readers including i-pad, i-book, BlackBerry and others.

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SMART QUESTIONS FOR WINNING THE GAMES OF BUSINESS AND LIFE

Essential to career success – and particularly success in sales and marketing – are the "people skills" of learning to spot and cope with the games, ploys, and manipulations you encounter within work organizations. Advanced communication skills-including how-to decode subtle, even covert communications-are equally key to career success in both the business and public sectors.

SMART QUESTIONS FOR WINNING THE GAMES OF BUSINESS AND LIFE is structured around ways of arriving at sound answers to questions like these:

-- What is "winning" for me? What is winning for the others, including hidden players operating through stand-ins?
-- What's really going on here: is this a real issue, or a subtle test?
-- Am I being given the recognition and compensation that I (honestly) deserve? If not, why not, and what can I do about it?
-- What are the "real rules" that operate here, beneath the coded language and disinformation? What are the real rules that govern communication skills here? That impact interpersonal and people skills?
-- What's my best move at this point? Is a confrontation needed? If so, is now the best time?
-- Do I really need to be involved in this? Or am I being drawn into someone else's problem?
-- Who are the other people involved in this situation (or "game"), and what are they really after? What is "success" to them, and how does that accord with or differ from my definition of success in this instance, as well as in overall career success?
-- What should I consider before taking action? Am I thinking enough steps ahead?
-- Are there broader opportunities hidden within this situation?
-- What can I learn from this situation? How should I handle a similar case when it comes again?
-- What's my best move, here and now, toward accomplishing my overall objective? Toward achieving my own career success?

To order  via Amazon. 

My SELLING 101: Essential Selling Skills for Entrepreneurs, Consultants, Free Agents now on Amazon Prime

Amazon has recently upgraded its Kindle software, so what appears on the Kindle comes out  closer to the visual quality and layout of the printed version.

I took advantage of that opportunity, and cleaned up the electronic typography  of SELLING 101, and at the same time entered it in the Amazon Prime program.  Here's the link:  Selling 101: Essential Selling Skills for Entrepreneurs, Consultants, Free Agents

What Amazon Prime means to you as a reader is that you can borrow it free, from Amazon, for however long you want.  As I understand it, if you're  a Prime member, and own any version of Kindle, you can borrow up to 12 books each year.  Only catch, only one book at a time.

And if you borrow a book and find it so indispensable that you just gotta have it? Just "return" it, virtually, buy it, and borrow another.

If just want to buy Selling 101 in e-format, not borrow it, same link gets you there.

New business start-up: "A Start-Up That Automates the Process of Starting Up," says article in NY Times

As I mentioned here recently, this  Selling Face to Face site is aimed at new business start-ups as much as at the sales training needs of experienced sales teams.

In that regard--- new business start-ups and how-to --- here's an interesting link to an article on
 Wicked Start   a free site designed by an experienced entrepreneur and management consultant. I haven't personally checked it out yet, just read the article  and looked at the Wicked Start website, but it seems definitely worth your taking a look.

As I understand, when you sign up you get access to a series of how-to checklists and templates to hold your hand through each of the major steps of a new business start-up from scratch.

It's free, so I'm not at all clear on the business model.

Here's the article I read, which came to me via the "Small Business from the New York Times" weekly e-mailing.

A Start-Up That Automates the Process of Starting Up -- NYTimes article

"Pulling off the ultimate career makeover" -- Fortune

When I was starting-up on this blog, I expected the main readership would be among new business start-ups, consultants, new free-lancers, people new to selling and sales.  Why? Mainly because the economy was begining to slide down, and a lot of people were going off on their own--- some as involuntary entrepreneurs, others as self- reinventors in advance of getting laid off.

It hasn't been that way, so far as I can tell: most of the readership seems to be professional sales people, folks who already know their way around a sales call, and were looking for fresh ideas.

Yes, that kind of info is here, but also here are a lot of the basics of getting started in sales, or starting up a new venture, finding prospects, and making a convincing case. There are also a lot of free sales training articles drawn from books (Selling 101, How to Sell Face-to-Face Survival Guide, Sales Training Tutorials, and Sales Presentations and Demonstrations.

In any case, for the "reinventors" out there, let me recommend the article, "pulling off the ultimate career makeover" in Fortune, issue of July 4, 2011.   Case studies include,

• An owner of franchises who sold them off and is setting up his own franchise operation, Yogurt Mountain. (Full disclosure: I have not, repeat not, received any free samples!)
• A sales executive formerly with the likes of Intel, Dell, and NetApp who, after being down-sized, first became a free-agent, then was hired as director of marketing of a social media operation.
• A lawyer, downsized after the media burst bubble burst in 2000, who turned around to become a contractor with the same firm. That led to a further reinvention as she set up what's best described as a legal firm of part-time lawyer contractors, many of them women juggling work and school-age kids.
  
• A director of strategic development and communicaitons who got cut when that company was acquired. He then did what any good consultant and strategist does, develop his "brand" after an analysis (which makes very good reading) of his passions and skills.  Now he's consulting full-time.
• Another lawyer who left the practice (good for him!) to become an author of mystery novels. (First reinvention.) Then when the market for paper books started sliding, he moved into the e-book field and took on self-publishing his backlist for Kindle and the like. (Second reinvention.)    By the way, as a "reformed" lawyer myself, I can't resist giving a plug to another lawyer who found "real work," hence this: his name is Paul Levine and you can read more about his mysteries at  Website of Paul Levine 
  

Fortune article: Pulling off the ultimate career makeover, by Douglas Alden Warshaw

 

 

 

 

Just what IS a buying signal?

A buying signal may come as any of a variety of  types of often subtle cues that the mood has shifted, and the other person is now ready to agree . . . or at least to be open to what you propose.

 

Sales tip: tap the power of silence

Sales tip: silence is one of the essential communication skills . . . and a powerful selling skill, as well.

Think of the questions you ask in a sales call as seeds. It's crucial to give the questions time to grow, and the power of silence gives that time. After you ask, be silent, even if it means letting the silence hang in the air. That gives the prospect time to think and respond.

Ask a question, then let it "grow" in the silence and listen closely to the response. In some cases, you'll need to rephrase the question so it's clearer, or to focus the Decision Maker's response so it's more on target.

But those are exceptions. As a rule, once you've asked the question, bite your tongue and let the prospect talk. Listening well is at least as important a communication skill as speaking confidently.

There are other good reasons to ask fewer questions and allow more silence: constant interruptions to ask new questions may irritate the prospect.

Besides, if you let the prospect go at her own pace, and in the general direction she thinks best, you may find other potential needs opening up in ways that you wouldn't have anticipated.

Above all, don't be so busy asking questions (and thinking of what your next questions will be) that you neglect to listen to the answers you do get.  That's another benefit of the power of silence: silence gives you time not just to listen, but also time to think ahead.

Overcoming objections: why prospects DO NOT buy.

"OVERCOMING OBJECTIONS: WHY PROSPECTS DO NOT BUY" is  now  a short E-book,  available via Amazon. 

You can read it on a Kindle, or in various other E-reader formats, including your PC.  Amazon offfers free apps to enable you to do that.

Order e-edition of Overcoming objections: why prospects DO NOT buy

Prospecting for leads and other useful information via cold calling: essential info to be looking for

In sales skills terminology, "prospecting" often means looking for industrial parks and the like, then doing a quick sweep in order to rapidly scan and flush out potential prospects.

In those sweeps, you speak briefly with the receptionist or secretary to make a quick determination of whether it is worth calling back to see the Decision Maker.

Just what information you are looking for at this early stage of your search for viable leads will vary with your product and the market. The checklist below is a starting point; adapt it to your own uses.

Checklist: The Kinds of Information to be Looking for When Cold Calling

Cold calling: when you CAN use it as a way to make the sale

Cold calls as a sales method

Good sales can flow from cold calls. While cold-calling should NOT be your primary way of approaching new prospects, there will be times when it is appropriate as a selling tool.

For example, if you have open time between scheduled calls, consider using it to "smoke-stack" for other leads. (The term arose when sales people would drive around looking for factory smoke-stacks to guide them to industrial prospects. Now most smoke-stacking is done by scanning the list of tenants at the elevators of office towers and entrances to commercial parks.)

You may spot a possible prospect, and knock on the door in the hope

Sales prospecting by phone: when and how to back off if you find this prospect is not viable

Prospecting, as we use the word in sales, is looking for potential buyers. But sales prospecting is also about screening out those who will not likely be viable prospects, at least not this time 'round.

Keep in mind those prospectors out west in the Great Gold Rush of '49. They spent months and years