For a chance to win a FREE bottle of champagne in our monthly competition Click here to email us your best sales idea/tip. Remember to include how you have applied this idea, and the results it’s had for the best chance of winning! The month’s winning idea gets posted right here on this page in our sales community.
October’s winning idea came from Ben Davies of OnGuard.
My ‘sales tip’ is more of a ‘lifestyle’ than a ‘tip’ but it works for me…it is all mostly common sense but it doesn’t seem to be common practice with other sales people I meet. In my previous role, where I worked for 3 years, I made 80 calls per day, every day. Here is what I have learnt through experience, reading tons of sales books and asking for advice from sales guys I respect so far… First of all I am always sure my persistence will pay off, and then it always does. I am overly enthusiastic, I smile when I am on the phone, I show that I am genuinely interested in helping the prospect and I actually am, I do my research before I call, and I always call with two dates in mind, two weeks ahead, for the first meeting. I work my ratios of first calls to decision maker calls, decision maker calls to meetings, meetings to second meetings, and so on… I read a book called ‘So What’ by Mark Magnacca and made sure I developed my pitch around benefit statements and practiced it a lot!
I try to dress for success, shaved, clean shoes, tie, not be over eager on aftershave or accessories, a nice watch seems to do fine and even gets conversation started sometimes! When I have a meeting I always imagine the end goal and then everything I do is to get the prospect to that point in as short a time as possible. Basically right from the first meeting, I have a plan for the second through to close. I go into every meeting with 3 questions written down (in case of uncomfortable silences) and two dates for my next meeting written down on my pad. At the end of the first meeting I ask about the prospects social life….what have they got planned for the weekend? What did they do on the weekend? I hope to hear golf, sailing, rugby, etc any sport of any kind as it gives me instant rapport. I work with my colleagues to sell as a team.
This is hard to explain but I need to have a story with a benefit statement, i.e. ‘we work with ABC Company and we saved them X over Y days’ for each industry sector I approach, and then I need to share those stories with my team so that I have a different story to tell dependant on the customer I am calling, this is also very helpful during meetings, I have found that being able to give third party validation is key. As I sell credit management software my first meetings seems to be more about listening and I tell my clients that I am there to listen and understand and then I will come back for a second meeting to present my plan. I do this at the start of the meeting and before my prospect knows it they have agreed that we are moving forward to the next stage with the product I am selling…… Hope this helps…please feel free to share the other tips as I am always trying to grow, learn and try new ideas.
Ben Davies, OnGuard