Professional Sales Training on Techniques to Build an Introduction in 3 Easy Stages

Step 1: Introduce you and your business or product

Start with your name and hand the prospect your business card. A good sales technique at this stage is to add something about you that could be of benefit to the customer. Don't just call yourself a sales representative as that offers no benefit to the buyer and may make them defensive. You want something about you that supports your objective of closing a sale. This could be your position in the company, especially if it is your own small business. Maybe you have a technical qualification or a title that will give the customer confidence in you and what you present to them. This can be a really effective selling technique if you use an advisory sales style or sell a technical product.

Now follow your name with either your company or product details. This is a good professional sales training technique. You are looking to give the buyer points of reference. This is how we navigate through new situations. We look for information we are familiar with. So give your customer clear words and phrases that allow them to quickly find something similar to what you do in their memory and experiences. Many sales people make a common mistake here and use technical jargon. The best sales techniques to use here are to keep it simple and let the buyer find familiar territory. If the buyer will recognise your company name and know instantly what you supply, then use it. If your products, or types of products, will be more familiar then include them. If the buyer will not have heard of either then relate your products to something they will know, such as what your product will replace, or the main competitor.  

Step 2: Your main selling point

Step 2 of this professional sales training on building a sales introduction is to start grabbing the buyer's attention. In step 1 you have used just a few quick lines to introduce you and your company or product. Now tell them what your main sales point is. In years gone by this used to be called your unique selling point, or USP. Nowadays it is very unlikely you will have a unique selling point because as soon as a company gets one it is soon copied by the competition.

Your main selling point can be related to your company's image. It could be the high quality service you offer, your history in the market, specific benefits you offer to customers, or many others. This can often be a sales technique where many small business sales people have an advantage over the large corporations. They can have a more unique main selling point that differentiates them from the rest. A good professional sales training tip is to start thinking about your company's sales angle. Are you priced focus and offer the cheapest prices. Do you have excellent customer service, or are your products unique in some way. Find that sales angle and add it into your sales introduction stage of your sales process.

Step 3: The reason you are there

Step 3 is the most important line of your sale. It's the reason why you are there, and the reason why the customer should carry on listening to you. This is a professional sales training must do action. If you want to be successful in sales you must become fully competent at using this sales technique. Start by putting yourself in the buyer's position and think what you would want to hear that would grab your attention and retain your interest. Start with the phrase, I'm here today because, and see what naturally follows. The reason you are there must be a big possible benefit for the customer. You are not there to see if you can sell them something. Be creative, think in terms of benefits, and write a list of possible gains the customer could get from listening to what you have to say. Here are some examples I have recently used while coaching field sales people:

I've asked to meet with you today because: We are specialist in supplying your industry. We have improved productivity for many companies like yours. I have a new product to show you that will... Our products can give you... I recently met with... and they said you might benefit from...

That's just a few ideas to get you started. Now write your own list and make it specific to your company and your products. Build up the possible benefits for your customers, and make yourself stand out from the rest. Use this professional sales training and you can quickly build an effective sales introduction stage for your sales.

I'm Stephen Craine, a working sales manager and trainer. The professional sales training above comes from the training and coaching I give to my working sales teams. We rely on these sales techniques to achieve targets and keep our jobs. This is not classroom training that only works in role play situations, this is real sales training developed in live sales situations with real customers. You can see more free sales training on building a stunning sales introduction, and free sales training on the other stages of the sale, on my website at http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com/sales-techniques.html

The website is packed with free sales training, sales tips, and if you really want to know how to increase sales there are workbook training courses you can download and start using today. To visit the site and click around the pages, open http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com and get real sales training proven by working sales professionals.

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Increase Sales by Leveraging Down Economic Times to Build Your Business Results

Are you thinking that the economy is terrible and sales are going to the dogs? Guess what? Many of your competitors are thinking this exact thought or something very similar. Did you know that down times are the best time to increase sales not to mention to improve your own sales skills.

Of course, by taking this attitude means that you will need a plan of action by knowing your existing sales statistics. Small Business Sales Coaching Tip: : Do not confuse motion with progress and activity with results as a close friend of mine has often stated.

What are you sales numbers or sales stats?
Do you know how many dial ups you need before you can reach someone?
Do you know how many people you reach to secure an appointment?
Do you know how many appointments turn into requests for presentations?
Do you know how many presentations actually convert into earned business?
Do you know the sales value of your customers?
Do you know your average sale?
Do you know how much time was required to earn the sale?

Small Business Sales Coaching Tip: If you answered No to any of these questions, you need to reread the previous coaching tip. Also, it helps to calculate your numbers based on 100 call ups or contacts.

Why so many professional sales people give up during down economic times is that they do not know their sales numbers. This ignorance is a killer and probably stops most sales professionals from reaching their goals to increase sales. Small Business Sales Coaching Tip: Knowing your numbers is part of your sales skills.

There is an old adage if "you cannot measure it you cannot manage it." When you consistently measure your actions, you can track your results.

For example, I know that every time I speak, I secure one client within 6 months. The average value of the client ranges depending upon the needs of the client. However, if I want to increase sales, then I need to increase speaking engagements.

Years ago, I constructed a simple business model, MSP, that helps to keep my focus on my sales numbers and consequently sales skills. For example, a speaking engagement is a Marketing activity. This specific action for me generates one Sale at XX Dollars. If I want to increase my income (Profits), then I must increase the number of speaking engagements. When you understand and more importantly use your sales statistics, you will not only increase skills, but probably improve your own sales skills.

Take this free sales skills assessment to help you increase sales.

Is your business facing inconsistent or insufficient cash flow, lackluster sales to poor productivity? Maybe some exercise at the sales coaching training gym will get you to where you want to go?

Leanne Hoagland-Smith, Chicago Sales Coach, helps small business owners to C Level executives from Chicago to Indianapolis to worldwide who are truly tired of struggling to unlock the sales and business results that they want. Call 219.759.5601 to schedule a free business coaching training or sales coaching strategy session to begin to quickly unlock tomorrow's solutions today.

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Why Build a Qualified Sales Pipeline

If your management asks you to check your sales pipeline that means you need to pay attention to the leads you are generating and how qualified they are. Your sales numbers will dip if the sales pipe line is not steady and strong enough to help you reach your sales targets. If you are not generating enough qualified leads and qualifying prospects how can you have sales? You will be advised to build a qualified sales pipe line to be effective in selling.

Each sale starts with a lead: a name, a phone number, an email address, a referral, or the person that just walks in to your office or store. The next step is qualifying the leads. To determine whether the customer has the need and capacity to buy your product or service. For instance, a growing small business owner may have the need of a few personal computers in the office to augment increasing business activity. But does your brand of computers meet his business needs? If yes, how many can they afford to buy at this stage and how many more in the near future?

The next steps are setting appointments with the prospects and giving a demonstration of your product or service. This could lead to a sale and taken all together this is known as the sales process. The first two activities: generating leads and prospecting are known as creating a sales pipe line.

Archery and Sales

The analogy of a sprinkler system best applies to a sales pipe line. When a garden needs to be watered with a sprinkler system there is an elaborate plan. The pipes carrying water are arranged in such a manner that the water flow is steady to all the sprinklers. The game of archery is the perfect analogy for sales. An archer is given many arrows to hit the target. With the given number of arrows they have to maximize their score. The closer their arrows hit the bull's eye, the more points they receive. Similarly, a sales person creates leads, qualifies them as prospects, and tries selling to them. Just as an archer may not hit the bull's eye every time they take aim, sales person may not be successful in selling with each call or each prospect. As an archer tries with more than one arrow to hit the target, the sales person also tries to make a sale with more than one prospect. In fact the game of archery requires the archer to carry all the arrows with them. Sales people keep trying with many prospects. And prospects come from leads.

Ten or more leads may provide the sales person with one good prospect. And one in ten such prospects may actually buy. This is the basic premise of a sales pipe line.

Steady Sales Pipe Line

Though the archer gets many arrows to use, still they are fixed in number. They have to utilize their skills in notching up the best score by hitting the bull's eye repeatedly at a given point in time. Likewise, a sales person generates a fixed number of leads during a sales day. For example, a computer sales person targeting a high rise building in Manhattan housing 50 offices can have 50-100 leads at the maximum (assuming that in some offices they may get the chance to sell to individual employees in addition to catering to the official requirements of the firms) from that building. Their sales would depend on how they manage the 50-100 leads.

There are no infinite number of leads and prospects. Every market segmented on the basis of location, income, and preferences of the consumers are limited in size. Wisdom lies in utilizing the leads and prospects properly and converting them in to sales. Careless exhaustion of the list of leads will only result in spoiling the chances of selling. Each lead has to be dealt with carefully. Each prospect has to be worked on attentively.

While taking each lead and prospect with due attention and sincerity a good performer in sales builds a steady pipe line of leads and prospects. Once a list of leads is exhausted fresh leads will be needed. High performers in sales always have a steady sales pipe line by renewing it with newer leads and prospects. They also include past and current customers in this sales pipe line. Fresh requirements from existing customers are no less important to sales than a new hot prospect.

With the possibility of rejections the only way a sales person can achieve their sales quota is to generate the maximum number of leads and qualify the maximum number of prospects out of them and thereby increase the chances of selling. The generation of qualified leads and prospects should be steady and voluminous. And each lead and prospect should be worked on diligently so that not a single one is wasted. This is the essence of a qualified sales pipe line which holds the key to maximizing sales.

Doug Dvorak is the CEO of DMG Inc., a worldwide organization that assists clients with productivity training, corporate humor and workshops, as well as other aspects of sales and marketing management. Mr. Dvorak's clients are characterized as Fortune 1000 companies, small to medium businesses, civic organizations and service businesses. Mr. Dvorak has earned an international reputation for his powerful educational methods and motivational techniques, as well as his experience in all levels of business, corporate education and success training. http://www.dougdvorak.com

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How to Motivate Your Sales Team So They STAY Motivated: Build a Foundation of Motivation

Do you feel that your sales team needs constant motivation? Do you feel you continuously have to pump-them-up just to meet minimum sales quotas? Of course, there is always a need for continuous positive and constructive input from sales management. However, your sales force should never become completely dependent on motivational food alone. When the team becomes hooked on the regular and excepted motivational high, they become like addicts who, without that fix, slip into the sales abyss.

If you feel sales production rises and falls according to the amount of handholding or cheerleading time the sales team receives, then you need to build your team on a motivational foundation rather than motivational rhetoric.

My team is already motivated

Some may be thinking, "My team seems to be as motivated as they can be and not always when I am around to pump them jump." Many sales managers and directors believe that since the team seems to be moving right along; sales are ok, production is par-for-the-course and no one is complaining, then the team must be on track. Since you have received no criticism and no one has quit this week, then everything must be OK---right? The biggest sign of an under-motivated team is no sign at all. That is when you get a quiet, steady flow of the "Just enough to get by," mentality and sales people who meander in a maze of mediocrity. Build on a foundation of motivation and reach new levels of production.

Silent Motivation

Unfortunately today, many sales managers believe that motivating a team means to engage the impressionable, unsuspecting souls in some ear-shattering, tambourine banging, adrenaline pumping rah-rah, you-can-do-it pep rally for an hour or two. While others feel that motivating is to utter the right words at the right time, lifting someone's spirits after she has lost a big sale. Or, to deliver a speech at the sales meeting to fire the team up so they will believe they can do a little better this quarter than the last.

While those thoughts have their merit, they are temporary and superficial. However, there are real, tangible, technical and structural measures that you and your company can take to help sales people develop true enthusiasm in their hearts, and a sense of self-motivation that will inspire them to greatness. True motivation comes from within.

Below are three motivational pillars to build a foundation for your sales force.

Concentrate on these three concepts, and the rest of your problems will take care of themselves! Be forwarded however, that these tips are probably not what you were expecting and some people are not going to take this very well. However, like most good medicine, it may taste bad going down, but it is what you really need.

Pillar #1: Show Your Sales Team That the Company Cares

Contrary to popular belief, the primary motivating factor for sales people is NOT the money. It is true that most sales people originally join the organization they work with primarily due to the lure of money. However, the primary reason they stay with the firm is that they feel the company cares about them-personally. Prove to your sales team that you care about them: their personal welfare, their success. Let them know that you put their success before yours and the company's, and they will stay motivated from the inside.

Sales People Come First

Frankly, as a sales manager, putting the sales person first, should be your personal philosophy anyway. If they fail, you and the company fail. Their success does come before yours. Often however, sales people feel as though the company puts everything and everybody before them. Many sales people feel the firm only cares about the money, and that they, as individuals, are as expendable as any tool or pawn. When people reach this low self-worth mindset, no amount of money, cheering or anything else will motivate them to reach high levels of success. To build on a foundation of motivation, first you must show sales people that the company cares, and note, I said SHOW them not TELL them.

How to SHOW Your Firm Cares

So, how do you show, demonstrate or otherwise prove that the company cares for the sales person? In fact, how do you know if you are doing that now or not? Look at some of your organization's policies and begin with your pay schedule. I am not referring to the amount you pay your sales people, nor the commission structure. The question is WHEN do you pay your sales people?

In many an organizations, the sales person, who is responsible for generating the money in the first place, receives his or her pay (the commissionable portion) last. If your firm pays the receptionist, the secretaries, the cleaning people, the VPs, you, the CEO, CFO, CIO, and everyone else first, then pays the sales person out of the leftovers, you are not putting the sales person first. Now of course, one could argue that technically, everyone is involved in the sale, not just the sales person, and that is true. There is the CIO and the website that attracted the lead, the marketing crew that created the sales collateral, the receptionist who answered the call, shipping who got out the literature on time, etc. However, if that sales person does not go out and close the sale, the fact is, none of those people ever get paid. Look at your pay schedule, your charge-back rules, your benefits plan, the sales break room, your intranet. Look deep and be honest. Are you putting the sales team first?

Pillar #2: Treat Sales People like the Executives They Are.

Treat your sales team as if they are true executives; directors or CEOs and give them the support they need to perform as such. Create a sales support system that allows sales people to do what they need to do: SELL.

In an effort to save money, too many organizations pile a bunch of petty, non-essential, non-sales tasks on the sales team. Someone figures that the organization can save $25,000 by NOT hiring an administrative person to handle some paperwork. Instead, "Let's just have the sales people do it." Well, you might save the $25,000 salary of the admin person, but you will lose a million dollars in the process. What is obvious and quantifiable is the time your sales people must spend doing things other than selling. What is much harder to calculate is the enormous loss you suffer due to the damage to the sales person's psyche. How can you convince someone that they can go out and secure a seven-figure deal, when you have them doing four-figure work all day? Give your sales team a support system and staff so they can spend 90% to 95% of their time on income producing activities, and they will feel like executives and you will see motivation from within.

Pillar #3: Get Sales People Involved in Company Decisions

One of the main reasons people become sales professionals is because they want to be in control of their destiny. Most sales people will tell you that feeling in charge of their income and controlling their fate is a driving force in their career decision.

When a sales person feels that the company will do whatever they want, whenever they want, it's all over. With total disregard for the sales person, the company makes blatant decisions that significantly and often adversely affect the sales person's life and family. The sales person feels like they no longer control their own fate when they have no say in decisions. Also, keep in mind that every sales person believes they know more about the industry and what is going on in the field than anyone at the office or corporate. Whether that is true or not, the fact is the sales person's primary security of being in charge of his or her fate is lost.

Before any major or reasonably significant decision, meet with the sales team, individually. Let each know that their opinions and ideas count. This does not mean that you have to agree or follow their suggestions. In fact, the sales team will be grateful no matter what happens because they feel involved.

Build a foundation of motivation for your sales team:

Show the sales team the company cares about them
Treat the sales team like the executives they are
Involve the sales team in company decisions

Once you establish a motivational foundation, you will significantly decrease turnover, increase sales and maximize productivity. Then and only then will those rah, rah, you-can-do-it pep rallies begin to make sense, dollars and sense!

John Landrine http://www.writebusinesssolution.com is a former CEO/GM with 25 years real world experience who provides article, book and e-Book writing and ghostwriting with strong SEO, keyword dense content. John also produces high quality self-help and motivational writing and training. He can create training manuals for entry-level to advanced direct sales and telephone sales training, motivation and consultation. In addition, John can supply professional sales presentations, sales manuals and collateral, sales and marketing strategy, planning and design and database/CRM training.

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