Sales Presentation Training to Learn Sales Skills That Will Stop You Irritating Your Customers

This sales presentation training will tell you if you, or your sales team, are irritating your customers. Many sales people don't even know they are doing it. They could be losing sales and missing out on rewards, and be unaware of why. Only good sales training techniques will make them aware of their habit and get them to stop. They can then learn sales skills that will eliminate the problem for good, and increase the effectiveness of communication with buyers. So what's this habit that many sales people have but don't know they are doing it?

Erm, you know, obviously, you don't want to irritate the buyer

The next time you hear someone giving a presentation, on anything not just a sales presentation, count how often they repeat an irritator. Irritators are those words or phrases that people have a habit of repeating, and that add nothing to the meaning or the communication of the message. Typical irritators include: You know, obviously, yeah, basically, at the end of the day, and the most common irritator of all; Errmm. When people have the irritator habit they only use one. It's very rare to hear a mixture of different words or phrases repeated.

Errmm or err, tend to be used between sentences. To the listener it sounds like the presenter is thinking of what to say and just making a noise to fill the gap. Basically and obviously usually come at the start of a new topic in the sales presentation as a way of introducing the sentence. Listen to sports celebrities and spot the irritators. U.K. soccer players and managers can often be heard repeating; you know, at the end of the day, and over the moon, when giving interviews. On a recent sales presentation training course I had a delegate that constantly used the irritator; my friend, when showing features and benefits to a customer. Like most people he didn't realise he was doing it.

Sales presentation training on stopping irritators

The first sales training technique to stop people using irritators is to make them aware they are adding them to their presentation. You can do this in several ways. If you have visual or audio recording facilities, ask them to do a sales presentation and record it. Then play it back to them and ask them what they think. Most sales people will watch the replay and not pick up on the irritator habit. Once you point it out to them a look of revelation comes over their face. They realise they have been doing this for years and never noticed. For many just the action of pointing out the habit is enough to stop it happening. If they include it again, once they are aware of it, they can start to irritate themselves.

A good sales training technique to include in your sales training courses is to get all the delegates counting the number of times their colleagues use an irritator for the rest of the training course. I ask people to count by holding up their fingers as they listen to other delegates presenting. This usually limits the inclusion of the irritator to one or two as the speaker is again made aware the habit has returned. You have to use some diplomacy and tact when making people aware of their speaking habits. They can take it personally and feel insulted or embarrassed. When giving sales presentation training make it light hearted and fun and tell them how you used to have the same problem.

Now add some more selling techniques

Using effective sales presentation training to eliminate irritators will improve the communication of the message and help keep the attention of the customer. When sellers learn sales skills the effects stack up on each other. Once the irritator habit has been stopped, you can start looking for more sales techniques to improve the sales presentation. As more selling techniques are learned and put into action the effects will compound and sales results, and rewards, will multiply.

I'm Stephen Craine and I earn my living by managing successful sales teams. The sales presentation training above comes from the training I give to my teams. My income, my job, and the success of my teams, rely on the results we achieve, so we only use what works. You can see more sales training on my website by opening http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com

If you like the training you've seen so far you can get a free sales training course and try it out for yourself. There's no catch, no registering or submitting your email address, just click on the link and it will take you to the page where you can open the training course. To see the course open http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com/free-sales-techniques.html You can use it, save it, and even pass it on to others. Try it out and let me know how you get on.

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Subliminal Messages in Sales Training Can Multiply the Power of Your Existing Sales Skills

Subliminal messages are a great sales training tool when used in addition to traditional and practical training techniques. With subliminal training you can effortlessly stimulate your mind and multiply the power of your sales techniques. Imagine putting on a set of headphones, listening to a CD or MP3 subliminal messaging track, and having your unconscious take in directly targeted subliminal messages. No reading through hundreds of pages of a sales training book, and no complicated selling techniques to remember. This is an effortless way to learn and make the best use of your time.

Subliminal messaging should not be used to completely replace effective practical sales training. You still need to learn, practice, and refine your sales skills. Subliminal training should be used as an additional tool and act as a catalyst to fire up your sales motivation and make deep seated changes to your attitude. These changes will give you a different viewpoint that stimulates your mind to take new actions and use your sales training in new ways. Many salespeople are doing the same old thing every day and getting the same old results every month. They have the basic sales skills but don't know what new actions to take to increase their results and earn more money. Subliminal sales training will give you a whole new attitude and create an unconscious resourceful state. 

I've used subliminal messages when coaching sales people that had problems in other areas of their life that were affecting their performance at work. I've seen subliminal training used to overcome obstacles such as lack of confidence, financial problems, and to make changes to personal appearance and physical well being. There are many things that can affect our results at work, such as fears, phobias, or irrational beliefs. Once these negatives have been overcome we can focus and use our resources to move forward and become successful in a sales role. Subliminal messages work in the same way as hypnosis.  They bypasses your conscious logical mind and act on your unconscious mind. This is why subliminal messaging is so effective at helping you change patterns of  behaviour. Your logical mind is a function you start to develop around the age of five or six. This is why you can suggest almost anything to a child and they will accept it as truth. When we are younger we are much more susceptible to suggestion and you don't need hypnosis or subliminal messaging to create self beliefs in a child.

When we are adults our logical mind does not let us accept all the information presented to us. By going around the conscious mind you can make major changes to your self beliefs, patterns of thinking, and physical behavior. These changes would be very difficult if using conscious learning techniques. By accessing your subconscious mind you can solve difficult problems or issues much more quickly and directly. Hypnosis gains access to your subconscious mind by sending you into a trance. And this is where the difference between subliminal messaging and hypnosis comes in. Subliminal messaging doesn't send you into a trance. You won't feel drowsy, or need to take a time out for an hour.  This means that you can use subliminal cds and mp3s while you work, study, or go about your daily activities. I've seen many top sales performers using subliminal training while at the gym. This is a great sales training technique because the exercise, and the surroundings, distracts your conscious mind and the subliminal messages go directly into your subconscious. It is also a great way to save time as you are getting physical training and mental sales training in the same space of time.

Having managed and trained sales people for many years it is my opinion that using subliminal messages has no negatives and a lot of potential positives. The worst that can happen is that the training has no effect. The potential positives are: increased sales results using an effortless sales training tool. You make changes that create a positive mental attitude, and you increase sales and earn more money,

I'm Stephen Craine, I'm a working sales manager and sales trainer. Subliminal messages are a sales training technique I have advised many people to use. When combined with practical sales skills training it is a powerful resource that takes very little time or effort, and can produce great results. Is also very effective in helping to overcome obstacles in all areas of your life and can help you create all round success and achievement. You can see more about subliminal sales training at Subliminal Messages for Sales Training As a working sales manager I look around the world for effective sales training techniques for my working sales teams, and I share the results on my website which you can visit at http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com

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Close More Sales by Using Sales Closing Skills to Get the Prospect to Buy Now

To close more sales you need to add just one important sales closing skill to your selling process. This selling technique is a final motivator that influences the buyer to take action now and agree to the sale. Use this sales skill and you will increase sales and earn more money.

Think of time when your sale followed a smooth process with no major sales objections that you couldn't answer. You gained agreement throughout the sales presentation and then added a nice closing question. But the buyer still didn't commit to buying from you now. They haven't said no, but they will not give you a yes now. They give you weak reasons why they want to think about it, or call you back. If you start pushing them for a decision now it could become confrontational and you may lose any chance of gaining the business in the future. So what went wrong, where was the mistake, and how do you avoid these vague objections to commitment in the future?

The answer is to include a reason for the buyer to take action in your sales presentation and motivate them to buy from you now. Often the only thing stopping the sale is getting the buyer to take one last step and say yes. The reason it's difficult is that often the buyer has no reason to buy now from you. Unless they have their own reasons for needing your product or services now, there is no urgency for them to sign on the dotted line. So you need to add a sales closing technique to give the buyer that one last push and see the benefits of buying now. You can also use any consequences of not buying now that are linked to your sales proposal. Negative consequences can be a much stronger motivation to take action than positive benefits.

Take some down time and write a list of all the possible reasons that you could give to a buyer that would motivate them to buy from you now. Include negative consequences of putting off the commitment to a sale and think how you can paint pictures of two future scenarios. One should be of the consequences if they don't buy and one of future benefits of taking that small step and making a decision to buy. The most common benefit used in all sales markets is price. It is also the most used negative consequence used to push buyers into buying. This is when there is a price offered but only if the prospect buys today. Many sales people, and marketing adverts, use a believable reason why the buyer will save money by signing on the dotted line now. Spare capacity on vehicles or workload, a bulk buy of limited stock, or an imminent change that will raise the price in the near future.

Your motivator to buy now doesn't have to be price. It can be any benefit you like, as long as it's a benefit for the buyer, not just you. The bigger the benefit the more it will motivate them to agree the sale. The motivator can be any consequence that the prospect may suffer if they don't sign today. The more believable you make your reasons for the buyer to take action the more effective they will be. Take some time to invest in yourself and add this final sales closing technique to your sales skills. You will close more sales, grow your business sales, and earn more money.

I'm Stephen Craine, I'm a working sales manager and sales trainer. Sales closing skills are a personal favorite of mine and I enjoy seeing the results of good sales closing skills training with my sales teams. You can see the course I use to help my teams close more sales at How to close a sale. I look around the world for effective sales training on all aspects of selling. I use the best techniques with my team and I to share the information on my website which you can visit at http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com.

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Critical Skills For Sales Leaders - Improving Performance by Sharpening Sales Skills

Corporate Executives are always looking for ways to boost revenue. That usually means turning up the heat on the sales team to produce better numbers. Research shows that increasing the pressure to perform on the sales team doesn't necessarily increase revenue. Pressure to perform might bring in a few short-term sales, but at the end of the day, customers don't respond well when they feel pressured into buying.

If you want your sales team to produce 20% more, the question you have to ask yourself is, are they 20% better? The best sales leaders don't only increase the pressure to perform on the sales team; they set about making the individual salesperson more effective.

Building the selling capability of your salespeople to sell and build relationships is a very effective tool for gaining competitive advantage. A well trained sales team will set you apart from most of your competitors simply because most sales organisations don't really invest the time, effort and resources required to effectively train their sales teams.

Most companies will invest some time and resources to train their salespeople on their particular products/services. However, salespeople that rely on their product/service's capabilities to win business will, more often than not, leave sales opportunities lying on the table.

Companies that only train their salespeople on their particular products/services leave sales opportunities lying on the table The right sales performance improvement training, that is, sales training specific to your industry and market segment, assists salespeople to master the skills, tools and techniques, concepts and behaviours and attitudes required to enhance their persuasiveness, influencing the buyer to make purchasing decisions in your favour.

An effective sales performance improvement training program can reduce sales personnel turnover as well as enabling salespeople to:

Understand their customer's underlying buying motivations and maximise their effectiveness with each customer encounter
Qualify and prioritise genuine selling opportunities more efficiently, improving the cost effectiveness of their selling activities
Deal more effectively with customer concerns and objections
Plan, use and manage their time more efficiently
Maintain a positive mental attitude when things are not going their way

Salespeople who lack confidence in their ability to market your company's products and services may experience frustration and low morale resulting in unmet sales quotas and revenue goals.

There is absolutely no substitute for a well-trained and highly motivated sales team!

Effective sales training benefits new and seasoned salespeople alike Training is critically important for both the new and seasoned salesperson alike. Experienced sales leaders place a high premium on both product and selling skills training and purposefully design their programs to be timely, relevant, and ongoing. An effective program should:

Train your sales team to engage new prospects and how to sell based on value without simply dropping your margin
Train them how to effectively listen and diagnose the needs of your customers
Train them how to effectively ask the "hard" questions up front and qualify sales opportunities so they won't waste time and resources with prospects who can't/won't buy
Engage multiple decision makers
Train the team what to do to ensure they bring home the sale
And much more.

There are no shortages of skills in which you could be training your sales team. Extensive research has identified the five Mission Critical Selling Skills that a sales professional must master to effectively move beyond their current limitations and to achieve your sales goals. When understood and mastered, these five skills will dramatically help you to increase your salespeople's productivity and get them to sell more, more often.

The 5 Mission Critical Skills of Outstanding Salespeople are:

Time and Self Management
Business Development
Diagnostic Acuity
Engage All Parties
Wrap Up

In his best selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen Covey makes a strong case for the fundamental importance of training, or as he calls it, "sharpening the saw". What often happens is that over time, the sales team becomes less productive because sales managers are reluctant to invest the time away from their busy schedules as well as the resources it takes to effectively train their salespeople. So train, train, train and continue to build the capability of your sales team. The result will show up in your "bottom line".

As one of Australia's leading authorities and coaches in sales management, Ian Segail has been involved in the coaching, training and development of sales managers and salespeople for over two decades.

Drawing on 25 years of experience in sales, sales management and leading an HR and training team, Ian brings a strong dose of fiscal reality and practicality to his works as a Sales Performance Coach.

Engaging directly with business owners and both novice and experienced sales managers alike, across a wide variety of industries and selling disciplines, the focus of Ian's work is to transform sales results for companies by improving sales management practices. Ian is the author of "Bulletproof Your Sales Team - The 5 Keys To Turbo - Boosting Your Sales Team's Results" and a number of business articles, business reports and white papers including "The fish stinks from the head!" and "Why Sales Training Doesn't Work."

Ian has an insatiable hunger for studying selling and people management and has passionately pursued answers to the question "How come some people can sell and most can't?"

He can be reached via http://www.iansegail.com

Read Ian's latest free report - "The 7 Most Costly Mistakes Sales Managers Make" here http://www.bulletproofyoursalesteam.com [http://bulletproofyoursalesteam.com/free-report/7costlymistakes.html]

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Seven Selling Fundamentals That Create an Effective Sales Skills Set

There has been a time that we have all experienced, although a rare situation, where you totally surrendered to the selling skills, selling fundamentals, sales technique and enthusiasm of a true 'Sales Professional." You were convinced that you were not going to purchase, you made that decision on the way to the presentation. You just wanted to hear about the product, not buy it. During the sales presentation you began to rethink your resolve and thought that 'maybe there is something to this'.

By the end of presentation, you did not change your mind, but you made a new decision based on new information, that made you want to buy what the salesman was selling. It was masterful: the timing of the questions, the tone of voice, the amazing ability to listen to what you were really asking for. It was like poetry in motion. It seemed like that salesperson could read your mind - and wow - even understood your pain. We are helpless and totally at the mercy of the Sales Professional's defined sales technique and sequence and the most fascinating of all, we loved every moment of it! The sales process was effortless, enjoyable and we even spent more money than what we had originally planned.

Why? Because the level of sales professionalism made us feel that our needs were safe we could trust this person. We felt comfortable enough to be confident that this process would solve our problem and add value to our lives. You see, we love working with true professionals. We love buying from them because they make our lives easier. Even better, we love referring them because they make us look good. We tell their stories at dinner and we go out of our way to ensure that our friends and family use this salesperson.

Effective professional selling fundamentals are what make this 'Sales Professional' that good. To be compassionate about being a sales person, with the drive to become this effective, you should become familiar with the '7 Pillars of a Sales Professional'. You will build a solid foundation for professional growth with these effective selling fundamentals.

The Selling Fundamentals

The fundamentals of selling consist of a basic foundational sales skill set. These include features and benefits, hot buttons, closing, silence after asking for the sale, the law of averages, the 80/20 rule, the six money making activities, open ended questions, etc. It is virtually impossible to build a career as a sales professional with out this foundation. Returning to the fundamentals is the secret to getting out of selling slump.

Art of The Sale

Anyone can draw a picture of an apple, but an artist draws an apple so beautifully that you might pay to put it on your wall. Learning the fundamentals is a great start and will make a dramatic impact on your sales career and pocket book. Now add learning how to deliver those skills in the same way an artist makes a painting and see your results soar. The art of selling consists of the proper use of voice inflection, body language, presentation skills, timing of questions, use of silence, pace of speech, etc. Research shows that tone of voice and body language make up 93% of the impact we make on other people. It's NOT what you say, it's HOW you say it that matters.

The Psychology of Selling

All sales people face the same psychological challenges of facing rejection, insecurity, fear, call reluctance and procrastination. These are not logical problems but rather problems of emotional self-regulation. Pure will power can sometimes be suffice but when we fail to overcome these challenges it may be due to taking a purely logical approach (better time management) to solve emotional problems (lack of impulse control). The psychology of selling consists of coping strategies and tools to deal with the realities of being a salesperson and creates the proper mindset and winning beliefs of a "Sales Professional." This is a complex topic, which is why it is so difficult to master.

Generating Results Through Selling

This pillar is exciting because it offers the opportunity of taking a giant leap forward in generating results if applied correctly. By using key scientific methodologies understanding the role the human brain plays in making buying decisions, the Sales Professional can experience vast improvements in closing ratios and speed the trust building process with clients and referral partners. Plus, the results can be achieved on purpose every time by following the scientific process/methodology, versus crossing fingers and hoping that the gift of gab or instinct will get you by.

The Sales Objective

Sales professionals know exactly what their job is on a daily basis. They know what their objective is on every sales call and are comfortable driving the sales process because they are crystal clear on what step is next. Their clients find it easy to do business with them because they reduce the number of decisions the client needs to make, allowing them to focus on their business. The foundation of a defined sales process is made up of what I call the Six Money Making Activities: Prospecting, Setting Appointments, Presenting Value, Closing, After Care/Follow-up, and Referrals.

The Advanced Sales Strategies

Advanced Selling Strategies consist of creating leverage and compression, preemptive selling to eliminate all objections before they come up, and consultative selling. In essence, here you begin moving from $25/hr. activity to $2,500/hr. activity.

Sales Management

Create a lean sales accountability system. All of the first six pillars are, fundamentally, subject matter and skills that can be learned and honed by committed sales professionals. However, the key to bringing them all together and turning them into more income, is a lean system. This ensures all the right things happen, at the right time, every time, with minimal wasted effort and maximum benefit both to the customer and to the sales professional. Such a system should keep track of every one of your contacts as well as your current lead pipeline and then drive each lead through the Defined Sales Process (pillar 5) that you created to take advantage of best practices.

Contact management and CRM systems can be helpful here, but a lean work flow automation solution is the way to get it done right. Such a system brings accountability to how you are handling the leads in your pipeline and whether you are moving them through your Defined Sales Process at a pace and conversion ratio that ensures that you are consistently making money. With competition at an all time high and unskilled salespeople lowering their prices on a daily basis, Sales Professionals need to streamline their business, focus on highest payoff activities and still deliver more value than competitors. By defining your sales process and accountability system, you then can focus on creating the life and business you've always dreamed of.

Becoming familiar with, and using these professional selling fundamentals, generate confidence and creates personal pride in being a professional salesperson. Continue to educate yourself in your chosen profession. Go back to why you sell what you sell, and be willing to act on the care that you feel for your clients. Care enough to be unreasonable when they don't understand the value of what you are offering and ask again for the sale. The world needs professional salespeople who understand and can effectively use these selling fundamentals to sell the right things to the right people at the right time.

Rene F. Rodriguez. Rene is a member of the LoanToolbox Speaking Faculty and Chief Executive Officer of Volentum, a Management Consulting Firm that specializes in sales system creation, sales training, & change management, with significant expertise in applying brain research to improving results. Rene is a partner of Cross Media, LLC.

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Critical Skills For Sales Leaders - The 6 Key Elements of Wrapping Up the Sales

If you asked the majority of salespeople what "Wrapping Up the Sale" means, they will in most cases say it means to "close the sale". "Wrapping up the Sale" starts at the beginning of the sales cycle - most sales are lost at "Hello!"

Reaching an agreement or "clinching the deal", tying up all the loose ends, and getting to a yes decision is a critical selling capability in the sales process. As a salesperson, even getting a "No" decision is preferable to holding onto a "China egg" (an egg that will never hatch!). However, there is more to "Wrapping Up the Sale" than meets the eye.

The 6 Key Elements of Wrapping up the Sale

Assuming you have laid a firm foundation to the sale by qualifying your prospect, effectively discovering and helping the customer to self-discover their needs, and clearly demonstrating how your product/service meets the needs of all parties concerned with the decision, then there are 6 key elements involved in "Wrapping Up the Sale". These include:

1. Resolving concerns

2. Negotiating

3. Reaching an agreement

4. Implementation Plan

5. Follow up

6. Repeat business & referral strategy

Resolving Concerns

Prospects and customers present concerns and objections when they don't understand or agree with the claims you are making about your products and services. Many salespeople disengage from selling at this point and concede the victory to the prospect. Top salespeople, on the other hand, consider concerns and objections raised by the customer merely as a roadblock and an opportunity to question the prospect further and gather more data about their issue, with a view to further educating them on how they can help to solve their problem or dilemma.

Some concerns and objections may simply be intended to disarm you. However, if you panic in response to a concern that is a sincere obstacle, you may lose the prospect's confidence. The key is to:

First, concentrate on identifying the foundation of the prospect's or customer's concern. Is it a fear of buying something new? A pricing issue? A lack of technical knowledge? A lack of credibility or capability?

Second, because many customer concerns and objections are either covert or unspoken, or based on unclear requirements, further probing can reveal what you need to learn to satisfy their needs and wants. Objections are simply data requests - neither good, nor bad!

Third, when you allow the prospect to express the negative and unfavourable aspects of your offer, it brings the issues out into the open and allows you the opportunity understand the customer's uncertainty and provide the pertinent information to resolve it.

To help resolve issues, a great strategy is to include the customer in the solution process, as they're likely to prefer a solution in which they were involved. When you stop trying to overcome objections and instead work and partner with your prospect as a consultant or coach, you will be far more effective (and less fearful).

Negotiating

How you handle your selling negotiations will determine two key things:

Whether you bring home the sale and
At what margin you bring home the sale

Many salespeople mistakenly believe that negotiating is something you do at or near the end of the sale. Being an effective sales negotiator begins with your first contact with your customer or prospect. Your prospect is evaluating you; your company and the value of your product/service, right from the moment you make first make contact. Your goal is to be able to clearly demonstrate the value your solution will provide and negotiate a profitable agreement with the customer. There are a number of factors from your customer's perspective that have an influence on the outcome of your sales negotiation:

What is the extent of your customer's problem or pain?
How much do they want your solution?
How do they perceive the value of your expertise?
How specialised or unique is your solution?
How urgent is their need?
How much would they be willing to pay to solve their problem?
How much do they perceive your solution as merely a commodity with you as just another vendor?
How large is their risk quotient?
How much do they like you and/or your company?
What is their timing need?
How much do they need to WIN?
Can they approve the sale?

When you consider the above points, you see that your role as a negotiator proceeds all the way through the sales process. Your role is to constantly probe and seek out information that may be invaluable later should issues like price, terms, quality, delivery, etc. have to be negotiated. Don't wait until you're in the last round to begin negotiating! Remember that as a sales negotiator it is very important for both you and the customer to come away feeling positive about the experience. At the end of the day, the chances are very good that you will want, or need, to do business together in the future.

Reaching an Agreement

Assuming you have laid the groundwork correctly by uncovering and answering the prospect's needs and concerns during the diagnosis and capability presentation phase of the sales process, then "closing the sale" becomes a mere formality as opposed to an overworked and stressful affair for both buyer and seller. If you are struggling to close sales, you will need to examine your current methods for discovering your customer's needs and requirements and the way you demonstrate the value of your product or service.

Before you attempt to "close" the sale ask yourself "Do I know..."

The problems the customer wishes to solve
The objectives/goals the customer wishes to achieve
Company issues that will be impacted by the decision
Personal issues that will be impacted by the decision
Financial issues - What funding is available to solve these issues? What or who else is being considered?
Time frames
Buying influences - Who makes and impacts on the decision?
Decision Criteria - How are decisions made? What are the Next Steps? and
Have I clearly demonstrated my and my company's capability to meet the needs and specifications of the customer?

Implementation Plan - Sell back from the date they need it

When salespeople and their managers get together and discuss where the "sale is at" within the sales cycle, they tend to focus on what the next steps are to bring the sale to a conclusion. Their focus is on the "close date". However, to the customer, what is most important is the implementation or use date. It is vitally important that you work with end users and buyers in a collaborative effort to identify and work towards their implementation date. In other words, find out when your customer needs the product or service you are selling and then work back from that date to make a case for why closing now is important.

"Salespeople sell forward - but buyers buy backward" Skip Miller

The professional salesperson:

Works with the customer's buying schedule, which begins from the implementation date.
Identifies the activities and actions the customer must accomplish prior to the implementation date.
Gains agreement from the customer on the actions they must accomplish prior to the implementation date.
Sets their selling plans, scheduling them to align with the steps in the customer's timeline, working backwards from the date of implementation.
Uses the implementation date as a means of accessing senior managers and users (to clearly understand their implementation and other core issues).
Selling to the customer's implementation date allows you to accurately set your sales milestones and forecasts. It is also a great tool for bringing your proposals to life because it will include implementation considerations when many organisations only consider implementation after the purchase

Follow Up

Much of your success in selling can be attributed to what you do after you've made the sales call or the sale. Constant and persistent follow up is the key.

We work and live at a very hectic pace and the prospect or customer who hasn't called you back might well be interested in your product/service, but they just haven't gotten back to you yet. There is a great quote from Patricia Fripp, which says, "It is not your customer's responsibility to remember you, but your responsibility to ensure they never forget you."

The frequency and amount of follow up required is very dependent on the complexity of what you sell and the lifetime value of a customer in your industry. Research demonstrates that most potential customers or prospects won't buy the first time they meet with you. On average, they have to encounter a marketing or sales message on at least 5-7 occasions before making a purchasing decision. This makes follow-up an essential ingredient in the selling process.

Mark Victor Hansen said, "Don't think it, ink it". When you rely on your memory you are very likely to forget. Imagine for a minute that your brain was like a PC. What happens if you open too many windows on your PC? Eventually the system gets clogged and clunky and in some cases will just freeze! Something as critical to your sales success as follow up, should not be left to your memory; it simply doesn't work. The best and most effective sales and business people have developed their own follow up system to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.

Follow-up isn't just about selling; it's about developing relationships.

Efficient follow-up demonstrates that both you and your company have your acts together and really care about ensuring customer satisfaction. However, a large percentage of salespeople don't conduct sales follow-up. Afraid of what they might hear, they avoid the follow-up, often blaming their busy schedules for not getting to it.

During follow-up, it's important to ask open-ended questions and then listen. Asking open-ended questions gives you an opportunity to gather more information from the prospect to pinpoint his or her needs accurately. Ask questions that begin with; who, what, when or how many. Ask something that will engage the prospect and get them talking. Ask "How did you feel about what was included?" as opposed to "Did you get my proposal?" Or "Did it all make sense?"

Your follow-up should convey:

I am still interested in you and your current concerns and opportunities.
I have something specific and valuable to contribute that would benefit you and or your company.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.

A consistent, well-executed follow-up system that keeps past clients and customers close is the most effective method of ensuring a steady flow of referrals and repeat business. Whatever follow-up system you adopt, make sure it's easy to use or implement. All too often, when the system becomes too complicated or unwieldy it gets sidelined and placed in the "too hard" basket. A good follow-up system is essential for building a healthy pipeline. Take the onus off yourself as far as trying to remember things and build a system to do it. If your company already has an effective CRM system, use it. If not, develop your own. It is up to you as a responsible salesperson to drive the sales process; therefore, you must drive your own follow-up system.

Repeat Business and Referral Strategy

Today the best salespeople, selling to both Business-to-Business and individuals, are constantly looking to increase their focus and effort on attracting repeat and referral business. Most astute business people understand that customer loyalty is the most vital aspect of their business because their organisations will live or die from repeat business. No company can exist without customer loyalty and retention.

Customer retention is well known to be much cheaper than customer acquisition. As a result, top salespeople place a big focus on their customer retention and customer relationship management strategies. They constantly look at improving the share of business coming from their existing customer base.

Information technology helps both companies and their salespeople to achieve customer loyalty by providing tools for analysing customer data. This assists with making informed decisions, as well as managing the customer relationships from the sales process all the way through to fulfilment and ongoing follow-up support.

A customer's repeat business is earned by the salesperson that continually provides their customers with what they want. Without effective strategies or processes for consistently offering customers more of what they want, repeat business is earned less frequently. When you communicate news and offers frequently to both past and present customers via telephone, mail or email, it generally increases the frequency of repurchase and is a powerful step salespeople must take to grow their business.

Effective referral strategies

Referral marketing is a vital part of your sales strategy that you cannot afford to do without. Every salesperson knows that one of the most effective ways to grow their business is through referrals, yet most salespeople do not have a means of generating an ongoing source of referrals.

Referrals work because they come from a trusted source that has already benefited from your product/service and yet has no vested interest in your business. The recommendation is independent and unsolicited. In sales terms this means a rapid conversion rate. The sales process is rapidly accelerated because the service or product has already been tried and tested by a reputable third party.

As a salesperson asking for, and getting, referrals is a powerful and low-cost way of building or developing your career. It is a simple approach, which feeds on its own success, but has to be built on secure foundations. Most salespeople don't get enough referrals because of one obstacle - they don't ask for them! An effective referral generation program will take care of this problem by creating a system that generates a steady stream of referrals from your network.

Referral marketing is simple: if you provide excellent products or services that people need, they tell others of their experience. Those others will trust you and want to do business with you because of the recommendation of the original, satisfied customer.

As one of Australia's leading authorities and coaches in sales management, Ian Segail has been involved in the coaching, training and development of sales managers and salespeople for over two decades.

Drawing on 25 years of experience in sales, sales management and leading an HR and training team, Ian brings a strong dose of fiscal reality and practicality to his works as a Sales Performance Coach.

Engaging directly with business owners and both novice and experienced sales managers alike, across a wide variety of industries and selling disciplines, the focus of Ian's work is to transform sales results for companies by improving sales management practices.

Ian is the author of "Bulletproof Your Sales Team The 5 Keys To Turbo Boosting Your Sales Team's Results" and a number of business articles, business reports and white papers including "The fish stinks from the head!" and "Why Sales Training Doesn't Work."

Ian has an insatiable hunger for studying selling and people management and has passionately pursued answers to the question "How come some people can sell and most can't?"

Download Ian's latest white paper on how to recession proof your sales team in the next 90 days from http://www.salestutor.com.au/Content_Common/pg-Salestutor-Tools-and-Resources-Articles-and-Whitepapers.seo

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Skills For Sales Leaders - Time and Self Management to Achieve Goals

As a professional salesperson, the first mission critical skill that must be mastered is the capability of effectively laying out a strategy to accomplish your set objectives and then managing both your time and sales territory in order to achieve that plan.

Time is a salesperson's most valuable asset. When you as a salesperson lose hours, it means lost sales and lost earnings. Planning, organising and allocating priority time to your selling activities is one of the greatest challenges you will face in this profession.

With increasing competition and changing economy, you are being forced to become more effective and productive than ever before. As a result, the more successful salespeople gain competitive edge by working smarter, becoming a master of planning and using their time in the most financially and energy efficient way possible.

Too many salespeople spend their time on non-sales activities.

They fill their days with putting out fires, administration and other non core-sales tasks and then end up wondering why their pipelines are so meagre and why they miss their sales budgets.
Without effective sales plans, many will waste "windshield time" as they crisscross and backtrack their sales territories.
They find themselves making frequent in-person calls on "low lifetime value accounts", and out of desperation will hit the road at the smallest expression of interest.

Poor sales planning and territory management ultimately will lead to missed opportunities, missed quotas and poor results.

 

Sales Planning  

Whilst there are many Sales Planning methodologies around, the object of the exercise must be on execution or the plans will simply not get done! Where the planning process is too complicated or it lacks simple and tactical objectives, implementation gets put into the "too hard basket".

Effective Sales Planning is the key to producing consistent and predictable sales numbers. More effective Sales Performance Plans will help you create, build and nurture a healthy sales pipeline. When you as a salesperson have a properly laid out, implementable and easy to manage Sales Performance Plan, it will ensure you meet your revenue goals and attain your sales quotas.

When you use the power of effective Sales Performance Planning you will also reduce those frustrating revenue peaks and valleys. As a professional salesperson you should not begin your selling year, month or week without a clearly specified Sales Performance Plan, which clearly outlines your key objectives, and action plans required.

With a Performance Plan in hand, salespeople must be able to manage their time and prioritize their activities for maximum impact.

Managing Your Time

Many salespeople experience the same problems. They feel overworked, disorganised and stressed out, with no control of their lives. Yet there are others who have somehow found "a better way!" The great news is that so can you. Time Management and planning is a skill that with time, effort and coaching can be mastered.

You need to truly understand that there are two simple, yet tough rules to dealing with time management and planning.

You can't manage time, you can only manage yourself
Focus and concentrate on results, not on being busy

Many salespeople waste their days in frantic activity achieving very little because they are simply not focused on the right things. The highest achievers, both in sales and other walks of life from business to sport to entertainment and public service, all have developed the skill and capability of focusing on and doing what must be done!

An effective sales plan will help you achieve the focus you require to achieve your sales goals. Ask your sales manager to put you with someone who can model "best practice" time and territory management. Alternatively decide today, decide right now, to become an expert planner and time manager. Go out and buy the top five recommended books on the subject, listen to Time Planning CD's in your car and attend a few time planning seminars. Google "time management", sales planning and read, learn and apply. Remember like any skill, goal setting, time management, planning and territory management can all be learned - with commitment, time and effort.

As one of Australia's leading authorities and coaches in sales management, Ian Segail has been involved in the coaching, training and development of sales managers and salespeople for over two decades.

Drawing on 25 years of experience in sales, sales management and leading an HR and training team, Ian brings a strong dose of fiscal reality and practicality to his works as a Sales Performance Coach.

Engaging directly with business owners and both novice and experienced sales managers alike, across a wide variety of industries and selling disciplines, the focus of Ian's work is to transform sales results for companies by improving sales management practices.

Ian is the author of "Bulletproof Your Sales Team - The 5 Keys To Turbo-Boosting Your Sales Team's Results" and a number of business articles, business reports and white papers including "The fish stinks from the head!" and "Why Sales Training Doesn't Work."

Ian has an insatiable hunger for studying selling and people management and has passionately pursued answers to the question "How come some people can sell and most can't?"

Download Ian's latest white paper on how to recession proof your sales team in the next 90 days from http://www.salestutor.com.au/Content_Common/pg-Salestutor-Tools-and-Resources-Articles-and-Whitepapers.seo

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Sales Training is Much More About Great Attitudes Than Superior Sales Skills

Have you ever wondered why some of the best salespersons are not the most knowledge sales professionals respective to their sales skills? Possibly, he or she cannot tell you how to:

Fact finding
Turn stalls into objections
Deliver excellent presentations
Close (I prefer to say earn) the sale
Explain their overall selling process

Yet, month after month, these folks continue to meet or exceed their sales goals. And, you as the sales trainer, the human resource person or the CEO continue to shake your head as to the reason why. Why do some excellent sales team members continue to perform while having sales skills that are minimal to average at best? And the better question is how can you replicate the success of these anomalies?

Possibly, these statistics from a national sales association may help answer that question"

48% of all leads are not followed up
10% of all professionals make more than 3 contacts
80% of all earned commitments are made between the 5th and 12th contact

Looking at these statistics, the answer is truly not found within knowledge or skills because most professionals know that they need to follow-up and to keep calling. The answer is really about great selling attitudes and habits.

Recently when speaking to a group of business people including selling professionals small business owners and C-Level executives, all said that they wanted to increase sales. Yet, when I asked if they had followed up on all leads, no one could respond positively. Did these individuals know that they need to do the follow up? Of course, they did. So why did they not follow-up? The answer again is all about having the necessary positive attitudes and habits more than great selling skills.

Those people who meet their sales goals probably have far greater positive attitudes and habits than all those professionals with super sales training and skills. These individuals keep going and going, much like the Energizer Bunny, demonstrating the basic behaviors necessary for success. Sales Coaching Tip: Using a proven goal achievement process reinforced with a proven goal achievement tool can help to establish the necessary sellings attitudes and habits.

When reviewing the plethora of sales training programs, many examine how to acquire or develop sales skills as mentioned early. The emphasis on how to build positive attitudes and sustainable habits is in many cases not present. Sales Coaching Tip: Learn how to separate the real problems from the symptoms disguised as problems.

Possibly, this is why sales coaching has experienced such a dramatic increase these past few years. This type of sales training focuses much more on the individual and what is keeping him or her from success.

Take Action Sales Coaching Tip: If you want great people who actually sell and meet goals or targets, then look to developing the necessary positive attitudes and sustainable habits along with filling those gaps in sales skills.

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

Chicago Sales Coach Leanne Hoagland-Smith helps to achieve Sales Goals because the real Issue is not "Do They (you) know it (Sales Training), but "Do They (you) want to do it? (Sales Attitude)

Receive a special offer for Leanne's sales coaching book on how to be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits.

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Critical Skills For Sales Leaders - Sales Performance Planning to Increase Revenue

How do you get your sales team to generate the greatest amount of revenue, consistently, year after year? Most sales managers think the answer lies in being aggressive, doing more sales activity, proactive business development, keeping the pipeline full and increasing the abilities of your salespeople so that they are more effective on the ground.

What about the value of better planning? World-class sales organisations establish aggressive sales objectives to achieve the best possible results. To accomplish these aggressive targets, they develop clear and effective sales strategy and Performance Plans. The Sales Performance Plan guides the sales leader's Sales Performance Coaching efforts, providing both them and the salesperson with a clear track to follow.

An effective Sales-Performance Plan can work to reduce your sales revenue peaks and valleys.

Generally the Sales-Performance Plan is an offshoot of the marketing plan, which is a critical component of the overall company business plan. Simply stated, the marketing plan defines your target market and outlines specific strategies which will attract, promote and sell your product or service. The Sales-Performance Plan details the essential steps that are required in order to retain the existing customer base, along with the specifics of how to reach potential customers and convert them from prospects into paying customers.

These plans should include execution details. Specifically featuring: who is doing what, by when, how and with what resources. The plan may also include details on how to deal with roadblocks and other obstacles. An effective Sales Performance Plan anticipates and create contingency plans against competitive threats, delays, etc

Leading sales managers have a healthy obsession with planning to ensure they reach their targets and better planning is the key to producing consistent and predictable sales numbers. An effective Sales-Performance Plan is made up of a variety of issues depending on your own individual sales environment.

Elements of a Sales-Performance Plan

A well constructed Sales-Performance Plan will not deliver sales results on its own. As with any plan, it must be actioned in order to produce a result. However, a well developed Sales-Performance Plan will direct every sales activity, greatly increasing the likelihood of the salesperson achieving their sales goals. The Sales-Performance Plan details the key objectives and the actions required to achieve the salesperson's goals.

o More effective Sales-Performance Plans will create, build and nurture a healthy sales pipeline.

o A well thought out and well-managed Sales-Performance Plan ensures your salespeople meet revenue goals and attain their sales quotas.

o A good Sales-Performance Plan will also include development and up-skilling objectives that you and your individual salespeople have determined to be lacking in order for them to achieve their sales goals.

The Sales-Performance Plan contains a brief description of the actions required in order to achieve the goals. The Sales-Performance Plan must briefly specify the following:

Who: Who are the individuals responsible for achieving what needs to be done?

What: What is required to be done to achieve the goal?

When: By when must the required actions be done?

Tactics: What tactics will be required to achieve the goal?

Resources: What resources will be required to achieve the goal?

Measures: How will success be measured, by whom and when?

None of your salespeople should ever begin their year, month or sales week without a clearly specified sales plan. The plan must lay out and detail their key objectives and action plans to achieve their desired results. Once the plan is submitted and agreed upon, it needs to be reviewed on a regular basis.

Target elements to plan for may include:

o Increase $ volume

o Increase the % in sales volume year over year

o Increase sales of specific products/services

o Increase average deal size

o Decrease average length of sale

o Increase $ volume by customer

o Opening new accounts targets

o Margin

o Ratio improvement

o Key account increases in existing product purchases

o Key account new product purchases

o Customer retention goals

o New product objectives

The Sales-Performance Plan needs to be split up into 4 X 90 DAY ACTION PLANS with set dates and strategies for their execution. The plan must be simply broken down and laid out for easy reference and follow up by you as the sales leader. Territory Sales-Performance Plans may also include some of the above measures as well as other goals for growing the territory.

Territory Sales-Performance Plans Territory Planning (a mix of customers or key accounts and prospects in a specified geographic location) is the process a sales team uses to analyze and plan around key accounts and opportunities within their assigned sales territory. For a Territory plan to effectively drive revenue, it must include both strategy and tactics and detailed actions for delivery of each objective.

A typical Territory Plan may include:

o Analysis and objective setting around the company's products and services, market segments, competition, trends, and profiles of key accounts.

o Specific key objectives

o Opportunity/threat analysis

o Account identification and estimates of account potential

o Account situational analysis and account strategy

o Detail on territory/account tactics - What to sell, for what price and by when?

o Key account increases in existing product purchases

o Key account new product purchases

o Customer retention goals

o Channel development

o Deeper key account penetration

o Re-establishing abandoned customers

Developing, reviewing and regularly updating your Sales Plan is critical to consistent sales success.

As one of Australia's leading authorities and coaches in sales management, Ian Segail has been involved in the coaching, training and development of sales managers and salespeople for over two decades.

Drawing on 25 years of experience in sales, sales management and leading an HR and training team, Ian brings a strong dose of fiscal reality and practicality to his works as a Sales Performance Coach.

Engaging directly with business owners and both novice and experienced sales managers alike, across a wide variety of industries and selling disciplines, the focus of Ian's work is to transform sales results for companies by improving sales management practices.

Ian is the author of "Bulletproof Your Sales Team The 5 Keys To Turbo Boosting Your Sales Team's Results" and a number of business articles, business reports and white papers including "The fish stinks from the head!" and "Why Sales Training Doesn't Work."

Ian has an insatiable hunger for studying selling and people management and has passionately pursued answers to the question "How come some people can sell and most can't?"

Access great tools and resources produced by Ian at http://www.salestutor.com.au/Content_Common/pg-tools-and-resources.seo

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Critical Skills For Sales Leaders - Sales Performance Coaching For People Development

Sales Performance Coaching is a function of 4 core practices of people development

1. Tuition This involves providing the salesperson with the direction, instruction and the knowledge they require in an effort to help them understand what they need to know in order to change their current approach.

2. Consultation involves identifying and analysing the specific issue or situation at hand and assist the sales person to clearly define the goal and map out a plan for their accomplishment

3. Coaching involves helping the salesperson to effect a change by self discovering the answers and thereby make adjustments to their current behaviour or approach. The Sales Performance Coach does this by providing them with regular guidance, feedback, insight and direction to ensure successful execution

4. Performance Management This involves ensuring the salesperson stays on track and holding them accountable to the measurable performance activities required to achieve the goal.

In addition to applying the above 4 core practices of people development there are 8 steps you as the sales leader need to take to implement and become an effective Sales Performance Coach:

The 8 Step Sales Performance Coaching Process

1. An execution focused plan.

Ensure you have a clear and well laid out tactical sales plan to achieve the required sales goals. The plan needs to specifically detail: who is doing what, by when, how, and with what resources.

2. Set clear performance expectations.

Before you as a sales leader can expect your salespeople to deliver what you expect of them, your first step is to be absolutely sure that, in your own mind and on paper, that you have clearly established what it is specifically that you expect of them. Once you have determined what you expect, now you need to have the expectation discussion with each of your salespeople.

3. Identify core behaviors for development.

Identify the key behaviors you and your individual salesperson have determined to be lacking in order for them to meet your expectations and execute their sales plan. These will provide you with the basis for and focus of your one on one coaching.

There are 5 Mission Critical Skills of Outstanding Salespeople. If you want your sales team to produce 20% more, the question you have to ask yourself is...are they 20% better?

Extensive research has identified the five Mission Critical Selling Skills that a sales professional must master to effectively move beyond their current limitations and to achieve your sales goals. When understood and mastered, these five skills will dramatically help you to increase your sales productivity and sell more, more often.

The 5 Mission Critical Skills of Outstanding Salespeople are:

1. Time and Self Management

2. Business Development

3. Diagnostic Acuity

4. Engage All Parties

5. Wrap Up

4. Set aside quality time weekly to debrief the week that was and the week that's coming up.

The fact is, that if you will invest the time to conduct a weekly debrief the week that was and the week that's coming up, over the next ninety days, you will completely turn your sales around.

5. Set specific behavioral goals, measure progress regularly

Change is a process, not an event and therefore you cannot expect to send your salespeople on a training course and have them instantly change behavior. Once you have determined the specific dysfunctional behaviors and strategies that are road-blocking an individual salesperson, set joint goals to improve and change the areas of greatest impact.

6. Collect Sales person behavioral data by engaging in joint sales calls and provide honest and data specific feedback.

70% of learning happens on the job. The most effective method for you to observe behavioral change is to witness the individual salesperson perform in their role. By careful observation you can gather specific data to provide them with accurate feedback. Now you can effectively challenge and guide them to improve their sales performance and behavior.

7. Offer training where applicable

- Demonstrate the 'ideal" way. Provide the salesperson with resources, books, CD's, online tools, seminars and workshops to accelerate their learning and reinforce your message.

8. Follow up; follow up; follow up.

There is one skill that as a sales leader you absolutely have to develop. If you haven't done so already, this skill will greatly determine your success or failure as a manager of others. This incredibly simple and yet powerful skill is the ability to effectively follow up. When your sales team knows what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by and when they can ABSOLUTELY count on you to follow up on their commitments to you....then you will achieve results that up and until now you have only dreamed of!

As one of Australia's leading authorities and coaches in sales management, Ian Segail has been involved in the coaching, training and development of sales managers and salespeople for over two decades.

Drawing on 25 years of experience in sales, sales management and leading an HR and training team, Ian brings a strong dose of fiscal reality and practicality to his works as a Sales Performance Coach.

Engaging directly with business owners and both novice and experienced sales managers alike, across a wide variety of industries and selling disciplines, the focus of Ian's work is to transform sales results for companies by improving sales management practices.

Ian is the author of "Bulletproof Your Sales Team - The 5 Keys To Turbo Boosting Your Sales Team's Results" and a number of business articles, business reports and white papers including "The fish stinks from the head!" and "Why Sales Training Doesn't Work." Ian has an insatiable hunger for studying selling and people management and has passionately pursued answers to the question "How come some people can sell and most can't?"

He can be reached via http://www.iansegail.com

Read Ian's latest free report - "The 7 Most Costly Mistakes Sales Managers Make" here http://www.bulletproofyoursalesteam.com [http://bulletproofyoursalesteam.com/free-report/7costlymistakes.html]

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Sales Training Lesson - How Behaviors Will Always Triumph Over Sales Skills

Check out most sales processes and they usually focus on the potential customers (a.k.a. prospects) and the sales skills of the sales professionals. Yet, sales research continue to reveal that the actions from the behaviors are the major obstacles in achieving sales targets. 

For example, follow up is a sales skill.  Yet, business research suggests that almost 50% of all leads are not followed up.  So it is the skill that is lacking or the application of the skill?

Years ago, my coach David Herdlinger created the KASH Box and since then with his permission I have expanded it into the KASH Box for Sustainable Change. The essence of this model is that Knowledge and Skills are not the obstacle for performance improvement be it in sales, leadership, customer service or management.  Attitudes and Habits are the real culprits preventing people, teams and organizations moving forward.

Too often we confuse learning with performance.  Learning is the acquisition of knowledge while performance is the application of knowledge.

With this understanding of the difference between learning and performance, I realized that sales training departments in organizations were asking the wrong question. Instead of asking do they (the sales people) know it, they should be asking do they (sales professionals) want to do it?

When we begin to look at the Attitudes and Habits, we are looking at the demonstrated behaviors. Most sales professionals know that they need to follow up, they know that very few sales are made on the first contact, they know that they need to listen more than talk.  However, given that sales research suggests anywhere between 50% to 80% of all sales targets are not achieved, then this data confirms that the issue is not sales skills, but rather behaviors.

When the focus is on the technical sales skills be them negotiating, fact finding, asking open ended questions, there is probably little to no emphasis on the behaviors.  Sometimes it seems that there is an apparent assumption that somehow the skill will immediately become a learned behavior. 

Sales training to be effective must look at both developing Knowledge and Skills while providing opportunities to apply (practice) these sales skills and then allow for feedback and additional practice. Many sales training programs be them 5 days to 1 day are like drinking from the fire hydrant. A lot of information given very quickly with little time to digest, practice and very rarely opportunities for feedback.

Sales Training Coaching Tip:  If you want your sales training to stick, the look at your curriculum and make sure you have both Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills and Habits.  You will discover not only a lot less redos, but a lot more positive return on your sales training dollars.

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

Chicago Sales Coach Leanne Hoagland Smith helps to achieve Sales Goals because the real issue is not "Do they (you) know it (Sales Training), but "Do they (you) want to do it?

Receive a special offer for Leanne's sales coaching book on how to be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits.

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Top 7 Sales Skills to Increase Sales in 2009 Regardless of the Economy

Being a top sales producer extends beyond your technical sales skills into your personal or self leadership skills. You must have knowledge of the results from your marketing and selling actions along with incredible self leadership skills. These seven sales skills can potentially deliver far more results than any technical selling skill such as fact finding to closing.

Number One Sales Skill: Track Your Progress Right now, do you know where you stand specific to:

Leads in your marketing funnel?
Follow ups on those leads?
Statements of work a.k.a. proposals?
Orders in your sales funnel?
Delivery of orders?
Follow ups after each completed earned sale?
Referrals?

Number Two Sales Skill: Know all of your sales numbers Do you know all the numbers respective to your sales actions? These numbers may include and are not limited to:

Sales to earn ratio a.k.a. sales to close ratio
Sales cycle time
Average dollar value per sale

Number Three Sales Skill: Increase your current actions by 10% What would happen if you increase your current actions by just 10%? The simple action of increasing your daily focused activity might look like this:

Instead of making 10 calls per day, you may 11.
Instead of setting 10 appointments every two weeks, you set 11
Instead of making 10 presentations every four weeks, you make 11

Number Four Sales Skill: Reconnect with all of your customers every 30 to 60 days Do you have a customer loyalty plan where you contact your existing active customers every 30 to 60 days? How about your inactive ones? When was the last time you contacted them? Given that for your customers to maintain a top of mind awareness (TOMA) requires at least 3 contacts per month, what opportunities are you creating for your competitors to steal your customers?

Number Five Sales Skill: Leave your Ego at the doorWhen times are good and when times are bad, your ego should be left at the door. Customers do not owe you a sale nor do they owe you a referral. What you owe your customers is a trusted advisor who is more concerned about them than a sales person who is only concerned about himself or herself and making that next sale

Number Six Sales Skill: Be authentic in ALL actions Are you truly authentic in all of your actions? Do you mean what you say? Do you follow up on all of your promises? Do you return all calls even when you know them to be potentially bad?

Number Seven Sales Skill: Listen more than you talk Great sales professionals understand the value of listening. As said by many, if you were designed to talk more than to listen, you would have two mouths and only one ear. Use your two ears at least five times more than your mouth. As a wise man once told me: If you are telling, you ain't selling.

Regardless if the economy is up or down, these 7 sales skills can keep your marketing and sales funnels full. You will increase sales and develop incredible strong customer loyalty.

Simply speaking, would you like to increase sales? Are you tired of coming up short with your monthly, quarterly or annual sales goals? Are you willing to be leave your comfort zone? Then you may discover a possible solution at the Sales Coaching Gym. Now is the time to step out of your comfort zone and become one of the few who achieve sales success instead one of the many who are left behind.

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

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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Sales Development Training and How to Learn Sales Skills That Could Change Your Life

Sales development training to increase your sales skills is a great investment. But if you just learn sales skills, and don't know how to put them into action, you won't get the lifestyle changes you want. To make it work, and get results, sales training needs a plan that's achievable, practical, and that has worked for others like you.

Do you see other sales people achieving more than you? While you're struggling to make your monthly payments they're buying new homes, expensive holidays, and great looking cars. Do these successful colleagues get attention and recognition from other people, people you would like to notice you? You have thought about learning sales skills to try and increase your sales results and your income. You may have downloaded some sales skill training, or been on sales training courses, but you're still stuck in a rut and struggling to earn the rich rewards that a sales career should offer.

Everyone in sales now has access to sales training and can learn sales skills that could change their lifestyle. The Internet is full of a wide range of professional sales training and free sales training courses. The effective sales skill training that does cost money gives you free examples and information on the training, so you can make an educated decision before buying, and the investment cost is very reasonable. For a few dollars you can download a sales training course and start taking actions today that could completely change your life.

Anyone with average intelligence, and the right attitude, can learn sales skills that can change their lifestyle. So how come there are so many sales people just plodding along, stuck in a rut, and running out of time to achieve their goals and live the lifestyle they want. What makes a difference to so many career sales people's lives is knowing how to put the sales training into actions. So when you decide that today's the day that your life changes, and you are going to get serious about sales development training and putting it into action, here's a sales development training plan to get you started on achieving your desires and dreams.

Find the sales training that's right for you

Click around the Internet and find the right sales skill training for you and your sales career. Consider if your customers buy because of their feelings and emotions, or do they make a buying decision based on logic. What's the value of your average sale? The sales process for a low value high volume product will be different to the sales techniques used for a low volume high value sale. Making money from repeat business sales will require different sales skills to a one off market. You want selling skills that are customer focused and avoid feelings of buyer's remorse to succeed in the repeat sales marketplace.

When you have a clear picture of your sale, the sale process, and how you close the sale, start clicking around the Internet. Look for sales development training that offers ways to increase sales by learning sales skills that match your style of selling. It's no good buying sales training on killer sales closes if your sales are based on repeat business from customers that feel valued. Retail sales skills are different to B2B sales techniques. Successful direct sales people use selling techniques that suit their market and their product. Look at free sales training courses and get all the information you can to decide which is right for you. Then invest in sales skill training.

Now start to use the sales skills to change your life

Once you've found the right sales development training, you have to use it to gain from it. It's no good just looking at it. You have to turn the sales training on the screen into actions. Take the sales skill training and transfer it into actions you are going to take. Write them in your diary and make them time bound. Have one sales action for each day, because you know you can complete that. Each action will build upon the one from the previous day.

For example, you start sales skill training to build a new sales introduction. The sales training says your first line should be an introduction of you, and your business. It must be short and to the point with no long winded speech about you or the product. This is your first action for day one. Write the new first line of for your sales introduction. Then day two could be to add a reason for seeing the buyer to your sales introduction. At the end of the first week you have a brand new sales introduction and you're ready to start work on the other sales stages. And you are not becoming bored with the sales training, or finding you haven't got the time to compete it.

The difference between successful sales people and the rest is not the sales skill training they receive, and it's not even their level of sales ability. It's whether they take actions or just sit back and let sales commission slip away. In most markets if you don't sell to a prospective customer some other sales person will. If you don't take actions today to increase your sales with sales development training, you are giving money to some other sales person. Perhaps it's one of those you have seen succeeding, and buying new cars and a bigger house. Join them now by taking action today. Look for sales development training now by clicking around the Internet, and go get that diary. Or, stay as you are and tomorrow will be the same as today.

Hi, I'm Stephen Craine, a working sales manager and trainer for a major UK company. If you want to see the sales training I present to my working sales teams then start your search for sales skill training at http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com/sales-skills.html and click around the site.

All the sales training presented on my website has been tested and proved by working sales people in real sales situations. There are no acronyms, buzz words, or complicated techniques to market training courses. The focus is on practical sales training that achieves results.

On the website I offer pages on all aspects of selling techniques and sales skills. The sales information is free and gives you ideas and sales techniques to try out and use for yourself. You will also discover free sales training courses that will show you how to increase your sales and change your life through your sales career.

If you really want to make a difference you can invest in sales training, presented in workbooks, and easy to put into action. How much will these professional sales training courses cost you, open http://www.sales-training-sales-tips.com/sales-and-training-solution.html and find out.

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