“No matter what your sales experience, you can likely appreciate the challenge that sales professionals face when selling to executives in the worldís largest corporations. But what does it take to sell to an executive in a small or medium-sized company?”
“Effective sales consultants invest much time and effort into developing and nurturing their sales leads and customers. The very nature of their job description renders this group competitive and somewhat territorial. The variety of systems and approaches they use to uncover, store and recall information on customers and prospects is almost as broad as their sales styles.”
“You are what you sell. Sales is the front-wheel drive that pulls a company forward in the marketplace. But in many companies, top managers are frustrated because the sales process seems disconnected from corporate objectives. This presents a serious impediment to management’s efforts to manage profitability effectively.”
“You’ve heard the expression that a picture is worth a thousand words. Great salespeople know that positive words can help them get a thousand sales… Your choice of words can promote positive feelings, encourage customers’ optimism, and lead to a sale. Using negative words can create fear, uncertainty and discomfort and, therefore, poison sales. Here are six examples of ‘poison’ words and their positive replacements.”
“What really goes on in the back rooms of car dealerships across America? What does the car salesman do when he leaves you sitting in a sales office and goes to talk with his boss? What are the tricks salespeople use to increase their profit and how can consumers protect themselves from overpaying? These were the questions we, the editors at Edmunds.com, wanted to answer for our readers… We hired Chandler Phillips, a veteran journalist, to go undercover by working at two new car dealerships in the Los Angeles area.”
“Price discrimination is the practice of charging different customers different prices for the same good. One strategy for implementing this is to produce two distinct qualities of product — a high-quality product and a damaged or crimped version. In addition to providing a justification for the price differential, this strategy also prevents arbitrage that might erode the gains from price discrimination in the first place.”
“In hardball bargaining, is the other side really making its ‘absolute final offer’ or only bluffing? In a collaborative situation, do you understand everyoneís true interests? Are valued customers and colleagues satisfied with their relationship with you, or are they harboring unspoken grievances?”
“If you think a proposal’s executive summary is really a summary, you’re missing the point. Here are six tips for turning your blah conclusions into an effective, well-substantiated pitch.”
“Justsell.com is your sales and marketing portal. It provides its subscribers and users with free just published sales leads, articles, templates, checklists, guides and discussion forums… Each month, the site hones in on a particular piece of the sales process or the sales career and publishes articles and tools by some of the best sales and marketing minds in the country.”
“I know it’s important to sell, but I’m no good at it, and I can’t afford to hire a salesperson right now. How can I develop the ‘tough skin’ that I need to be a successful salesperson for my own company?”
“If you have used and/or written patterns, you are most likely aware that this literary form, and its corresponding process and community support, is providing potential for capturing best practices and communicating them between people in organizations and throughout the software industry. However, it is also quite likely that you have experienced some difficulty convincing others in your organization of this potential.”
“More important than having a great idea is figuring out how to sell it to the boss — especially in a culture that’s not too keen to accept your idea. How to do it? A couple of academics from Stanford and the University of California at Davis looked at how ideas are successfully sold in, of all places, Hollywood. Selling a script or a movie may not be all that close to selling your idea for a new product or marketing campaign. But the lessons ring true, no matter what kind of idea you’re peddling.”
“It’s an interesting and important question for people hell bent on making a difference. In ‘What’s The Big Idea’ by Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak, there some great advice. The best of it comes from Mitzi Wertheim, a social anthropologist by training who works in — of all places — the U.S. Department of Defense as a ‘change consultant.’”
is the new book by XPLANE founder Dave Gray. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a manager or a saleperson in the trenches, this book is for you. View sample pages and order online at posted in Sales, XPLANE | Permalink | Comments Off
“I am faced with my first face-to-face meeting with a new prospect. What’s the best way not to talk too much and yet still get my point across?”
