When writing letters to a business or individual in another country remember that the customs in that country may be different. To communicate clearly and politely, follow these tips:

1. DON’T USE CLICHES. Colorful expressions may be confusing to a person who has never heard them. For instance how would they translate “spur of the moment”?

2. USE REAL WORDS. Be careful not to include words like prioritize, Americanize, digitize, Canadianize, privatize. If your reader has learned standard English, he or she will be puzzled by these “non-words.”

3. DON’T REFER TO SEASONAL TIMES. Your spring could be their fall.

4. BE FORMAL AND CORDIAL. Use “Respectfully yours,” or duplicate the closing used when they wrote to you.
(more…)

6. My buyer can’t see the benefits of my product or service solutions.

If you are faced with the difficulty in getting the buyer to see the benefits of the your products or services being offered to them, then reacquaint yourself with the how to ask questions and really listen to your prospect. So often, the desire to dive into your product bag and speak about features occurs too frequently and too easily. In order to have the buyer actually visualize the benefits of your product or service, a picture must be painted. Let your buyer see themselves using your product.

7. My buyer has no sense of value in my product or service solutions.

“Most of the time, I run across a situation where my buyers will say they don’t have the budget for my solution. With that, they expect me leave, so how do I overcome that?” If buyers are concerned with their budget, think about where that the buyer is within the organization: below or above the budget line? They may not be the ultimate decision-maker. Try to find out more and see if they are the final decision-maker, and who else may be involved in the final decision.
(more…)

In working with over 500,000 sales professionals over the past 14 years, we’ve heard many selling difficulties that our clients have been facing. Year after year, they’ve proven to be consistent. The following are the Top 10 Difficulties we hear:

1. My prospecting lacks planning.
2. My workload prevents me from prospecting, I have too much else to do!
3. Early in the call, my prospect is already objecting.
4. I’m unable to get my buyer to admit to having a critical business issue.
5. Once I’m in an organization, I have a difficult time actually getting to the decision maker.
6. My buyer can’t see the benefits of my product or service solutions.
7. My buyer has no sense of compelling value in my product or service solutions.
8. Too large of a % of my sales never reach closure.
9. I’m getting squeezed on price!
10. I keep losing my sales to my competition.

Sound familiar? Well, you’re not alone as over 80% of all sales people feel one or more of these frustrations throughout their careers.

What do you do about these difficulties? How do you overcome them, and make your sales opportunities more successful for you and your company?
(more…)

You get a call during dinner and find yourself talking to the voice on the other end who is trying to sell you some product or service you didn’t request. If you’re polite, you’ll continue the conversation to find that the cold caller is following a script word for word. Often, they do not listen if you stray from the norms of the script. Nor do they know what to do with a buyer who sways which leads to high customer frustration. I want to be clear that this is not what I am talking about in the topic “Shadow Practicing, Pre-scripting Calls.” Pre-Scripting simply means to create a framework for your sales calls, not a word-for-word plan. And Shadow Practicing is practicing your script framework before you ever get in front of a prospect.

Word-for-Word Scripts

Word for word scripts are difficult to make work because they usually do not offer enough flexibility. Salespeople, who try to follow a word-for-word script, will find difficulty in sales. You are less able to listen and certainly can not give quality feedback. I am sure most of you do not use this type of scripting; however, there is a type of scripting that is useful to all types of great sales professionals – Pre-Scripting.
(more…)

Not the Ultimate Decision Maker?

What happens when you’re already involved in account and you find your contact is not the ultimate decision maker? This is one of my most frequently asked questions. You must investigate the prospect’s buying process. You’ll know if you’re in the right place by asking how decisions are made. For example, a sales professional selling copiers presents her idea to the general manager of Trisk Industries, Inc. The general manager likes the thought of the improved performance gained through the new copier, the computer integration, digital capabilities, as well as its ability to be attached to their entire network. However, when the rep asks for the order, the general manager mentions he will have to talk it over with the Vice President. How could this problem have been solved earlier in the sales process?

Questions To Ask

Most importantly, the sales professional should have been speaking to the Vice President in the first place rather than to the general manager. However it is too late now, so what next? If you encounter a situation like this, ask open-ended questions along the following lines:

• Tell me a little bit more about how the decision process works on a product like this in your organization.
• I know this is an important decision, who else helps you come to decisions like this?
• Assuming we demo this product and it makes sense to you, are there other people we need to consult in order to move toward closure.

(more…)

How often have you encountered a prospect who, when you’re at the closing phase, tells you something like…

• “I am not the final decision maker.”
• “I’ll need to talk to my partner.”
• “There are a few people in my division I need to speak with regarding this idea.”

If you’ve heard one of these lines, you’re not alone. In sales, we are often faced with the daunting task of generating new business; yet, speak to people who cannot make the ultimate decision. Situations like this are inevitable because you are dealing with the human factor. People as a general rule want to feel important they like power. It is very easy for pseudo-decision makers to manipulate a salesperson into believing they can make a decision when in truth they cannot.

The Relay Game

Success in sales weighs heavily on how efficiently your message is delivered to the top decision maker. When a message you deliver becomes a part of a ‘relay game,’ you’re almost certain to experience frustration and lost sales. The relay game, for those of you not familiar with this term, is when a manager says they have decision-making power, but they actually relay your ideas to someone in the power seat that gives them the ultimate ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and relay the decision back to you. Quite often they play the relay game and then act as if the decision were there own. In my sales training workshops, we focus on getting to the proper decision maker from the start. “How is this done?” you ask. Read on.
(more…)

In section one of the CAP Selling System, I discussed the importance of listening closely to actual words people use and their tone of voice. Tone of voice is very important; it tells the hidden meaning of what people are really thinking. You know the old proverb: “It is not what you say, but how you say it.” I cannot stress knowing how to use tone of voice enough – it drastically effects the success of your sales. In this issue of the Executive Sales Newsletter, I discuss the importance of proper needs assessment and the process to ensuring you adequately capture your clients’ needs clearly and concisely. There are four primary parts to the sales process.
They are:
1. Introduction — rapport building
2. Needs, wants, and problems assessment
3. Alignment of solutions
4. Closing
(more…)

I have the ability to write this letter to you today because I live in a free country. Free to choose the path I lead. Free to love my country, my family, my freedom and my God. Free to speak on a platform of my choosing. Though destruction abounds my free world, I still stand free because of the thousands of brave patriots that have fought and will fight to keep this sovereign nation safe. Last week a horrible tragedy ripped through the United States causing carnage and worst of all loss of life. Today I call out to you requesting that you not bow down to the cowardly deed performed but yet you stand tall in defiance to this heinous act.
(more…)

4. Commit Time Each Day To New Prospecting Calls

The last eight years, but prior to these recent economic swings, has caused many sales professionals to be order takers and not salespeople. I’ve spoken to many organizations over the past few months and have learned the plague of order taking is rampant in many industries. If you are an order-taker and not a sales professional then you are ill equipped for these difficult economic times. How do you separate yourself from the competition? I don’t know too many salespeople who just love prospecting. As a matter of fact, it ranks near the bottom in a recent informal survey we performed. Sales professionals prefer talking to a qualified buyer than having to find one. If you feel this way, you must shift your outlook.
(more…)

When people hear or see the words Reverse Selling they immediately smile out of curiosity and say “That’s intriguing, what is it?” I usually respond with “Well, if you had to take a guess what would you think it is?” Then, they usually say with a smile “Maybe I’d suggest to a prospective client that they may not be interested in my product.”

That answer, as counter-intuitive as it may sound is only but a brief glimpse into the world of Reverse Selling. The Reverse Selling philosophy espouses the idea of not “chasing” prospective clients, because pursuance and enthusiasm creates pressure. which causes prospective clients to retreat. Instead, it advocates relief of sales pressure by awareness of activities that cause it.
(more…)