Wednesday, December 13, 2006

2007 Salesmanship Tips - Selling and Negotiating with Integrity

Perhaps you are already in a sales job or had been a sales profession for a while and you have read various books on the subject and you have decided to maintain and continue your sales profession ongoing education by also reading this book. This is a very smart habit for salespeople because it keeps them motivated and at the top of their game. But what he is a salesperson? In this book we will discuss selling with integrity and positioning yourself as a; Consultant, Problem Solver and Expert.

In my career I started out as a very small business and grew the business very large into a franchising company servicing 450 cities and 110 markets with franchisees in 23 states and four countries. In franchising there is a lot of sales going on for instance you have to sell the franchise and put the franchised outlet into the marketplace and then help the franchisee with their sales and train them to be effective. Also many franchise companies like ours had national accounts and those two needed to be sold. After all if the franchisees did not make money they would not be able to pay us the royalties.

As we set out to sell our franchises we realized that we had to sell only to qualified prospects who we believed could carry our brand name without tarnishing our stellar reputation. We also quickly realize that when we sold national accounts those companies were interested in saving money and would only hire our services if we could save them money and of course we could not take the accounts unless we could make money doing it. You can see quite quickly how selling with integrity and positioning yourself as a consultant, problem solver and expert was paramount to our success as a franchising company.