Are You Achieving Sustained Sales Growth Efficiently - Reliably And By Design

In his book “Fundamentals of Selling”, Charles Futrell identifies careful use of selling time as perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of the successful salesperson. Frequently there are two main pitfalls that even experienced salespeople can fall into in terms of activities. First, they simply aren’t doing enough. What’s enough? Enough telephone calls to make appointments, enough face-to-face calls, enough calls that involve or influence the decision-makers. In general, the more focused sales activity salespeople generate, the greater the number of sales opportunities they can create.

Poor Quality Activity:

Second, but equally important, salespeople often aren’t clear about how to identify the prospects most likely to have a genuine need for their product or service. Without an objective way to prioritise which prospects to contact first and/or an efficient strategy for contacting them, salespeople are doomed to waste a large percentage of their time.

Another huge dilemma for many salespeople is how to divide their time between servicing existing clients and generating new business from new prospects. Existing clients frequently make requests for service that could be dealt with by support staff. But salespeople who lack a disciplined, future-orientated plan for generating new contacts and sales often find themselves spending more time attending to “urgent” tasks for existing accounts instead. A common approach among salespeople can be summarised in the saying “If you throw enough mud against the wall, some of it is bound to stick”. This approach is exhausting, demoralising, extremely unproductive, and very expensive in the long term.

Speed Of Relaying Customer Information:

The Sales Director provides another interesting dimension to activity management. Apart from product or service knowledge, salespeople require knowledge about prospects, clients, and market trends. Therefore, if the information those salespeople require isn’t relayed in an efficient manner, their “face-to-face” selling activities are dramatically reduced.

Harder Rather Than Smarter:

In the book Emerson’s Essays, there is a section on “Law of Compensation”, which can be summarised simply as “give more, get more” This is what most salespeople try to do, so they end up working harder when they could be working smarter. This begs the question, are your sales activities deciding your strategy or is your strategy deciding your sales activities?

Developing A Consultative Sales Process:

From the Sales Director’s perspective, developing a consultative sales process means developing a comprehensive, formal, realistic and step-by-step outline of what salespeople are expected to do. This is just as appropriate for internal and totally reactive sales teams as it is for external pro-active ones. This outline includes the activity and calls they must make, the relationships they should establish with prospects, the documentation they should use in sales calls, the issues they must discuss and resolve with prospects and the tangible goals they must achieve in sequence along the path to each sale, in order to achieve maximum effectiveness.

It’s only when such an outline is in place that sales management can be in a position to:

* Monitor the sales force’s activity, progress and results,

* Assess issues as they arise and take appropriate action,

* Redirect individual sales effort efficiently.

How To Deliver A Professional Sales Presentation

All professional salespeople have to be involved in a presentation at some time in their sales career and Top 5 % players present their proposals every time.

Presentations allow us to : -

• Influence a group of important people.

• Gain consensus and commitment.

• Find out who the real players are and the real status.

• Set ground rules for a major sale.

• Make a lasting impression of professionalism.

When it comes to the enthusiasm that sales professionals have for making a presentation, they broadly fall into four categories, (as I highlighted in a previous article - :”When It Comes To Making Presentations, The Very Best Salespeople Are Seekers”)

The Avoider:

An Avoider does everything possible to escape from having to stand in front of an audience; in some drastic cases salespeople may seek positions that do not involve making presentations.

The Register:

A Register is also extremely hesitant of speaking in public, however Registers may not be able to avoid speaking as part of their job but they never encourage it. When they do speak they do so very reluctantly.

The Acceptor:

The Acceptor will give presentations as part of their job but does not seek opportunities to do so. Acceptors occasionally give a presentation and feel they did a good job. They even find that once in a while they are quite persuasive and enjoy the experience.

The Seeker:

A Seeker looks for opportunities to speak. They understand that anxiety can be a stimulant which fuels enthusiasm during a presentation. Seekers work at building their professional communication skills and self-confidence by speaking often.

The reality is, that making presentations is an essential sales skill, Top 5% achievers are very good presenters. Any salesman or woman, who has ambitions to become the best in their sector or industry, will need to ensure that they can deliver dynamic, convincing and professional presentations, whenever they are called upon to do so.

Becoming a Seeker is a pre-requisite to success!

There Are Four Key Elements Of A Successful Presentation:

Element One: Structure

In preparing for any presentation, there is a simple, yet useful structure: -

• Prospect Need

• Prospect Advantage

• Your Proposal

• Your Action.

Prospect Need:

It is essential that you consider your prospects/ audience’s views because every prospect/audience has a need. Need consists of two parts - symptoms and causes, (through identifying the symptoms we find causes).

Prospect Advantage

• Main - This demonstrates how your ideas will meet the needs and resolve the prospects problems

• Added - These are powerful persuasions that explain why your ideas are superior and compelling.

Real Time Hot Mortgage Leads

The fresher te lead, the better the quality, so it makes sense that Real-Time mortgage leads are the hottest they come. Think about it, mortgage borrowers looking to refinance or do some home improvements find a broker that is looking to give them a great rate, perfect match?

Of course it's a perfect match. The truth is that if a lead is not real-time then it might as well be a dead lead. Even a one day olf lead is useless if the potential borrower has already found a mortgage company while your 1 day old leads was making it's rounds through the different lead companies, and then getting to you. How many hands touched that lead being delivered in the next day's bulk lead email? There is no way of telling unless, one it is timestamped and origin-stamped.

Why Real-Time? Borrowers want to get info now! They want to be impressed when you call them within 2 minutes of them filling out the online application. What that says is yeah this loan officer and mortgage company has their heads on straight and can quickly take care of my needs. Usually a prospect starts working with th first person to contact them.

Real-Time Exclusive Mortgage Leads are the answers to your prayers. Real-Time leads need to be generated from a source which you can trust and actually visit yourself. You should be able to tell exactly what website generated the lead, and exactly what time. Real Time Leads should not be from some unknown 3rd party company your lead company buys leads from, and resells to you for a profit.

A Great Lead Company owns and operates their websites themselves and timestamp and origin-stamp (What website the lead is generated from) the lead any and every time. There is no playing games since everything should be automated and you can feel relax. Some lead comanies like Perfect Town USA have guarantee that if you don't get your leads in 5 seconds or less it's free!

"High Touch" or "High Tech", What Do Clients Want?

I still hear comments from agents in our industry talking about the need for “high touch” versus “high tech”. They feel that we are all potentially losing our contact with our clients because of the impersonal nature of email and the internet. The National Association of Realtors completes a yearly buyers profile report. According to this report, the number of people initiating their home search on the internet continues to increase at an explosive rate. (Close to 79% of all consumers begin their search on the internet.) All trends are pointing toward greater reliance on real estate information on the internet: including listings, school information, and mortgage information.

With the popularity of real estate sites, it is clear consumers find value in the ability to search and find the information. We, in the real estate industry, are also consumers and prefer the speed, anonymity, and control provided by the internet. As a result, it highlights the importance for all real estate professionals to utilize and understand the technology that enables our clients to become more knowledgeable about the local market.

Being comfortable with technology, in many cases, allows us to communicate effectively with our clients and to be “high touch”. We are finding that many clients actually prefer the interaction through email. Communicating through email enables them to better control their time, balance their busy lives, while searching for a home. So our internet clients would agree that we are providing “high touch” customer service on their terms. With the increase in the number of internet and email users, the definition of “high touch” may be changing. Maybe the line between “high touch” and “high tech” is beginning to blur and the two are actually becoming the same thing.

Pulling the Trigger – Making Your Business Smoking Hot in 2007

How Can I Increase Business? A client once came to me having agonized for six months over a brochure. Helplessly, the manager, (a professional engineer), thrust the paper towards me, as he confided that he’d been dragged in from the field to make this happen. The poor little thing was all bloody with red-lined marks (the brochure, not the client), but no one had actually finished the copy, and all were afraid that it might not be just the thing they needed to bring in new business.

What went wrong, and how can you make your business smoking hot in 2007? The number one answer is by pulling the trigger. Define all you need to do. Start with one thing, add another and repeat what works.

Please understand that no business ever lived or died through one single marketing effort. A single postcard, letter or brochure is not a make or break marketing effort. It is but a whisper in the wind.

Remember, lather, rinse, repeat? A marketing effort is like that. You have to repeat it.

Make Money Selling Used Books on Amazon

First of all look for all the books around your home that you no longer want. Once you have your books at the ready then register on the Amazon site which will literally take ten minutes or so.

Listing the books on the site is extremely easy as you enter the international book standard number and it will automatically bring up your book. You then can see the market price for your used book.

I would recommend entering your book price at one penny less than the nearest person which ensures you get a low price tag next to your book. You then just click and complete your listing. Amazon will then send you a sold dispatch now email when the book is sold and you mail the book to your customer.

Once you need more stock I recommend looking at the local charity shops and libraries. Also car boot sales and fairs are very good too. I have bought books for 25p and sold them for 20 pound and this happens weekly.

Not every category of book will sell extremely well so it is very important to avoid modern fiction titles. There are literally thousands of used books in this category on amazon and you will not be able to generate income with these types of books.

You should really be looking for older books with a hobby connotation. Good examples of these could be music, religion, self help, military, arts and crafts, sports and poetry to name but a few.

It is very easy to get the hang of and in time you will easily be able to identify what sells and what does not sell. I also personally sell dvd's online too but you must make sure that your dvd works before sending out to a customer because good customer feedback is very important in this business. Having said that dvd's are fast moving items and can easily make you a lot of money.

If you have an amazon library online of about one hundred books or so then you can be expecting to sell about 30 books or so a month. When you reach this level of sales then it makes it worthwhile to become an amazon book seller. This costs 25 pound a month but also cuts the 85p charge that amazon puts on your account every time a book sells. Of course Amazon needs to make some income from the arrangement with yourself but as you can see the 30 book per month and over limit makes it a viable business decision.

Another top tip is to try and keep your books small to medium in size to save on the postage costs. Amazon are quite generous and will give you a good postage allowance when selling your books but on very large books you will actually lose out.

Having said that school textbooks and educational books are very good sellers and can attract prices over 20 pounds or so therefore I would make an exception for those type of books.

Are You Achieving Sustained Sales Growth Efficiently - Reliably And By Design

In his book “Fundamentals of Selling”, Charles Futrell identifies careful use of selling time as perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of the successful salesperson. Frequently there are two main pitfalls that even experienced salespeople can fall into in terms of activities. First, they simply aren’t doing enough. What’s enough? Enough telephone calls to make appointments, enough face-to-face calls, enough calls that involve or influence the decision-makers. In general, the more focused sales activity salespeople generate, the greater the number of sales opportunities they can create.

Poor Quality Activity:

Second, but equally important, salespeople often aren’t clear about how to identify the prospects most likely to have a genuine need for their product or service. Without an objective way to prioritise which prospects to contact first and/or an efficient strategy for contacting them, salespeople are doomed to waste a large percentage of their time.

Another huge dilemma for many salespeople is how to divide their time between servicing existing clients and generating new business from new prospects. Existing clients frequently make requests for service that could be dealt with by support staff. But salespeople who lack a disciplined, future-orientated plan for generating new contacts and sales often find themselves spending more time attending to “urgent” tasks for existing accounts instead. A common approach among salespeople can be summarised in the saying “If you throw enough mud against the wall, some of it is bound to stick”. This approach is exhausting, demoralising, extremely unproductive, and very expensive in the long term.

Speed Of Relaying Customer Information:

The Sales Director provides another interesting dimension to activity management. Apart from product or service knowledge, salespeople require knowledge about prospects, clients, and market trends. Therefore, if the information those salespeople require isn’t relayed in an efficient manner, their “face-to-face” selling activities are dramatically reduced.

Harder Rather Than Smarter:

In the book Emerson’s Essays, there is a section on “Law of Compensation”, which can be summarised simply as “give more, get more” This is what most salespeople try to do, so they end up working harder when they could be working smarter. This begs the question, are your sales activities deciding your strategy or is your strategy deciding your sales activities?