4 Secrets of Hula Hoop Selling!

I admit it.

On the week-end, I had an Endurance Hula-Hoop contest with my 8 and 11 year old nieces! They had a fabulous time laughing at their aunt as I fumbled with the purple hula hoop.

Of course - they had NO PROBLEM keeping that plastic tube flying!

In fact, neither of them even broke a SWEAT.

They both said " Auntie - we could do this for hours!"

One thing I have on them is old age so I watched carefully what they were doing. (Observation goes a lonnnnnnnnnng way in life.)

It took a few tries but before they knew it - their "old" aunt was giving them a run for their money!

As my stomach muscles were screaming in holy terror, I thought ..." This would make a great article on how women approach selling!"

The 4 Secrets of Hula-Hoop Selling:

1. The Hula-Hoop Has To Be The Right Size. It's true! If the hoop is too big or too small - then you're going to struggle. In selling - you struggle when your daily goals are too big or too small. Either way you'll end up feeling frustrated and yet you're not getting anywhere.

2. You Have To Consistently Move! Just as the hula-hoop won't start rolling unless you get those hips going...your sales won't gain momentum if you don't "move" every day. The Stop/Start strategy doesn't work for hula hoops or making money.

3. You Have To Commit To The Right Moves. Putting the hula-hoop on the floor and jumping over it is not the purpose! If you want to play the game, you have to do it right and be willing to make mistakes. Selling is all about commitment. Where are you at?

4. Don't Quit. Yup - sometimes the hula-hoop falls from a bad manoever or from lack of movement. So do your sales. The numbers don't lie honey! So if you have dropped the "hoop" just pick it up again and start moving.

Momentum Is Never An Accident!

I first watched my nieces in amazement as they made keeping the hula-hoop up look EFFORTLESS.

Then I realized what they were doing.

They had found the rhythm of it. Once they had the "formula" for what worked - they hardly had to work at all to keep the momentum going.

Sales Success: Four Critical Steps

It’s been said often, “Some folks can’t seem to see the forest for the trees.” Perhaps that’s true in any arena, but it seems that it’s rampant in sales, especially when sales are down. Time after time, when sales start to fall we find sales people becoming so caught up in the “slump” that they fail to focus on the four critical steps to consistent sales success.

Motivational speaking is a multi-million dollar a year business and, in large part, it is attended by those who need that inspirational reminder of what they already know. Not that speaking for a living is bad. I do that. The audience, however, through years of experience already knows the answer. They just need to be reminded.

Sales people tend to be motivated by immediate gratification. Those who have been in sales successfully for years understand that seeds planted today come to fruition later. Although there are moments of immediate gratification, frequently the fruition will take time. Motivational speeches are, perhaps, that little nudge to focus them not on the slump, but on the outcome.

Let’s define the four critical steps to sales success, in order to re-establish successful habits. Mind you now, once you read this you’ll know just how simple sales success can be, if only you’ll focus on these four items and ignore all other distractions.

Question One: If your income comes from sales, are you making as much as you want or need?

If you answered, yes - Stop reading! You obviously are practicing the fundamental principles that create success and reading further is a distraction. Go back to doing what you do best.

If, on the other hand, you answered No – then you don’t have enough sales. Sales create income and not enough income equals not enough sales. Solution – go get more sales.

Now, I know from making hundreds of presentations to countless sales professionals, some of you are a bit perplexed at my simplistic approach. How, you say, do we just go get more sales? We’ll get to that, but for now stick with me. The first step is increasing your sales volume. Simple. There is nothing hard about this concept. It is critical to grasp, however, because the solution is always to the left. That statement will make sense a bit later.

Question Two: If you don’t have enough sales to support your income needs, then aren’t you lacking in enough people to see – enough presentations or appointments?

This one seems obvious. If you are not generating enough sales volume either you lack people to see (enough appointments) or your closing skills need improvement. More times than not, the issue isn’t just closing skills, it’s people to present to and close.

Sell More: Having A Defined Sales Process

Some of the salespeople reading this article book may be muttering to themselves “face to face selling... I wish! If I could only get more in-person time with my prospects, I wouldn’t need to be reading this article!”

If that’s your situation – that once you’re with a prospect, you’re home free and you do really well from there on out in your sales process – then pay careful attention to what we’re about to share with you.

Your challenge is linkage. You don’t start each phase of your sales process with a clear picture in your mind of what the next step is going to be.

Perhaps you feel that your selling process should be different with each prospect or that if you had a template or a system you use with everyone, that would be insincere or it would somehow ring false when you put different people through that same process.

Let’s turn away from sales for a moment.

Let’s talk about brain surgery. Or dental work. Or flying an airplane. Or doing someone’s tax return.

These processes all have the following characteristics in common:

•They are executed by a professional
•He/she has had a good deal of training
•This professional has had plenty of opportunity to practice under the supervision of someone more knowledgeable and experienced
•This person is required to continue their professional learning throughout their career
•This person uses a clearly defined, proven, documented system for making incisions, using anesthetic, take offs and landings, or amortizing expenses
•Many of these processes are system-atized to the point of using simple checklists, logs, and computer programs to ensure the proper sequence and completeness of steps
•Any significant variation or omission in these procedures is at the risk of injury, death, lawsuit, bankruptcy, prison time, or all of the above

Sell More Using Sales Psychology

True sales pros use psychology to sell more, the psychology of urgency, time, choice and stories. Let’s look at each.

The psychology of urgency

Another typical sales scenario involves the salesperson doing everything right – until after the first appointment. Then, suddenly, the emails stop, messages don’t get returned, and the lead runs cold, leaving you scratching your head wondering how that nice, friendly, responsive, involved prospect dropped off the face of the earth.

Does that ever happen to you?

What you’ve just experienced is a good sales process gone bad for the lack of a key ingredient: urgency.

As Stephen Covey says, there is a big difference between the “urgent” and the “important.”

In everyday business, the urgent category includes soothing angry clients, “putting out fires,” production stoppages, surprise inspections or audits by regulators, labor problems, media blowups, and things of that nature.

The important category includes things like making employees feel appreciated, upgrading to new office technology, listening to someone’s ideas, increasing your industry knowledge, developing good corporate citizenship (charitable, environmental, etc) and so on.

Guess which category is at the top of every executive’s agenda each morning when they walk in the door?

If you’ve positioned the product or service you’re selling as a “nice to have” instead of a “have to have,” – or even better a “have to have now” – your leads will run cold. Simply put, buying from you (even if it’s important) takes a backseat to the urgent matters of the day.

If you as a salesperson haven’t identified the pain, then you will get a less than urgent response. If you walk up to someone on the street and they have a nail sticking out of their knee- they would have a high sense of urgency to have the nail removed. This is the same with the prospect. When you can identify their “nail” they will want to move on it quickly.

In my seminars, I ask people to think about these questions:

•Why is it urgent for the prospect to ACT NOW?
•What is the incentive?
•How can you create meaningful deadlines?
•How is buying both an important *and* an urgent issue?


Again, I’m not going to supply you with gimmicky stock phrases or clever comebacks, but rather suggest that you spend some time and energy thinking about how to intelligently and professionally address legitimate buying obstacles such as “We have no budget,” “We have no need for this product/service,” “We’re happy with who we’re using,” and “This is bad timing for us.”

I don’t believe in the process of “overcoming objections” – sounds too much like fighting. And if salesis a battle, you’re going to lose.

One method I like to use is simply turning objections into objectives. In other words, if you can intelligently address the objection in terms of reaching a goal, agreement, or solution that addresses the problem, you will be well on your way to collaborating with your future customer on buying your solution.

For example, if the objection is “it’s too expensive,” you can show, in clear dollars and cents terms (and using numbers supplied by your future customer!) how your solution will save money, generate sales, increase profits, reduce costs, etc.

You’re turning the price objection into a value objective.

The psychology of time

A lot of sales trainers suggest using the personal touch: handwritten notes, personalized gifts, etc.

We think these are powerful tools, but for different reasons. Whether a note is typed or handwritten makes little difference in and of itself. Whether the note comes with a small gift (personalized or not) also doesn’t really matter.

Cheap Mortgage Leads Equal Bad Leads

"You get what you pay for," the saying goes, and that's the real problem in the mortgage industry. A lot of mortgage lead companies sell leads to other mortgage lead companies which results in recycling leads within the mortgage lead industry before it even gets to the average mortgage loan officer or broker. The aftermath is not pretty, 20-40 calls a day for the prospective borrower just within the first 4 days if the lead being generated.

Obviously this creates a headache for the potential borrower who is being bombarded with endless phone calls, and unnecessary competition for already frustrated loan officers.

The Solution:

* A. Real-Time Leads

* B. Exclusive Leads

* C. Timestamped Leads

* D. Origin-stamped Leads

A. Real-time Mortgage leads are received within seconds of the borrower completing a short online form. These are perfect leads since the prospect is usually able to be contacted within 2 minutes of them filling out the form. The prospect takes the time to fill out a form so are not cold calls nor recycled. Just Fresh Leads. Also the prospect loves the fact that a loan officer got back to them so fast.

B. Exclusive Leads are leads that not only are designated for you but cannot be resold as a semi-exclusive or non-exclusive lead. Make sure the lead company you deal with is a reputable company has timestamped and origin-stamped the lead.

C. Timestamped leads are the only leads that should be bought. If a lead is not timestamped then there is no proof of when the lead actually was submitted. This is the problem that allows crooked lead companies to sell you recycled leads and waste your hard earned money.

D. Origin-stamped leads are leads that are stamped with the website that originated the actual lead. You should look for lead companies that obtain their leads through websites they own and operate themselves. If they won't tell you their website or don't have them posted then it's time to look else where. Otherwise they are obtaining them from third party companies and recycling them.

Remember you work hard for your money so be sure that when you invest with a mortgage lead company that you will be getting your money's worth.

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.