For anyone involved in sales, you know that they do not just happen by themselves! In order to be successful at sales, you need to do a serious amount of preparation, which obviously takes effort. The only place where success comes before work, is in the Dictionary!

Here is a list of things that you need to prepare, which will help you enormously when Prospecting for Clients:

· Ensure that your product knowledge is excellent before you ever contact a prospective client.

· Be clear in your mind what the benefits of your products or services are and what value you can add.

· Research companies and potential clients, to see who would benefit from your products or services.

· Get a clear picture of what their businesses are about and how you can support them and/or their businesses.

You might ask the question, “How long is a piece of string?” Well, it is as long as it needs to be for the particular purpose for which you plan to use it. Similarly, how much preparation do you need to do, and how often depends on the nature of the company and situation.

It is safe to say that without proper preparation, you cannot be successful at sales, no matter what business you are in. This is especially true in the service industry, where the prospective customers cannot see the physical product/s you are offering them!

It is always important to do your research on a company before phoning them for an appointment and definitely before actually presenting to them. Looking at the company’s website is a good place to start, plus Google and LinkedIn are excellent places to get more information about who the company is, what they do, who their clients are etc.

Throughout this course we will celebrate your progress at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. I really want you to succeed but you need to take action and keep going so look forward to these milestones of progress. I will see you there and cheer you on as you keep going from one milestone to the next >>

Let’s start off with distinguishing between Leads and Prospects. A Lead is any name of a person or company that may be a potential customer. In other words, we have no idea whether they would be interested in our products and services or not, nor do we know if they even need our products or services. On the other hand, a Prospect is a lead that has been qualified to the extent that we know they would have a need for our products or services, because they are buying equivalent products or services elsewhere.

Finding prospects is not a big deal, but finding good or ‘hot’ prospects is sometimes more of a challenge, and we need to find good prospects if we plan to sell to them

It is a great start to send the prospect a request to connect on LinkedIn, with a suitable message that establishes a relationship before you try and sell to them. This is an important part of your preparation. Are you currently doing this?

The message that I use is, “Hi (first name), your profile caught my attention today.Although we do not know each other, I believe that LinkedIn is a good place for business people to connect. Kind regards, Les Wiggill"

Once you have contacted the prospect, you need to start building rapport with your prospect straight away. This is very important, because it helps build trust and sets the prospect’s mind at ease. It is the start of the relationship building process, but what does ‘building rapport’ actually mean?

Once you’ve made the sales call and are speaking to your prospect and hopefully have built some rapport with them, the next step is to do a proper needs analysis with the person. This is an extremely important part of the sales process and is true of all selling interactions, irrespective of what you are selling! If you don’t qualify your prospects properly, then don’t expect them to buy from you – simple as that!

Regarding features and benefits, many people don’t care all that much about the features, but everyone is interested in the benefits, i.e. what you and your products/services can do for them, how it will help them and their customers, how it will improve profitability, productivity etc.

Throughout this course we will celebrate your progress at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. I really want you to succeed but you need to take action and keep going so look forward to these milestones of progress. I will see you there and cheer you on as you keep going from one milestone to the next >>

Some people are naturally good listeners, others are not. Fortunately, the art of listening is a skill that anyone can learn, even sales people! It is imperative that you learn to listen to the content (what they are saying) and the intent (how and why they are saying it).

Sadly, many people listen to just enough to be able to respond, instead of listening well enough to understand the whole message (content and intent), so that they can consider what has been said before responding to the speaker.

When you get objections from a client, it is a positive sign that they have some interest in what you’re offering, because it usually means that either they are not sure about some of some of the stuff you have told them, or else they have not been convinced of the value of your offer. It is a positive sign, because it gives you the opportunity to ask more questions, to ensure that you get to the real objections and then to deal with those real objections. If they are indeed real objections that you can answer, then you have a very good chance of closing the deal.

There are numerous different types of ‘closes’ that you can use at the end of the sales presentation to close the sale. It is important for you to get a definite ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ from the prospect, not a ‘Maybe’ or any other kind of excuse, because you either want the sale or the truth about why you’re not getting it!

There are numerous different types of ‘closes’ that you can use at the end of the sales presentation to close the sale. It is important for you to get a definite ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ from the prospect, not a ‘Maybe’ or any other kind of excuse, because you either want the sale or the truth about why you’re not getting it!

Different closes work in different situations and some of them work better with certain character types than others, so read your client carefully during the sales interaction and decide which Close would be most appropriate for that specific client.

In this lesson, we’ll look at the Assumptive Close. Closing the Sale using the Assumptive Close is easy if the prospect has agreed with everything that you’ve told them and likes what they hear or see during your presentation.

Two more powerful Closes that work really well with Driver Personalities are the Alternative Close and the Direct Close

The first one is an excellent Close to use with high Compliance or Analytical people and it is called the Balance Sheet or Summary Benefits Close

The second Close we’ll look at in this lesson is the Concession Close (“If I can, will you?”):

Many deals are lost because the sales consultant does not follow-up as promised. Closing sales is easy if you qualify your prospects properly, address all their needs and answer any objections they may have, plus keep following-up on each and every query they may have. Service and follow-up are all to poor these days, so when a sales person or a company does follow-up as promised and responds to every query, people take note. It makes a big impression! By offering excellent follow-up, you will stand out from the crowd and have a better chance of securing the business, and securing future orders too.

Let’s look at how to develop or improve your level of Confidence:

The best way to develop genuine confidence is to become an expert at what you do, in terms of your communication and listening skills, your written communication, EQ, product knowledge and your selling skills. Practice your professional skills and apply common sense in every situation.

One of the biggest destroyers of both productivity and joy in life and in business, is living with too much stress. When stress levels get too high, people lose all ability to think creatively, plan properly and to relax and enjoy life. It is important to recognise that a certain amount of stress is actually good and healthy, because it helps motivate us into action.

The problem occurs when we don’t know how to manage our stress and we let it overwhelm us, making us unable to think straight or to function properly.

Throughout this course we will celebrate your progress at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. I really want you to succeed but you need to take action and keep going so look forward to these milestones of progress. I will see you there and cheer you on as you keep going from one milestone to the next >>

Completing a character or personality profile (eg the Mini DISC profile) is a good place to start, in terms of understanding yourself and other people better. The concept of harnessing emotion has a huge impact on how effective you will be in sales. We’ve already alluded to the importance of managing your emotions when dealing with prospects and customers.

Complete a Mini DISC Character Profile to Understand Yourself and others better and how it relates to different character types.

Sales is an emotional business, and with the exception of your high Compliance people, who are highly analytical in all their thinking and decision-making, the other three Character types are all swayed to greater or lesser by emotions when making decisions, so the type of language you use can be very persuasive in helping them to connect with you and them being willing to do business with you.

In the workplace, this translates to perceiving, expressing, understanding and managing emotions in a professional manner at all times. It also means acting in a professional manner at all times, no matter how we are feeling, so it means we have to control our emotions and attitudes throughout every interaction to achieve the most positive outcome in any given situation, be it in sales or otherwise.

The level of energy and enthusiasm that a sales person has is usually a few degrees higher than that of the prospect. As a result, if your level of energy and enthusiasm isn’t high, your prospect’s enthusiasm could be down at floor level and you will never be able to sell anything to anybody if their energy and enthusiasm is that low.

One of the most significant and relevant aspects of emotion is the ability to show empathy towards others, especially in sales. Empathy means being able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes or see the situation through their eyes.

No-one can deny the importance of being enthusiastic when presenting and selling to prospects and clients, but it is just as important to maintain that level of enthusiasm when dealing with objections, because if not, you risk losing the sale at this point in the sales interaction. The biggest thing to remember about receiving objections, is that most of the time, the prospect wouldn’t bother with objections if they weren’t interested in your offer. By objecting, they are telling you that they are interested, but they are not convinced, which means they are giving you a golden opportunity to deal with their objections and insecurities, so that they can make an informed decision.

Attitude refers to how we think, feel and act, so our attitude will always affect and influence our behaviour. The old adage that says “Your attitude determines your altitude” is so true. Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or you can’t, you are right”.

Aptitude refers to our natural ability to do something, i.e., how good we are at doing things.

Attitude refers to the way we think, feel and act, so our attitude will always affect and influence our behaviour and our relationships. If you have a negative attitude towards life or towards another person, it will always impact your behaviour and relationships negatively. Similarly, if you have a positive and constructive attitude towards life and towards others, it will always impact your relationships very positively.

Adopting a ‘Customer for Life’ philosophy will encourage you to treat each and every prospect and customer as a special guest, someone who you would like to see and deal with for many years to come. Always make them feel welcome, special and valued. Make a positive impression on them every time you interact with them. Go above and beyond to give them outstanding service!

This Sales course has covered a lot of principles and concepts and breaking it up into individual lessons should have made it easier for you to process and apply each concept. If you feel you have missed anything, simply go back to those lessons and recap to ensure that you implement and apply all the principles, concepts, hints and tips, in order to become a professional super-salesperson!

Throughout this course we will celebrate your progress at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. I really want you to succeed but you need to take action and keep going so look forward to these milestones of progress. I will see you there and cheer you on as you keep going from one milestone to the next >>