We're teaming with Smashwords to bring our How to Sell Face-to-Face: Survival Guide for you to read or download online FREE! Yes, Free Sales Book! Free Sales Training book! Free stuff!
What's the catch? It's on Smashwords, and it's this week only— March 7-13, 2010.
We're teaming with Smashwords to bring our How to Sell Face-to-Face: Survival Guide for you to read or download online FREE! Yes, Free Sales Book! Free Sales Training book! Free stuff!
What's the catch? It's on Smashwords, and it's this week only— March 7-13, 2010.
"COLD CALL SALES AND PROSPECTING CHECKLIST: 14 PRACTICAL STRATEGIES WHEN COLD-COLD CALLING" which had been here in four parts is now a short E-book, available via Amazon.
You can read it on a Kindle, or in various other E-reader formats, including your PC. Amazon offfers free apps to enable you to do that.
Objections and questions as buying signals — cues that the prospect is ready to buy, or at the very least, nearly ready.
Sometimes, when you look through a prospect's question, or even what appears to be an objection, you find that they are subconsciously signaling their readiness to buy.
For example, you may encounter the question, "How soon could you install?"
"COLD CALL SALES AND PROSPECTING CHECKLIST: 14 PRACTICAL STRATEGIES WHEN COLD-COLD CALLING" which had been here in four parts is now a short E-book, available via Amazon.
You can read it on a Kindle, or in various other E-reader formats, including your PC. Amazon offfers free apps to enable you to do that.
When you're selling face to face, your non-verbal messages are usually at least as important as your verbals. If your body language, expressions, eye-contact, even voice tone don't synch with your words, then your prospects will tend to discount the words.
That is, if you talk-talk about what a great project you're selling, but your eye contact is minimal, if you look away, if you draw back — all those factors (markers of low enthusiasm and low trustworthiness) are sending the opposite message.
I had lunch the other day with William Shatner (well, not really Star Trek's Captain Kirk, just an incredible look-alike, Mike Broderick, the image of a younger, sleeker Shatner, but with that same infectious exuberance).
Mike, a former IBM financial type, took a buy-out and executed a career-change into the field of money-management, an aspect of which of course involves sales.
He wasn't there selling me anything, he was just running one of his presentations past me for my "expert" input, but, watching his moves, I was impressed.
Eye-contact: steady, relatively unblinking. Not so intense as to be off-putting, but steady, reassuring, confident.
Posture: leaning forward toward me,not slouching back in the chair (as I and most of the others in the restaurant were).
Expression: alert, focus on me, not the rest of the folks in the place)
Energy-level: enthusiastic, moving in the chair with excitement as we went over the benefits of his program.
Overall impression: confident, enthusiastic about what he is selling, glad to be doing that, conveying trustworthiness.
P.S. A long time ago, when I was first in the business of tapping the selling skills expertise of top sales people, I interviewed Bob Tuomey at Xerox, Rochester. He took me through the whole body-language scenario: don't slouch, sit upright, but as call progresses, move forward more in your chair until you are (as the saying puts it) "on the edge of your seat with enthusiasm."
P.P.S. Forgot where I first learned this: when the Prospect begins leaning forward, holding eye contact, energy in the eyes, that tells you you've captured that Prospect's interest. Maybe now is the time to experiment with a trial close.
The content in this post has been adapted from my books, How to Sell Face to Face: Survival Guide, and Selling 101. They are available in various e-book and paper editions; see below:
Survival Guide:Order e-book as Amazon Kindle (Amazon offers free apps that enable you to read it on your PC, Apple I-pad, I-pod, Blackberry, and others)
Selling 101 (third edition): Order e-book as Amazon Kindle (Amazon offers free apps that enable you to read it on your PC, Apple I-pad, I-pod, Blackberry, and others)
Personality tests address the questions, "Who am I— really, down deep inside? What am I best at? Am I missing my real potentials?" — questions we all ponder from time to time.
Introspection can take us only so far, which is why personality testing has become a significant industry.
We'll be adding a new book on personality testing here soon. In the meantime, here's another take on
Telephone etiquette with the gatekeeper or secretarial screen . . . professional ways of speaking with, and maybe even winning the gatekeeper as an ally.
Career transition rebounders such as those profiled in a Business Week article (and the related on-line slideshow) are examples demonstrating that you can leave the corporate nest and go on to successfully "sell your better mousetrap" or yourself. (Not explicitly mentioned is the very real issue of how to sell your newly-rebounded self, or your new venture. No matter: we cover that how-to-sell in this blog.)
The 29 people — career transition rebounders — profiled in the video/slide-show include,
