SOLD magazine arrived in my email box this morning, with a reprint of my article, "Sales Skills – Capturing the Prospect's Attention and Interest at the Start of Your Face-To-Face." SOLD is brand-new; this is only the second monthly edition, and it looks like a real find for sales professionals . . . as well as for those just starting out in sales, maybe in new business, consulting, free-agenting, and the like.
I'm frankly very impressed with SOLD (not just because of their wisdom in carrying my article!) but equally by the reader-friendly design and layout. If you're like me, your eyes are getting blurrier and blurrier from trying to read information on-line. Not so with SOLD. Not only do they have articles relevant to professional sales people, but—no less important—they have taken care to make it eye-friendly: not just pretty, but easy to pick up what articles are saying — no boring lines of type droning on like tiny marching soldiers.
SOLD is free, and the company behind it offers other info products, including online TV interviews and the like.
"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 that.
The article "CAPTURING THE PROSPECT'S ATTENTION AT THE START OF YOUR FIRST PHONE CONTACT" which had been here in four parts has now been published as a short E-book, and is 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 that.
The article "CAPTURING THE PROSPECT'S ATTENTION AT THE START OF YOUR FIRST PHONE CONTACT" which had been here in four parts has now been published as a short E-book, and is 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 that.
Overall, strive to become not just a passive listener, but an active listener. We'll be examining the how-to of active listening in much more detail later in this site, but here are some starting points to give you a quick sense of what active listening means in sales.
Active listening is a topic in itself, but means, among other things, not just sitting there, but becoming actively and visibly involved with the speaker.
Depending on the situation, that might mean giving clear feedback that you are understanding correctly, nodding, taking notes on items that are particularly relevant — as all of these are signals to the speaker that this is what you're really looking for.
Thus "active listening" may not be just listening: it could be saying encouraging words—like "I understand," or "Interesting," or "Mmm, I see," or whatever helps to the speaker realized that he or she is on-course to what you need to know.
Active listening may also mean asking follow-up questions as needed.
Yet active listening also means knowing when to be silent, and when to let the speaker "roam free."
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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)
You’ll find
here in Selling Face to Face.com free sales training articles and tutorials, checklists and sales tips, as
well as links to our sales training books.
The free sales training
articles and tutorials here in Selling Face To Face.com are adapted from the courses and workshops I
developed on contract for the “sales universities” of world-class marketing
companies such as Xerox in the United States and abroad, Kodak, Motorola,
Sylvania, Bank of America, and others . . . as filtered through my own
experience in marketing consulting services.
The aim is to provide practical sales
training across the spectrum from beginners (starting up new businesses, or
making career changes) to experienced sales people looking for fresh approaches,
or hoping to gain the kind of professional selling skills they would have
developed as attendees in big company sales training
programs.
In the
free sales training articles here, and in the related books, we cover topics
including,
Finding and getting through to sales
prospects
Telephone etiquette in getting past
screens
Sales cold calling: when, when not, and
how
Consultative selling— selling by asking smart
questions
Helping sales prospects become
more aware of the value of filling needs
Ways of closing
sales
Handling objections, questions, and
hesitations.
The how-to of Sales presentations and
demonstrations
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.
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)
