"HEALTH navigator? Conflict coach? Pollution mitigation outreach worker? These
emerging jobs aren’t household terms yet, but they are a natural fit for older
people looking for new career opportunities, said Phyllis Segal, vice president
at Civic Ventures, a nonprofit research group based in San Francisco."
— That's the opening paragraph in Elizabeth Pope's article in the New York Times.
You might ask, "What does it have to do with the subject of this blog—Selling Face-to-Face?"
Amazon has recently upgraded its Kindle software, so what appears on the Kindle comes out closer to the visual quality and layout of the printed version.
What Amazon Prime means to you as a reader is that you can borrow it free, from Amazon, for however long you want. As I understand it, if you're a Prime member, and own any version of Kindle, you can borrow up to 12 books each year. Only catch, only one book at a time.
And if you borrow a book and find it so indispensable that you just gotta have it? Just "return" it, virtually, buy it, and borrow another.
If just want to buy Selling 101 in e-format, not borrow it, same link gets you there.
I needed a new laptop recently and did the usual rounds of stores. I ended up buying a HP from Staples, along with various accessories, and here's why: the sales rep asked good questions that broadened my thinking and gave me confidence that he knew his stuff, and that he was thinking ahead not just to making this sale but to winning my loyalty as a long-term customer.
I'd been around all the shops, and had in my mind settled on one at Sam's, costing around $1000. On the way to Sam's, I stopped at Staples for one final look, hoping they'd have finally gotten in some new Toshibas (my long-time laptop of choice). No luck on that front, but luck was with me as Evan stopped by to "answer any questions" as I was looking at one of the units.
Interestingly, instead of going for the sure thing and telling me the unit I was looking at was the usual "great choice," he began asking questions. (Whether the questions were Evans' own, or the result of Staples training I have no idea. But they were good.)
His first questions related to how familiar I was with computers in general. I passed on that score, so then he asked what I'd be using it for. Since I don't play online games, he said, then I didn't need one with an I-5 chip.
In short, his questions expanded my thinking. (I was upgrading from Windows XP to 7 and didn't know what I was getting into, and his questions guided me by bringing out the diffferences as they related to my actual work.)
He asked about my printers and my security software — a good way, of course, of expanding the potential sale, but prudent concerns all the same. My printers were fine, but my old security wouldn't jibe with Win7, so there was another sale.
All in all, his questions, drawn from his obvious expertise, built my confidence and trust in his various recommendations. That confidence made me more open to his further questions, and so on.
I wish I'd taken notes of the questions he used. Suffice to say, they went much beyond the kind of questions we more often run into, the questions that only sow distrust: "How much did you expect to pay?" and "Will you be paying by paper or plastic?"
As you know, in my books I focus on consultative selling and the use of the selling wedge, mostly in the context of making sales calls. on prospects My point here is that consultative sales questions can be equally useful when the prospect comes to you. Both involve selling face to face, just in diffferent contexts.
"Contingent workers—including part-timers, free-lancers, and contractors— consistently make up about 30 percent of the [American] workforce between 1996 and 2005. . . [and] . . . that number may be higher next time they measure."
You’ll find here free sales training articles and tutorials, checklists and sales tips, as well as links to our sales training books — all focused on Selling Face to Face.
The free sales training articles and tutorials here 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
In a previous post, we addressed buying signals in general. Now we look more specifically at the kind of buying signals you might encounter once you're actually face-to-face with the Prospect.
One sub-theme of this present blog is "reinventing yourself" — maybe reinventing yourself from an employee to a self-employed person (who remains self-employed by learning to those services face to face).
In that regard, US News has again published another very apropos item on one of its blogs, this one referencing Boomerater.com, which, if I understand it, is a new collaboration between Boomerater and US News.
Anyway, check it out; it may be very much of interest to you.