Several things about selling are still terribly exciting to me. One of them is effectively using Sales Questioning skills to land a deal. Another is seeing the moment when salespeople realize that they haven't just gotten a little better at their job, they have made a quantum leap in sales performance. They have learned something transformative. They have gained sales capabilities—and earning potential—that will change their lives. They have become different, and they know it…
How to Train Salespeople
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Quantity vs. Quality
Most salespeople are aware of why Questioning Skills are important to their jobs. Not that they actually ask the BEST sales questions, mind you, but they know that they are supposed to question customers in order to find out whether the customers have any pressing needs for which the salesperson's products and services might provide solutions…
“Did You Get Some Training?”
Everyone in the sales training business is teaching salespeople that they need to ask more and better questions. They instruct you to use "open-ended" questions. They give you some tricks to pull, like, "Tell me more" or "What happens then?"...
Sales Training: It’s Not Just for Salespeople Anymore
If you have practiced the Action Selling system, then you have experienced the joy and satisfaction of making sales calls like a genuine professional. And if you manage salespeople who have learned Action Selling, then you know what a huge advantage it is to be able to coach and guide them in a common language designed precisely to describe the sales process...
Making Complex Sales Simpler
Complex sales can be defined as those with two basic characteristics. First, they involve lengthy sell cycles: They require more than one sales call, and they involve a series of milestones that must be completed in a particular order. Second, they involve multiple buyer types...
The Supercharged Sales Channel
When a company begins to master the Action Selling system, a series of discoveries occur. The sequence is predictable...
Make Selling a Team Sport
In many companies, salespeople essentially are left to their own devices. They walk into complex, business-to-business selling situations, with multiple decision makers and unclear buying criteria, armed only with their own background research and their own skills…
The Success Cycle
How long is your sell cycle? In most cases, this is a function of how many calls it takes for a salesperson to complete a deal and how effective your sales process is at moving the business forward with each call. If your salespeople "wing it" on client calls, flying by the seat of their pants, then the average number of calls is probably pretty high...
They Can’t Sell Loyalty If They Don’t Feel It
If customer loyalty means a bond that will outlast the next attractive offer from your competitors, then loyalty cannot be bought with discounts or special programs. But loyalty can and must be sold—by your sales force, consistently, on every call. The one thing your competition can never match or beat is a great relationship—a genuinely loyal relationship—between a client and one of your salespeople.
From Satisfied to Loyal
Research shows that even a customer who is perfectly satisfied with your company, your products, and your salespeople will nevertheless leave you for a competitor who offers a more attractive deal. That thought should disturb your sleep, because most salespeople, even good ones, do no more than satisfy their clients...
Are You Getting Customer Loyalty All Wrong?
Companies that want to capture more business from their existing customer base often devise loyalty programs as the means; they combine discount pricing with technology or special services, then try to sell customers on implementing the program. Three problems with this tactic exist:
Teach Skills That CAN be Taught
There are three basic necessities for a sales training/certification program that will produce lasting performance gains and a positive, measurable ROI. The program must teach a sales system that is genuinely more effective than what salespeople are doing now...
Your Greatest Asset
The greatest hidden asset in any company is the untapped potential of its sales force. The best investment opportunity available to any company, or salesperson, is to unlock that potential. How many other investments can show a documented ROI of more than 3:1 in 90 days and 14:1 in the first year?
THE NEW ACTION SELLING
A Quick Read That Will Boost Your Sales -- Guaranteed! The Action Selling series of sales books will help you achieve quota, sell bigger deals, shorten selling cycles and retain your customers.