Who needs the most sales help - Direct Marketing

2/24/2010

Hands Down... Direct Marketing representatives need the most sales help. The reason is most have not been trained to sell. Most like Mary Kay or Avon representatives hail from other professions.

It is one thing to use a product and love the features and benefits of that product. It is an entirely different thing to actually sell that product.

Where most Direct Marketing reps fail is in their opening statements and their probing questions.

Basically they don't give themselves the opportunity to move forward with their openings and they don't ask the right questions to find out what the prospect really wants or needs when probing for solutions.

Since they cannot open or probe they ultimately lose interest and quit the business. Essentially once they run out of friends and family to sell to they lose interest in being an independent representative.

Training Direct Marketers is all about giving them the confidence to sell their products. Teaching them that opening, building rapport, and carrying on a conversation with their prospects can be as fun as speaking to their friends and family.

Can everyone learn to sell? Yes - if they really want to learn they can become decent salespeople and succeed in their independent businesses. But... even though they can be taught what to do they have to practice what they have learned and actually use it on every call.

To review all sales articles by David Peterson click here

Afraid to Close the Sale?

1/26/2010

When people think of closing they think about the art of closing or some times you will hear that the sales rep has "the gift" of closing. Actually the act of closing the sale comes naturally in the sales process.

So if the close should happen naturally in the sales process why is it that sales people fail to do so?

There are several answers to this from not listening to the prospect to thinking that they have tried to close. But one opportunity I want to focus on right now is the salesperson who is "afraid to close."

This is a real phenomenon that happens every day of every year. If listening to 1,000s of phone calls in my career has taught me anything is that salespeople will avoid closing statements because they are afraid the prospect will say "NO!"

In the sales reps mind it is much easier to keep going, keep probing, keep pitching, keep building rapport - if you keep going the prospect never has a chance to say "no." In their mind it is better to keep a sale advancing vs. possibly losing the sale over a closing statement.

If they keep advancing the sale then certainly, eventually the prospect will just speak up and ask to buy the product - right?

The problem with that thinking is your sales representatives are just educating the prospects they are not trying to sell. Once a prospect is educated he is extremely valuable and fair game to any salesperson that happens to call on him.

Please try to remember - Your sales reps are not the only salespeople calling on these prospects. Professional salespeople win more orders!

Are your sales reps "afraid to close?" I bet you have a couple of them in your organization right now with that mentality. You can coach this out of them but you first have to recognize that this situation exists.

To review all sales articles by David Peterson click here

"Leads to Prospects, Prospects to Opportunities, Now What?"

1/10/2010

I have written several articles this week on the topic of CRM tools. What to expect and how they should be used. To me all of them do the same basic job, they all allow you track your leads, prospects, opportunities, customers, and vendors.

The flavor you choose from the extremely difficult but powerful Saleslogix to the overly simplified excel spreadsheet really is not as important to me as the data the sales representatives are entering into these systems.

Here the ole cliché really resonates:

Garbage in - Garbage out!

Sales is a process, leads turn to prospects, prospects have opportunities, opportunities create tasks, and ultimately prospects convert to customers.  Since each customer could have multiple opportunities and each opportunity could have many dozen tasks you can see that a lot of entries are being made into the CRM system.

Now what do we do with all of those entries?

Sales representatives have to be taught to realize creating the next "follow up" task is not always a good thing. It implies you have something to "follow up" about. And if you don't have something to "follow up" about then they have to figure out where all of these prospect are in the sales process.

Sales Managers have to be disciplined enough to make sure the CRM tools are accurate and up to date. This required discipline is a task that must be assigned to the Sales Manager. If the reps are not keeping the CRM up to date with accurate information then that should be a disciplinary action taken by management.

I hate to come off hard but if you have this problem in your office, garbage in - garbage out, then your sales reps really don't know who to call today and why they are supposed to be calling. In a nutshell, your sales department is lost.

The sales tip of the week... Get those CRMs up to date with accurate information before MLK day. By the way... The New Year has already started.

To review all sales articles by David Peterson click here