Selling: What You Should Really Know

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The sales world is a mix bunched of professionals who all have a different approach when it comes to selling, there are also many misconceptions out there that really need to be destroyed or at least made invisible.

Below you’ll find some helpful tips and pointers to understand selling:

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Sales is Art & Science

Sometimes we anticipate that Mathematics and Science will give us the answer we always seek however human intuition makes it that extra bit more difficult to fully integrate Science into the sales process.

The art of conversation, trust, meetings etc or basically the ‘dance’ is something few understand or have time for and this is when your sales process begins to fall flat on its face. Realise the efforts you need to put into the ‘Art’ and backup your findings with Science, then you have the perfect sales process.

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Your Conversation Involves Listening

Talking about every bullet point in the product guide is not going to sell anything, this is an old school tactic that was crappy then and is even worse now.

Listening is the new talking (this subject has been talking the daylights out of across the web, but it really is true).

When’s talking acceptable? During a product demonstration but even then ask questions that revolve around potential problems and future situations that your product/service can completely solve.

Drop the jargon and elaborate phrases, does this product solve the problem & how is all you need to be answering.

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The Sales Cycle

It’s long & at times frustrating (mainly in the B2B area) as meetings are cancelled, people forget about you, no one has the time and commitment to a long drawn out sales-fest is something no one considers fun.

Decision makers should be the target or present from the first step, without them the whole process is pointless and basically a back and forth conversation. (If this is your only option look to convert the person who you are conversing with into a ‘Champion’).

It’s a marathon and not a sprint (sorry for the cliché) to build trust, friendship and loyalty you can no longer be making that hard sell – just understand your customer and offer them something they can’t refuse, they’ll come to you in due course.

Qualification is the new closing and it really is true, the vast majority of sales professionals out there are willing to close on the day but go for a scatter shot – not knowing if they will most certainly win the deal or not. Qualification limits the guessing and allows you to measure the potential close at an early stage – cutting losses with investment and time before it’s wasted.

You have to be actively listening now so thinking about the next ‘pitch’ is no longer advisable – active listening means you can fully understand the problem which needs to be fixed.

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Trust & Loyalty

People do business with others they trust so having a questionable approach to your money back guarantee or selling a product that doesn’t solve any problems is going to hurt you bad.

Negative comments travel much faster than positive so you need to really be thinking through every answer you give and how you give it. The worst thing you can do is sell something that you have said answers all the problems but in fact does nothing at all.

People love to buy so focus on how you can improve the experience and improve sales; improve the ‘being sold to’ hate that people have and you’ll begin to win over the customers with loyalty (good reviews & comments) & trust.

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Accessible & Accountable

Everyone needs to have a direct line, to be honest if you haven’t then you’ve already fallen behind.

Make every customer/client you have feel like they are the only person you deal with; if a problem arises then you need to spend as much time as needed to get the problem solved regardless if it means you need to stay behind longer or work on a weekend.

Passing the buck is one of the most hated things for clients to deal with, getting passed to 3 different people who all need an explanation is tiring and stressful – if it’s your client then become their PA and do everything you can to get the situation fixed.

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The sales world is full of common misconceptions and ideologies that shouldn’t exist so try to avoid the more old school and cliché techniques to really get the sales coming in.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

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