One of the passions i have is hunting down old hard to find sales and business information. This sales training video is absolutely a must see.  It is from one of the greatest ever sales trainers, called Elmer Wheeler.

You may have not heard of Elmer, but i can guarantee you have heard of some of his phrases, which you will see in this sales training video. He was instrumental in introducing the following phrases into the English language:

“Don’t Sell the Steak; Sell the Sizzle.”
“Don’t Write: Telegraph.”
“Say it with Flowers.”
“Don’t Ask If, Ask Which.”

Now let’s watch the Sales Training Video

The sales training video is  a bit corny at the beginning so you may want to start watching at about 6 minutes. It might seem old and out of date but this guy was a genius of his time and there is not 1 sales person alive today who could could not learn from his work.

[FLOWPLAYER=http://salesdnaltd.com/blog/wp-content/videos/MantoMan1947.flv,480,360]

Let me know what you think about the Sales Training Video on the comments below!

It must be because I have just come across the first sales related Christmas poem.

http://blog.meetingtowin.com/2009/11/17/twas-the-recession-before-christmas/

Have a read – its light hearted  style hides a great message to all sales people and sales managers in the run up to the end of the year.

Handling Sales Meetings

The blogger and author Geoffrey James  recently posted this  article  about sales meetings:

-  6 Ways to Really Irritate a Customer

which I thought I would share with you because it has some great lessons on sales training for any business to business salesperson.

Sales Meetings Tips

My personal favourites are:

1) Don’t do an information dump and

2)  Don’t show up and throw up.

For me these two tend to work hand in hand. If anyone ever came to me and opened up the laptop and uttered that phrase:

“I’m just going to tell you all about us”

The meeting would have an abrupt ending.

When I run sales training courses, I work with the delegates to put a meeting structure in place that always focuses on the client first by asking questions. Only after understanding their needs are any possible solutions fed back – if appropriate.

Top Sales Meetings Tips

My two top sales meetings tips would be:

1. Always ask how much time the other person has – even if you agreed a time before hand it is very likely that things have changed.
2. Always ask if it is possible to achieve your desired outcome at every beginning of sales meetings. This way you can work the meeting according to the response. For instance you might say “Gill, at the end of the meeting we should know enough to make a decision on rolling out the pilot project. Is that OK?”. Gill might say OK but she might also say “Sorry. No can do. I need My Vice Presidents rubber stamp on this. I had expected him to be here today but he was called away”. That’s not a problem for you now because now you can set the goal as rescheduling a meeting with the VP for next week. It’s better to agree this at the beginning of the meeting rather getting to the end and asking for something that was never on the cards

Read Geoffreys article(s) on sales meetings, you will like it and it will increase your effectiveness and ability to handle sales meetings.

Peter O’Donoghue – Modern Cold Calling

I have a confession – I have elephants breath!!

When you watch the video you will know what I mean:

Elephants breath is every where in our lounge!

“I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree,”

sighed the turkey,

“but I haven’t got the energy.”

“Well, why don’t you nibble on some of my droppings?”

replied the bull.

“They’re packed with nutrients.”

The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, and found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree.

The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fourth night, the turkey was proudly perched at the top of  the tree.

He was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot him out of the tree.

Sales Lesson:

Bull **** might get you to the top, but it won’t keep you there

“Can I also sit like you and do nothing?

The eagle answered:

“Sure, why not”

So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle and rested.

All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.
Sales Tip for the Day:

To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up

How To Sell: A project plan to structure your time

This is a fantastic one page project plan to get you thinking about the key reason and actions needed to make any sales strategy work.

My Goal: The most important part of the process where you clearly articulate the reasons why you are undertaking the sales project. What will it do for you? What are your objectives?

Resources I need: A fantastic way to get you thinking about what and who you will need to call on to make this sales project a success.

Resources I have: Never forget to be aware of all of the existing resources you have  and how you can include them. Databases, relationships with potential referrers, marketing materials – these are just some of the resources you might have available to you.  You might even have sales training available to you!!

Priority: Once you have made a list of the action points required you can prioritise them according to your own rating system. This could be  A – D or 1 – 5 e.t.c.

Time: Depending on your way of working you can use this for two elements. Firstly is the actual time you think it might take in minutes or hours and/or the second is the date by which it will be achieved.

Who: Are you going to do it ot can you delegate it or outsource it?

Action Plan: The actual items that make up the overall sales strategy. For instance if the Project is New Business Generation by a Targeted Calling Campaign, some of these could be:

• Acquire list
• Clean list
• Develop reason to call
• Develop powerful reference points to use in opening statements

Result/ Outcome: Once this part has finished what will success look like? What will have happened?

Purpose: This is the reason you are doing this in the first place. What will these actions help you achieve. Psychology shows us that one of the single biggest reasons we fail to do things is because we don’t have a strong enough reason why. Sometimes we just lose sight of that reason.

You can download the sales project plan by clicking the link above the document.

If you use this to structure your sales projects and activities I know you will sell more and be more effective.

The article  gives a great overview of how to use Google to do sales prospecting research.

Sales Training Tip – How To Research Your Marketplace

sales success for this business

About 80 minutes later we managed to get to our desk, collect the keys and we were on our way. The staff were friendly and efficient and chatting to them, we found out that this was actually a quiet day for them.

When we were talking lagter on, we worked out that this company was probably not that much cheaper than their rivals. You see, the car hire company priced on the basis that the fuel tank was empty and we had to purchase a full tank at the car hire companies rates. By the time we added this in, they were probably around the same price as the other companies.

There are some fantastic sales tips to be learnt here:

1. If you are in a price sensitive business, where you don’t have much chance to differentiate yourself then look to find a way to use price to your advantage. The car hire firm did this and the results were spectacular. In the 80 minutes we were there, they must have cleared 100 customers. The other 6 or 7 hire companies combined probably had a grand total of 5 clients while we were waiting. Thats good business!
2. Prepare for customers – Even though we were there for a while there was little more the company could have done to speed us through. They were frindly, efficient and never stopped to take a personal break. They looked delighted to be doing good business.

Have a look at your business and see how you can use price to your advantage.

As a final note though i do have to say that you must be careful about how you use these techniques. I was impressed withthe company but would probably not use them again.

Why?

Because I value my time. Next time i would prefer to pay a premium to speed through the airport and be sipping my san miguel by the pool while the rest of my fellow passengers were just collecting their keys.

If you sell to the 21 – 39 age group then a recent study by the Zandl Group might give you some interesting perspectives on what you need to focus on.

Do It Yourself Culture:

Consumers are increasingly adopting a do-it-yourself mentality to save money. This can be seen in shifts in:

• Cooking v Eating Out
• Bringing their own lunches to work
• Making coffee at home V Starbucks
• Doing their own home repairs V Bringing experts
• Seeking out cheaper, more underground, original entertainment venues

Online Barter:

Consumers are looking to the following sites for financial relief.

• Craigslist to sell/buy/barter
• Ebay to sell/buy/barter
• Paperbackswap.com to exchange books
• Couchsurfing.com for free accommodation – worldwide

Stay in touch  with the trends if you want your business to be a success for 2010 and beyond……… if you don’t know where to start then try http://www.trendhunter.com/

It’s funny but as a sales trainer and consultant it’s very rare that I wear a tie anymore. And do you know what I don’t miss them one iota!

I was reading through a classic sales ‘text book’ from the early 1990′s recently and was caught by the Way that the advise has dated so much in just ten years. I won’t give the name of the book because it was once regarded as the best sales texts books available and it would not be right.

The suggestions when it came to dress were:

‘Mens suits should be solid blue or gray, pinstripe or chalk stripe or modest gray plaid. Wool or polyester that looks like wool, is preffered. The darker the suit, the more authority it carries, although black is funeral. Men’s shirts and ties are important. Generaly, shirts should be white or pale blue or have mdest stripes………The ages of the salesman and the customer he is facing will affect the choice of dress. For salesman, considerbly younger than his customer, particularly buyers over the age forty eight, it is advisable that the salesman adopt the high – authority pattern of a dark suit along with a white shirt.’

Wow!

What detailed and specific advice. What happens to buyers at the age of 48? Is there some well known  ‘professional buyer menopause’ stage that kicks in?

Do you think that is true in today’s modern business world?

Personally I don’t but I would love to hear your thoughts. Personally I think that you have to dress appropriately for the circumstances. And if you are in a sales situation you should take the time to find out the perspective of the person and company you are going to see.

Thinking like this is still quite prevalent.  I was at an event recently and chatting away to someone who said:

“This event seems to be better than the last one I went to in London. It was full of scruffy gits, who couldn’t dress properly and not one of them was wearing a suit!”

Beware of taking a short sighted attitude like this in todays modern business arena. Some of the most wealthy, dynamic, forward thinking business people I know would never dreamof wearing a tie, never mind  a suit. Some you wouldn’t get out of their flip-flops!  However, if you were selling to this guy (he was a Sales Director) you would never get anywhere without a suit as a minimum. It’s not right because we all like to believe we are judged on the value we bring rather than appearances, but it still happens.

My own personal philosophy was very much moulded in my teens and in particular one instance when I went to buy a car. WhenI was 19, I was fortunate to be in a position to go and buy a brand new Volkswagen Golf through the family business. Although I was technically a University student at the time this was to be a ‘company car’. The problem was I  dressed like a student. And not a very good one at that!

I remember walking through a few showrooms where the salespeople just ignored me as if I was not even there. Yes, I looked scruffy but I as good as had a cheque for £15,000 in my pocket to spend.  I never really found any one to take an interest in me and had to force myself upon a salesperson after I got fed up of looking around garages. I will always remember that lesson.

Be careful who you judge!

If you are in sales then dress appropriately. If in doubt you can’t go wrong with dressing smartly or one way of putting it is  to dress how the people who advise your potential client dress i.e their bank manager and accountant.

My view on time management, activity planning and delegation took  a dramatic upheaval when I went through an exercise I found in a book by Dan Kennedy called “Time Management for Entrepreneurs”. I guarantee that your view of your own personal worth will never be the same again either!

Are you productive all of the time?

I guarantee that you are not. At best you are actively productive one third of your working day. That is engaged in activities that are going to make you money as opposed to firefighting. If you think you are productive 1/3 of the time then use that number in the example to follow. Be honest as you are only cheating yourself if you don’t. The rest of the formula works on the basis that there are on average 220 working days per annum and this is our ‘money making days. If yours is less than this because of extended vacation or lifestyle aspirations then again be honest with yourself and reduce this number.

An example of the formula is:

Target Earnings Example For Someone wanting To Earn £50,000

Your Example:

If your situation doesn’t lend itself to this way of calculation then make it work! For example take the total profitability of your business directly attributable to you and use that figure.

Hey, it might not be precise, but it’s a starting point that you can use to quickly evaluate what you are doing with your time.

I was recently tidying out some old paperwork and came across some notes I made when reading the Seth Godin Classic – “Purple Cow”. I think I made these notes back in 2006 or 2007 but they are just as relevant in todays business world.

Be Remarkable – old approaches just don’t work. The ways you have happily found, dealt with and kept customers for years are becoming increasingly ineffective. When was the last time you tried something new or revolutionary in your sales system?

You are Invisible – If your overworked, time poor audience doesn’t have the time or inclination to listen to you then you are just down right invisible. When was the last time you tried out a new way of communicating. Do you twitter? Do you post to Youtube? God forbid but do you write hand written letters? In the information age the old personal touch may just work you know?

Old Rule: - Create safe, ordinary products and combine them with great marketing.

New Rules -

Create remarkable products that the right people seek out. What can you do in your business that is remarkable? When was the last time you had a Being Remarkable brainstorm?

Happy consumers - The vast majority of people are happy with what they have got – they are stuck! It is a tough job to sell to the stuck so your only chance Is to a seek out those people that are actively seeking what you sell and want/like change.

Differentiate your customers: Find the group that loves what you do and is the most profitable and rewarding. Ignore the rest. Don’t cater to the masses. Cater to customers you would love to have.

Boring leads to failure! - Always.

Abandon Following The Leader - Does your company follow the leader in your Industry? What would happen if you abandoned that strategy and did something very different instead? When was the last time you made a strategy for being different?

Niche first Product later? – Can you identify the niche market first and then build or develop the product or service to be ‘remarkable’ in that niche.

Slogan - What is your slogan that people can use to spread the remarkable message about your company?

Are you looking for inspiration at the moment. At around £10 or less I would recommend Seth Godins – Purple Cow as a quick read to inspire you with ideas. Or read some more of this sales blog. It’s free!

The following article was first published in my Sales Newsletter. You should subscribe here — Sales Newsletter

Last year I was in the process of selling my House and had invited a number of Estate Agents around to show me why they should be get my business.The process was an eye opener and one that left me totally unimpressed with some of the Agents I met. They were there to sell me on the benefits of why I should place my house on the market with them yet they could not even sell themselves. One Agent even delighted in telling me:

“Oh no, I’m not a salesman. I try to show them the house and stay out of the way”

Considering he was asking for a significant chunk of my money to sell my house, this was not what I wanted to hear.

One Agent did a reasonable job of asking me some good sales questions as she walked around my house. She was at the top of the list of my choices even after she had told me her fee was 1.5%. The cheapest agent was asking 0.75%.

I asked the Agent a question I usually ask anyone that I am considering doing business with and there does not appear to be a clear choice:

“Why should I choose You as My Estate Agent?”

I was hoping she would substantiate her high fee with something like:

• We have a completely new marketing system which means that we have been proven to get 30% more viewings than other agents in the critical first 2 weeks.

• We understand choosing an Agent can be difficult and that there is a level of risk involved – usually with you. Therefore we guarantee that if we do not sell your house at the price we recommend within 60 days then we will charge no commission.

• Here is an independent report that shows the average time taken to sell a house in your area with other Agents, is 85 days and our companies average time is 42 days. The benefit to you is that we are proven to sell faster and at the full market value – guaranteed.

What happened next was the Agent taking a sharp intake of breath, pulling a few tortured facial expressions, hesitating for about a minute and then replying:

“Oh, OK then. I can do it at 1%”

That was not what I wanted either! I wanted her to impress me and instill confidence in me that she was the best choice available. I wasn’t looking for a discount – yet!. At that point she went from the top of the list to the bottom.
The whole point of that personal tale was to get you thinking. -

“How would I answer that Question?”

That question is the basis of success in any business and in any sales position.

I regularly teach Sales Training Courses where the delegates would be looking for me to give them the magic words to say on their cold calls, telephone conversations and sales meetings. I’m afraid that those magic words that will guarantee you the business every time do not exist. All too often it is not the individuals fault as they have never been shown what the benefits of doing business with their company are.

Sales Success is built off the back of hard work and preparation. My top Tips for success are:

• Draw up a features and benefits list of your business and of every product and service you offer. Yes, I know this is sales 101 but do you really do it in your business? Concentrate on the benefits to your prospective customer/client. Learn to live a ‘day in their shoes’. Talk about them – Not You. This is one of the single most important processes in any company because once this has been undertaken it can be used for the basis of all of your marketing materials and sales presentations.

• Use the following aids to assist you — Link every feature with the phrase “which means that” i.e. Sales DNA offer an unconditional guarantee on our sales training (feature) which means that if at any time you do not feel you are getting a significant return on your investment then we will refund all of your investment. This means (a variation) that there is absolutely no risk to you at all.

• Get one person in your organisation to play devils advocate. It is their job to play a potential customer and ask “So What?. What does it mean to me?” to every benefit offered. The tougher they are the better the results!

• Try starting every sentence with “You benefit from…………” rather than I / We.

• Document the results of this process and ensure that every new member of staff knows as well as they know your product and service details. The simple act of doing this has proven to make new starters more effective in up to half the time it has taken sales employees prior to this being introduced.

• Make sure that you make this a continuous process and that all members of your company are involved.

• Make it part of your company culture that everyone can answer “Why should I use You?”. Every member of staff should be able to articulate this and should be asked regularly to make sure that everyone knows.

• Once you get so good at this that they become second nature be careful not to over do it! When you get good at this the natural human tendency is to tell every prospective client or customer every fantastic benefit you have to offer. Don’t! Limit it to the main 2-4 benefits that are relevant to the person. People can’t process more than this and the benefits start to lose their impact.

• If you are having trouble developing some fantastic, client focused answers then why not do something radical. Ask your existing clients why they continue to do business with you. The answers may surprise you.

Many marketing consultants and marketing text books advocate the development of a USP. That is a unique feature of your product, service or company that no one else has to offer. I think these are fantastic when done well but are hard to develop in many businesses.

In my experience with my sales consulting and sales training the very fact that you and your staff can articulate what it is you do and why they should use you is probably the best USP you can ever develop. I guarantee your competitors aren’t that great at it!

The very first thing I do is remind myself and them of one of my favourite sayings from Dale Carnegie:

“There is only one way…to get anybody to do anything….And that is by making the other person want to do it”

That should be the basis of all ethical negotiation and influence training.