“Accepting the consequences, good or bad, will free you; take a risk, but be aware that things sometimes turn out differently than you expected.”
-Marcia Wieder
No matter what you try to sell, you really won’t sell anything without getting a prospective buyer to purchase your product or service. In attempting to sell your merchandise or services, the sales letter you send out is when and how you talk to your prospect.
All winning sales letters speak to your prospect by creating an image in the mind of the reader. They set the scene by appealing to a desire or need, then flows smoothly into the visionary part of the sales presentation. This visionary process describes in detail how wonderful life will be and how good the prospect is going to feel after the product is purchased or the service has been performed. This is the heart, soul, and secret of a million dollar sales letter. In your sales letter and your marketing campaigns, give your prospect a clear vision of the benefits they will receive or take away from what you are offering.
For this to happen, your winning sales letter must follow a time-tested and proven formula known by the acronym AIDA:
A - You must get your prospect’s Attention.
I - Give your prospect an Interest in what you can do for her.
D - Create a Desire for the benefits you’re offering.
A - Request some Action from your prospect.
The Attention for your offer first comes from your headline. If it’s not compelling or a heart-stopping attention getter, work a little harder to make it so. Look at other advertisements that have made you stop and take a second look at what was offered. Then come up with a better one of your own that fits your offer. A powerful headline is 80% of the success or failure of your sales letters and promotions.
When your headline expresses your unique positioning statement — the million dollar phrase that captures in just a few words the “essence” of what you have to offer and how it will benefit a customer. A compelling headline can go the extra distance as an opening line for your sales letter and goes a long way towards establishing your “brand.”
Is the offer of Interest to your potential customer? What makes your product or service distinctive from your competition? Why would a prospect buy your product or use your service over another’s? Make the image of your product important. Whatever you offer should have the power to stay in the marketplace a long time. Just because life changes so rapidly, your product and/or service doesn’t have to conform. Potential customers need to know you’ll be there when they are ready to purchase your product or service.
How can you make your product or service Desirable? This is where the benefits are highlighted. Will it make the prospect feel more healthy? Save money? Lose more pounds ? Will it make them look more beautiful? Find ways to communicate the benefits to your potential customers. Use words that are powerful and irresistible like: magic, caring, power, richer happier, abundance, appealing, and enticing.
After announcing or promoting your offer, what is the result or, what type of Action do you wish your prospect to take? Be clear on your directions. Do you want them to request additional information, by telephone? By email? Must she mail a check? Call for further details? Or, just give an opinion?
Working the above AIDA formula into each of your sales letters and business marketing campaigns will determine the success of your business. And putting passion, purpose, and truthfulness into each sales message will work wonders - and bring you success.
Copyright, 2004
Gerri D Smith is publisher and host of multiple Gateways to inspiration, motivation, and support for individuals, women business owners, and entrepreneurs. Gerri’s internet resource offers ways to unlock the doors to your personal and business empowerment. Now is a perfect time to own your own business and discover some of the best ways to market a product. One is by letting your customers see it before they buy it. This concept is a sharing of information and is made available by the Internet. Best of all it’s delivered right to your email doorstep. Why not invest in your future, now. To help you reach more of your personal and business goals, subscribe to Gerri’s Free bi-monthly inspirational newsletter.
Visit: http://www.distinctivebusinesswomen.com Or, send a blank email and your correct email address and mailto: gerri@distinctivebusinesswomen.com?Subject=EZ-Scribe
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Second in a series of articles, we’ll discuss various issues and practices associated with modern ways of selling over the phone.
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The New Telemarketing is a set of selling practices designed to accomplish several things:
(1) To sell more goods and services than its predecessor, the “traditional” style;
(2) To be less offensive than its predecessor to buyers;
(3) To be consistent with a customer service style of communicating;
(4) To help in recruiting and retaining qualified phone representatives and managers; and
(5) To repair and reform the image of telemarketers in business and consumer communities.
We need new practices, because traditional telemarketing, which utilizes a command-and-control communication style is inherently offensive, inefficient, and out of date.
It has resulted in hostile legislation (chronicled in the first article in this series), fewer sales, and a poor image in business and beyond.
The main driver of telemarketing is people: buyers and sellers. Traditional telemarketing offends and degrades all parties, and a proper replacement will elevate the process and make it a more enjoyable and productive process for all.
The New Telemarketing will produce more sales, at a lower cost. It will enable companies to recruit and retain high quality personnel, who will earn a better living, and it will rehabilitate the image of practitioners.
What Thomas Watson did at IBM to improve and reform selling, we need to do with telemarketers across companies and industries.
In later articles, we’ll discuss exactly how The New Telemarketing differs from its predecessor style, and how it works.
Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone®, You Can Sell Anything By Telephone! and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com
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If you’ve been around the Internet for more than a week or so you know that everything is hopping and moving fast and that using audio, webcasting and podcasting are where it’s at.
Most direct sales representatives are content building their business using the traditional means and supporting their downline with phone calls and emails. But, let me tell you, if you’re not exploring the use of audio with your direct sales business you’re missing out not only on profits, but also on FUN!
Here are some quick ideas for making use of audio with your direct sales business:
1. Recruiting - Record a 4-5 minute audio about your career opportunity. Load the audio up on a one page sales letter or onto a voice mail for potential recruits to dial in and listen. You can even turn this into a weekly or monthly podcast and update the general information with specific company recruiting specials, interviews with top sellers in your company or with the company founders.
2. Customer service - Have a weekly audio newsletter for your customers. Do product spotlights from your catalog, talk about monthly specials and have customers call in their testimonies on how your product has worked for them. Do customer contest drawings and get your listeners involved.
3. Bookings - Create a hostess hotline audio series where hostesses can listen to tips on getting ready for your home party and load that up on a password protected webpage. Don’t let this replace personal contact with you, rather make it a convenient way to communicate all those things that you always need to tell your hostess and a fun way for her to listen to it uninterrupted at midnight when all her kids are in bed… and you are too!
4. Downline - Do a weekly or monthly podcast meeting for your downline. Celebrate accomplishments, talk about products and specials, update them on any corporate news and do new recruit intros or interviews with top producers. Have a series of audio trainings for new recruits that include how to book a party, how to conduct a party, recruiting ideas, how to use the company resources, etc. Make it fun and involve others in your group as well. This is especially helpful when you have a large group of out of town downline who might feel neglected if you’re having only local fact to face meetings.
This list is just a start of all that you can do with audio for your direct sales business. It really is fun and not too difficult either. You can go as simple as just purchasing an inexpensive MP3 player/recorder up to getting a full system to record via your computer. Help and resources abound on how to take it from recording to the point of getting it to the listener. Start simple, play with it and then expand into more as your time and budget allows, but just do it! You and your business will be glad you did!
Annette Yen has 20 years of direct sales experience and is currently with www.funontheark.com. She loves sharing ideas with other direct sales moms. Sign up for her free direct sales audio ecourse at www.directsalestools.com.
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As a sales training person you are well aware that many times news salespeople will be over persistent in order to achieve the sale. Often they will push the sales process along too fast and fail to answer objections from the client or fail to develop a relationship with the prospect or the potential customer. This leads to huge problems in that on one hand your salesperson is very persistent but on another hand they are harassing the client.
This can lead to burned territories and upset feelings from prospects and actually drive them away from your company to your competitors. Sales training professionals and sales managers both have to be watchful of their sales force and make sure that their salespeople are not harassing prospects, yet are persistent overtime in developing a proper relationship and also understanding the customer’s interest, objections and questions.
Sales trainers need to make sure that the salespeople understand that persistence and perseverance is important however, harassment and acting like a pest will kill the sale. If a salesperson is persistent, but harasses the client they’re wasting both the client’s time and the salesperson himself. As a sales trainer is important for you to establish the difference between these two methods and help the salesperson understand where to draw the line. Consider all those in 2006.
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Cold calling. Most people hate to do it and there is a cottage industry of people making a profit by selling ideas on how to generate business without cold calling. They’re making money because they are using a basic marketing tactic that most of us have forgotten how to use - give your customer what they want! Tell a salesperson that they can get appointments without making cold calls, tell them to buy your book, and you’ll make money hand over fist. Why? Because it’s a solution that fits what that market wants.
The fact of the matter is that there are many things you can, and should, use to help generate leads. However, business-to-business cold calling will always be an effective basic tactic that will help you get an appointment with your prospect.
Effective appointment setting begins with 4 1/2 simple steps that will help you get back to the basics of giving your prospects what they want.
The steps are so easy and basic that you might have a tendency to be suspicious of them. But if you just follow along you’ll be on your way to doubling your sales appointments in record time.
Step) Put yourself in the place of your prospect. Think about what it will be like to get a call from you. You know your product/service inside and out and are hopefully excited about and believe in it. Your prospect isn’t excited about your product/service and doesn’t believe in it yet. You have set aside time in your day to make calls but your prospect hasn’t set time aside to take your call. That’s why it is very important to make the call all about them. Give them what they want out of a cold call - hint: the solution to what they worry about at work.
Step 1) Identify your ideal customer and their critical wants and needs. At the very least you should have some generic information about the markets that you serve and the obstacles that they face from industry magazines, trade associations, or industry analysts to help you target your cold call message.
Step 2) Ask the “cold sweat” question. “What is it that wakes your prospects up at 3AM in a cold sweat and in such a troubled state that they would give anything to solve that problem?” If you answer this question within the first 7 seconds of your call, you will be more likely to gain the attention of your prospect and be that much closer to gaining an appointment with them.
Step 3) Create multiple positioning statements that focus on solving your prospect’s most difficult problem or achieving their most important goal.
Step 4) Test those positioning statements and determine which one results in better dialogue with your prospect and gets you the appointment.
Here’s a very successful sample cold call script that I’m using for my own business based on the 4 steps:
Good morning Mr/Ms. VP of Sales, this is David from EMDCO here in Chicago. We are the major B2B lead generation firm in the area. Because of our expertise in your industry, we’re able to solve the problems of the call reluctant/time constricted sales force by delivering quick, reliable, and affordable lead generation services. The reason I’m calling you today specifically, is to set up an appointment so I can tell you the way in which we’ve been successful with (name client) companies. How’s (day) at (time)?
That’s it! I mention that I can solve what most owners, presidents and sales directors worry about. They are always thinking about the revenue numbers they have to hit, they know they have sales people that don’t make the calls for various reasons and they know they want a reliable source of leads. I know I’m not wasting my prospects time with a telephone introduction like that.
Using this simple 4 step process will help you formulate your own quick introduction, allow you to quickly answer any questions they have about you or your product/service and redirect the call back toward getting the appointment.
David Wells is a business development expert, speaker, trainer, consultant and founder of http://www.emdco.com a provider of business-to-business lead creation, data confirmation and integrated marketing solutions.
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Rather than focusing on closing sales, focus on helping people to buy. Being governed by fear of rejection can make the task seem insurmountable, or an unattainable plateau. Many sales people take rejection far too personally. Being valued is important to self image, and self esteem and rejection can cause you to question that value. Unfortunately, in most cases the focus is on your personal fear of rejection rather than helping people make a good buying decision. The focus must be transferred and primarily centered around helping prospects to buy, and to make good buying decisions. Prospective clients are not concerned about how we feel, it’s how they feel; it’s not about us, it’s not about me, it’s about them! Shift your focus and you will immediately shift the fear of rejection.
If all of your attention is on yourself, and what’s in it for you, you will rarely get a sale. Very few people out there want to be sold. You don’t want to be sold. I don’t want to be sold. With that in mind, instead of selling, give your prospects a reason to buy.
Go in with greater confidence, and concern, shift concern from yourself and your company to the prospect. Shift your focus and change your thoughts. Provide options and choices that fit your prospects wants and needs. Focus on helping others…your prospect in particular. Go into each meeting with a genuine desire to help your prospect improve their life. Even if you are selling to businesses, the end result is all about making their life better through increased business success.
Sincerity, is a very important factor in helping any prospect to buy. As I mentioned earlier, go into each meeting with the attitude that whatever you do, you will leave your prospect better off than when you came in.
You are the most important part of the sales process, you are the most important factor that can build trust, build rapport, and build relationships. Be real, be authentic and present what you have to offer in a very sincere manner. Integrity is the key. “I know exactly how you feel, because I felt the same way.”
Follow these steps in your calls and watch your sales results soar!
Greg Beverly is a sales coach dedicated to helping create abundance for all who seek it. Find out how YOU can become a sales champion and live the life of your dreams by visiting http://www.salessuccess.yougethelp.com today.
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In most businesses, when sales are slow or low, the first reaction is to spend more on marketing. Create better adverts, more adverts; direct sales letters is the cry. But is this always the right solution?
Let’s take a step back and examine the issue more closely.
The first thing is to examine the numbers to see what they reveal. The critical ratio we need to look at is the conversion rate from lead / enquiry to sale. This will show us immediately where our emphasis should be.
Let me explain…
The numbers tell us that you’re getting 100 enquiries per month and tracking shows 25 convert into customers. What we also see is that 75 don’t become customers. This is the group you need to focus on. Typically, some will never buy so we can eliminate another 25. That leaves 50 who are still in the market.
What happens to them? If they didn’t buy from you, where did they buy? No doubt a competitor. Depending on the market, it may be that your advert stimulated their interest, but because you didn’t connect with them and make the sale, they spent their money elsewhere.
In other words, your advertising generated sales for your competitor. So when he sees your next advert, he’s laughing all the way to the bank. Why should he advertise when you do it for him?
Suppose you decide to either improve your adverts; better headlines, copy, offers etc, or simply double your advertising expenditure. Now instead of 100 leads, you get 200. Only you still convert 25%. Make 50 sales, yes, BUT you’re now leaving 150 unsatisfied customers to spend elsewhere. If 50 never buy, there are now 100 buyers still out there.
Your competitor thinks this is hilarious. “Guys, we’re going to do well this month,” he tells his staff. “Fred is running more ads”.
Let’s take a better view of the situation. Instead of looking to the lead generation process, you teach your staff how to increase their conversion rate. You still get 100 leads but now you convert 45%. You’re making 45 sales instead of 25; 25 still don’t buy and instead of leaving 50 unsatisfied buyers for your competitors, you’re now only leaving 30.
Increase conversion to 50% or better and starve your competitor by reducing the number of unsatisfied buyers left in the marketplace.
Now look to your lead generation process. Stimulate more buyers and capture the lion’s share by converting more of your own leads into customers.
Is this hype or reality? Let me give you simple four real-life case studies so you can decide for yourself.
Docwise Information. A software company providing records management solutions. Needed to make more sales but in fact, couldn’t convert the leads they had. Went looking to create more effective advertising but the diagnosis was that the conversion rate was too low. Within six weeks of starting a training program, their sales had increased by $32,000 without a dollar spent on marketing.
Acorn Software. One day of training took a 10% conversion rate to 50%. Over a four-month period, sales increased by $100,000. Current conversion rate is around 50% resulting in regular $50,000 months. In less than 12 months sales have increased 10-fold.
AAA Action Hot Water. Distributors of Solar Hot Water systems. A simple review of their sales processes resulted in a staggering 100% increase in sales in 1 month. At the same time, advertising expenditure was reduced!
Phantom Screens Sthn Qld. Simple changes to their phone answering and sales processes and with no change in advertising content or expenditure, conversion rates increased by a staggering 250%.
Hype or reality? You be the judge. Albert Schweitzer once said, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing.”
Does sales training come before marketing expenditure?
Categorically yes. There is absolutely no point in increasing the number of leads you generate if you can’t increase the conversion ratio. Learn how to do that first otherwise the sales explosion you create will be for your competitor.
About the author:
James Yuille is a sales and marketing consultant and trainer with over 32 years experience. He is based in Brisbane, Australia.
His free weekly sales and marketing newsletter provides topical information for business owners and salespeople. Find out more at http://www.jamesyuille.com
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I’m not a fan of “The Donald” and I had never seen his hit show until last week. Bernadette, my wife, seems hooked on “The Apprentice” and makes a habit of watching every Thursday while I usually go off to our den to read a book. Each week, she encourages me to watch - and each week I decline. I keep telling her she is probably the only person over 35 to be interested in his show. “Oh, I think you’d be surprised,” she tells me.
Last week I referred to the Runaway Bride in my newsletter and told Bernadette I was amazed at the responses I got from readers. “Why don’t you write about The Apprentice,” she asks. “You’ll be amazed at all the selling insights you can cull from each episode. See what kind of response you get.”
So, reluctantly I watched the show. However, while I watched, it was through the lens of the sales trainer that I am. When I conduct a Sales Training Seminar, I often ask salespeople and sales managers to name their most important tool - one they rely on every selling day. Surgeons have a scalpel, sculptors their hands, cooks their favorite knives: “What is the ultimate selling tool you rely on,” I ask them? They never get the right answer. I hear: palm pilot, cell phone,
support staff, products, yada yada yada, etc.
However, the most important tool for the sales professional is
“words.” It is the “words” you use that sets you apart from others and determines your level of success. So as I watched Tana - the street smart one - and Kendra - the book smart one, I listened to their words. Both Tana and Kendra claim to have sales backgrounds so they should be savvy in the use of words.
Here’s a sampling of what I heard.
Tana: I have the Three Stooges working for me
I can’t count on these people
I won’t hesitate to get rid of these people
How can I depend on three idiots
I’ve f—— had it
There was no love on this project
I did this on my own
I want to punch somebody
I have a bunch of knuckleheads on my team
I can run with the wolves
Kendra: Don’t be sorry - just make it good
My team worked harder for me than they did for their own
positions
Pleasing the sponsors was our number one priority
I want to inspire people to action
I’m so proud of everybody
We did it as a team
Bye you guys (hugs)
We had our differences in the past, but I can’t
remember what they were
These people believed in me
I don’t need Caroline and George to help me decide who to hire. Tana had a brochure that wasn’t ready on time and when it was ready it was discovered that it hadn’t been proofread! Poor Governor George Pataki didn’t have an American flag to carry in the parade of flags, but Tana did offer him a donut and coffee; and the entire event did not start on time. She wouldn’t get my vote.
I hate to do it, but I guess I’m going to have to tune in this week to see if “The Donald” agrees with me. I know what words he’ll use: To one he’ll say “Your fired,” and of course to the other he’ll say “Your hired.”
In sales, I believe, if you listen to their (The customers’) words they’ll buy from you. If after you listen to their words and you deliver a presentation based on what they told you (Their words) - they will buy even more from you.
When you come right down to it, you have a choice between using the right words and the wrong words. Sure everyone I talk to thinks they’re doing okay in this department. If you’d like to be as sure as the rising sun, that you don’t sound pathetic, you might want to listen to my new CD, “How To Avoid Sounding Pathetic During A Sales Call,” - 33 phrases that you should immediately banish from your vocabulary.
You can use this link to check it out.
http://www.meisenheimer.com/products/patheticcd.htm
As broadcaster Bill O’Reilly likes to say, “So what say you? Who would you hire?”
Now go out and take care of business . . .
Jim Meisenheimer
Guru No-Brainer Selling Skills
P.S. - Here’s the link for the “How To Avoid Sounding Pathetic” CD
http://www.meisenheimer.com/products/patheticcd.htm
Jim Meisenheimer is the Guru of No-Brainer Sales Training.
His sales techniques and selling skills focus on practical ideas
that get immediate results. You can discover all his secrets by
contacting him at (800) 266-1268 or e-mail: jim@meisenheimer.com
Use this link to sign-up for Jim’s FREE No-Brainer Selling Tips
Newsletter and to get your copy of my Special Report titled,
“The 12 Dumbest Things Salespeople Do.”
http://www.meisenheimer.com
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The 80/20 rule in sales is not a myth. Believing that it is inevitable and that all sales organizations or service industry professionals must live with 80 percent of their sales team members selling only 20 percent of the products or services is the fallacy!
The articles in my series of submissions to Ezine Articles were basically written to help sales managers, representatives and service industry professionals to eliminate the literally hundreds of sales and sales management myths that lead to an 80/20 configuration of their sales force in the first place. If you have read a number of these articles you learned that developing a 100 percent producing sales team starts with hiring the right people, training them in sound consultative selling principles and then coaching them to become 100 percenters. By reading my submissions, then you can obtain literally dozens of proven techniques and field-tested systems to help eliminate the 80/20 rule in your organization. The 80/20 Rule is also discussed in some detail in the e-learning manual entitled 101 Sales Management Myths at: http://www.TheSellingEdge.com/myths4.htm
Remember, that the 80/20 rule dies hard. You’ll need to work diligently and hard to eliminate it and then even harder to keep it from resurfacing. Good Luck!
VIRDEN THORNTON is the founder and President of The $elling Edge®, Inc. an Ohio consulting firm specializing in sales and sales management training, personal coaching, advisory services and publishing. Clients have included Sears Optical, Eastman Kodak, IBM, Service Linen Supply, Bank One, Jefferson Wells International, and Wal-Mart to name a few. Virden is the author of the “best selling” Building & Closing the Sale, Prospecting: The Key To Sales Success and Close That Sale, a video/audio tape series published by Crisp Publications a division of Thompson Learning. He has also authored a client acclaimed Self-Directed Learning series of sales, coaching, telemarketing, and personal productivity manuals. To obtain a substantial discount on two of Virden’s latest books, 101 Sales Myths or Organizing For Sales Success, go to: http://www.TheSellingEdge.com/
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Many salesmen who do cold calling use a cold calling script, but if you choose to do this there are many things you may wish to consider first. For instance if you talk at the wrong speed, too fast you sound like a Fast Talking Salesman, and maybe you are but you will need to slow it down a little.
If you use too much voice inflection you sound like a Radio Show Host and whereas this might be entertaining indeed, the person on the other line is thinking to themselves; WTF? Who is this guy or is this a crank-call or a recording?
Next you have to be careful not to appear to be reading it, as they will think you are just like those New York cold calling stockbrokers trying to rip them off. And let’s face it most wire house stockbrokers still use these same techniques and they sound so utterly ridiculous and folks are just tired of that really.
Now personally I do not recommend a cold calling script unless you really need one, as if you are selling a product or service that you very much believe in it or really you should not be selling it. People should be able to sense your excitement and enthusiasm and you should be so confident and have so much knowledge of your products and service that nothing ever catches you off guard. Consider all this in 2006.
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