As sales professionals, we need to continually learn new and powerful things to help us add more value to people’s lives and most importantly close sales and make money.
Since you are reading this article, you are in some kind of job where you need to sell stuff. Maybe you’ve just started your own business, or you work for some huge international online marketing company that has been around for hundreds of years.
Either way, you’ve got to sell. Sales are the lifeblood of any company, and without them, even the strongest would quickly crumble. In this article you’ll learn the basic sales process, so you can apply it and get more sales.
First of all, sales must be thought of as a numbers game. If you get too hung up on each individual person, you miss the forest for the trees. Always keep the big picture in mind, and realize that so long as you stick to this strategy, you will be successful.
Sure some days are better than others, and some days you don’t want to get out of bed because you’ve received so many rejections, but keep a wide view of things.
Good Attitude
Attitude is the most important element of inconsistent sales performance. Attitude is the lens through which the mind receives information. When it is positive even negative events are perceived as encouraging, hopeful, and opportunities to learn.
When it is negative, even positive events are seen as discouraging, hopeless, and without value. Consistency in selling is about maintaining a positive outlook, and a positive attitude makes that possible. The good news- attitude is a choice that you make.
Asking Questions From Your Prospects
Start every sales conversation by asking the prospect what they need to know about your company and product. Rather than telling them what you think they should know, ask them what is important to them.
Once they tell you, what you say in response is no longer selling them, but rather a much less threatening way of answering their questions.
Prospects are much more receptive to this, leading to less resistance to the information and the greater likelihood that they will receive it positively.
You can use tools like Semrush and create content on keywords that your customers are searching for. Try to rank on Google and get organic targeted traffic for increasing sales/conversions. Here is how you get a Semrush free trial worth $119.95.
Practice every day
There isn’t always time to practice for hours, nor is there probably the need after you have established your skills, but you should make the commitment and get in the habit of practicing something every day.
When you practice, don’t just read or review dialogues in your mind, practice by saying it out loud. Learning is contextual, and what you learn by reading doesn’t do much for your ability to use the information in a conversation.
Get comfortable with talking to yourself in the mirror
From time to time we all need a good talking to, and who better to do that than the person who knows us best- ourselves. You can’t always rely on someone else to pick you up when you are down or scold you for not doing the things you know you should be doing.
Be meticulous with your follow-up
For every company I ever worked for, the number one cause of customer dissatisfaction and lost sales was lack of communication. Excel at follow-up and you will excel at selling.
Because people have come to expect poor follow-up, when you are different you get noticed and that attention will get you sales.
When you need to call someone back, give them an exact time and then call them back at the promised minute. They will be amazed and likely to put complete trust in everything else you say.
Set goals for yourself
Far too often salespeople set goals and then forget about them until it is too late. Don’t be that person. Sales goals only work when they serve to convince you of the inevitability of the outcome.
It’s not about having an objective, it is about subconsciously creating the outcome so that your mind can figure out how to get you there and motivate the behaviors that will.
Give Reset Sometimes
Sometimes it’s OK to give yourself a reset. We all have bad weeks, and sometimes those weeks turn into a month when we just can’t seem to make the sales happen. Oftentimes the momentum of a bad streak becomes too much to overcome and we suffer from the pressure of being unable to hit our targets.
Get out from under this pressure by giving yourself a reset- forget about the first two weeks of the month and set new goals for the last two weeks- starting over at zero for zero.
Taking the pressure off of coming back from insurmountable odds is often enough to turn your slump around and get you back to making sales. As a sales manager, you can also apply this advice to managing your team.
The importance of emotions
When it comes to valuable sales tips this has to come in at number one. This is one of the sales tips that you have to take on board if you want to be successful in sales.
The emotions that we are feeling are paramount when it comes to our ability to close a sale. These emotions are communicated to people on a subconscious level and are very important when it comes to getting the client on board with us.
Fortunately, with human psychological advances like NLP, we have arrived at a point where we can control our emotions and draw on the emotion that we need at the right point in the sales process.
When it comes to valuable sales tips, NLP not only underlines the importance of emotions when it comes to sales, it has given us techniques that we can use to control our emotions like the “anchoring technique”.
With anchoring, we can bring up a positive emotion at will that we can use to bring more energy and confidence to our presentation for example. I found this to be one of the best sales tips that I ever learned.
Sales tips on the internal world
When you are selling the going can get rough at times when you are up against your number for the month and things can get stressful. Luckily for us then there are sales tips we can use from hypnosis to help calm us down so we can perform better in the field.
Hypnosis can address any concerns we have internally with negative self-talk and can help us to turn the thoughts around in our minds to more positive ones.
Changing our internal dialogue is one of the most powerful sales tips, as when we change this internal world our outside world can change automatically which means more sales for us.
Taking advantage of hypnotic states
There are even more powerful sales tips from hypnosis that focus on taking advantage of the natural hypnotic states that we are all in every day.
If you focus on getting your client talking and imagining their ideal outcome they will naturally go into a type of hypnotic state as they imagine their dream.
Simply showing them your product or service will enable them to achieve this dream and you will be on your way to closing the deal with them.
More on hypnotic states in your client
Hypnosis has more sales tips for us that focus on using the right wording to elicit the right pictures and hypnotic states in the minds of your clients.
Using highly descriptive colorful language can really help here to produce powerful images in the minds of clients that they will want to act upon.
Listening skills
We are often told that salespeople have the “gift of the gab” and this enables them to persuade people to buy from them but this is not really true.
Another powerful sales tip that you can learn is the fact that salespeople are excellent listeners and it is by listening and understanding the client’s needs that they are able to effectively communicate the value of their product when they are making the sale.
Taking the time to listen and really understand needs is one of the key sales tips you can utilize to persuade people to buy because it gives us a lot more leverage when it comes to closing the deal.
Sales tips on language
A lot of us forget about the importance of language when it comes to sales even though the language is so paramount when it comes to communication with people and getting them what they want.
NLP sales tips teach us about the importance of language and how we can use it to direct a client exactly where we want them to go when we are trying to close a sale.
One of the key persuasion sales tips
One of the key mistakes that a lot of salespeople make when they are in the sales process, especially early on, is trying to do too much too early.
A great sales tip when it comes to persuasion is to persuade and close the client by increments and not all at once.
Multiple Payment Options
Sure, you probably only pay using one payment method -always the same thing. Once you figure out what you like to use to pay online you are likely to always use the same option.
Others are just like you, but they might not use the same payment method as you. The three payment methods I always offer are PayPal; Google Checkout; W. Union or a bank check. This way you hit just about everyone.
Optimize Checkout Process
Minimize the number of pages a customer must wind their way through in order to buy something on your site. Make the process ultra-clear to customers so they never feel lost. For guidance look at zappos.com or another major online shopping site.
Shopping Cart
If customers can purchase more than one item at a time, do not make them buy one at a time. PayPal and Google Checkout both have very easy shopping cart options for marketing your ecommerce store that you can integrate with your website. Use them.
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Use this, or a variation in the number of days you offer a refund, to get customers to buy that would not buy otherwise. Being able to get a refund makes ordering your product or service 100% safe.
Believe it or not, it even makes sense to offer a refund in the case of people that buy ebooks or other digital products that can not logically be returned.
Refund processing for ebooks of any worth is very low and you will sell more to have a refund policy in place for these types of products also. Be sure to cover in detail how customers can file for a refund.
Bonuses
Throw in some bonus items to help close the deal. Everyone loves to get more than they are buying for free. See what your competitors are doing to attract more consumers. Have a look at an in-depth comparison of Semrush vs Ahrefs and find out the best tool for yourself.
Call to Action
Place regular “calls to action” on the page you want customers to buy something. A call to action is a statement like, “Buy Here ->” or “Click here now to order.” Make it very obvious what a buyer needs to do to order.
Easy to Find Contact Information
Use a contact page with multiple ways to reach you for any questions a buyer has. Some prefer to phone, some email, some chat. Offer as many ways as possible to reach someone to help before they purchase your products.
Fast Response to Email
I noticed that when I respond quickly to questions I get from potential customers that they nearly always buy. The comfort of knowing there is a human behind the website builds trust that closes the deal.
Offer a Free Sample
In the case of ebooks or some training program, and many other products and services you can offer a free sample to help the buyer decide if it is something they would enjoy buying. This works exceptionally well when you have a good product and use a high-quality sample.
Show Real Testimonials
Showcase others that have purchased the same product, and how well it worked for them. Collect as many as you can – these are like pure gold for helping your sales.
Focus on current benefits
As important as credibility is, a potential customer must nevertheless always have a valid reason for making the purchase from you, whether it is to achieve an objective, solve a problem, or meet a newly discovered need.
As long as your product or service accomplishes one of these, it is much more likely that your sales efforts will be successful. However, while current benefits might win the sale today, repeat business requires additional benefits (described below).
Develop short-term future-benefits
Short-term future benefits are what encourage repeat business, through building customer loyalty. These can include customer loyalty programs, unique offerings, and other hard-to-duplicate intangibles which can prevent or at least slow competitors from entering your market.
These benefits give you some time to win a customer base but should be complemented with long-term benefits for best results.
Develop long-term future-benefits
Long-term future benefits are probably the most difficult to establish, given the rapid rate of change in business today. Some of the best ways to do so include cultivating an extremely loyal group of fans among your customers, having products and services which have lasting demand, and effective branding efforts.
It also helps to be first in one or more market spaces, which competitors do not find profitable enough to challenge. While none of these can guarantee long-term business success, taken together, they make long-term sales success much more likely.
Conclusion:
So, by understanding a customer’s past experiences, showing how your product or service has been used by others successfully, linking this success to what your potential customer needs, and then showing how short and long-term success will follow, it is more likely that your sales efforts will succeed, leading to higher revenues overall.