tips to succeed in sales

Never plan to present all of your information on a sales call. If you do, youll have nothing left to show the customer should you reach the end of your presentation without a sale. The keys to a successful sales call are to know your information so well and to be so prepared that you do not need to present everything to gain the sale. The best sales presentation is the one never given.

Every time you make a sales presentation, always be thinking about what the add on sales may be. If you wait to think about this until after you close as is commonly done , you tend to be too rushed and forget the whole add on process.
Thinking about these sales during the presentation will enable you to be ready when the time comes to ask for them. In addition, many times, the suggestive sell of the add ons can help close the sale of the first item. By using this technique, you increase the potential for the total sale, and decrease the amount of time you would use if you were to sell each item independently.

The customer should never hear your entire sales presentation! If you have to deliver the whole thing to make a sale, you either havent developed a very good presentation or you shouldnt be selling. The purpose of the sales presentation is to assist you, the salesperson. It is not so you can assist the fancy, glossy sales materials or the super slick PowerPoint presentation.
Great salespeople never have to deliver their entire presentation because theyve taken the time to over prepare. Theyve built sales materials around any type of concern they may face and are ready to deal with an objection should it arise.

No one has the time to read everything they need to in either their professional or personal lives. This general shortcoming creates a magnificent opportunity for us as salespeople to become experts in our industry. A universal lack of reading time means that all it takes for a person to be viewed as an expert in his field in less than a year is a commitment to read for 30 minutes a day about their trade not counting medicine, engineering, etc. For the vast number of industries in which salespeople are involved, this simple one year reading commitment can quickly make you an authority.

Frequently, salespeople think the way to control the amount of time needed for a sale with their customers is by offering them a special deal if they buy now. When this is done, the salesperson is usually only giving away profit, while thinking hes speeding up a sale. We leverage time best by selling to the customers time parameters, not our own. When we sell to their parameters, we are selling at a higher value and a higher profit.

With many sales, it appears there is only one person involved in the decision making process. Yet, more times than not, another person is behind the scenes influencing the decision. When you make your sales call, always assume there is an influencer and expect to deal with him or her.
To find out who that influencer is, use probing questions with the customer such as: Who else in your organization is typically involved in decisions such as this? When decisions like this have been made in the past, what are some of the things others have said? Where does a decision like this rank in terms of other decisions you typically make.

When faced with resistance to price, offer the customer an example of where they spend considerably more money on something else. By doing so, the customer will begin to put into context the amount youre asking them to spend with you.

There are six universal questions you can ask almost anytime and anywhere in a sales presentation. They are: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, Why?, and How?. A perfect place to ask one of these is when youre not sure where to go with the discussion and/or are afraid of losing control.

The best way to make a sale is to have someone else make it for you. You do this by creating sales advocates. These are people who are so impressed with what you offer and/or the way you sell that they tell others about you even without you asking. If you havent obtained any sales like this, then you dont have any sales advocates and, more importantly, your sales process and/or service may not measure up to what people expect.

After people have had time to experience the product or service youre selling, they often begin to realize benefits they werent expecting. Talk to your long term customers and find out what additional benefits theyre experiencing. You may find it advantageous to use these in your future sales presentations.