Even when business is booming, it can feel like hard work trying to make a sale, but during times of recession, it can seem like an insurmountable challenge as it becomes tougher to encourage people to hand over their hard earned cash.
Having successfully weathered difficult times and easily succeeded in prosperous times, business coach and best selling author, Terri Levine, shares her successful sales secrets in her new book “Sell Without Selling: Lessons from the Jungle for Sales Success“ to help everyone from self-employed entrepreneurs and business owners to corporate sales people.
Presented as a business fable, the book showcases Levine’s selling-without-selling formula, offering unique insights into selling in effortless ways, saying goodbye to the hard sell and old manipulative sales habits that don’t work.
Here are 10 useful sales tips from the book:
- Your heart must be in it. You need to want to be a success. If you’re only in it for the sake of an income, until something better comes along, success will be evasive.
- Don’t listen to the nay-sayers – not everyone’s reality is the same. Don’t let somebody else’s failures influence your goals and achievements. Stay positive and expect success.
- Sell yourself first. Your potential customers must trust you. This means be upfront in all your dealings, deliver the goods you say you’re going to deliver and honor any commitments you make.
- Learn to listen. Focus attention on what the customer is saying and what they are looking for. People know if you’re trying to sell them something they’re not looking for, and they’ll walk away. By listening carefully, you’ll understand what the customer honestly needs and be able to give them something that works.
- Show them you’re selling quality products. Good salesmanship involves doing right by the customer, and you’re not going to do that if you’re selling something you know is an inferior product. People are looking for things that are well-made yet affordable. If your competition is selling a similar product at a cheaper price, point out why your product has more value than theirs.
- Maintain contact with the customer, even after the sale. A follow-up call is all about making the connection last. It lets the customer know that the experience was not about you making the sale but about him being happy with his purchase. It’s about building a relationship and having a client who is going to be a part of your customer base for a long time, who will pass on excellent word of mouth referrals.
- Maintain a positive and happy attitude and don’t badmouth any business, including your competition. People are attracted to happy, confident people and you do attract more flies with honey. The customer can sense when someone is being false, and nothing is a bigger turn-off than dealing with someone who is smiling but who you know isn’t being genuine.
- Put your customer before the sale. People are dissatisfied with bad, pushy salespersons. They are actively looking for new avenues to service their needs. Now, there are more companies to choose from and it is easy to find new places to do business with by simply going online. This means that you’ve got a better chance to succeed where others are failing, but it also means you must put your customers first because it has never been easier for them to replace you!
- Sell people what they want – don’t try to sell somebody something they don’t want just to make a sale – you’ll only annoy them and ruin possibilities of doing future business with them.
10. Don’t be afraid to delegate. A successful salesperson will know how to delegate tasks and assignments to those working around them. That way, they can concentrate on making sure their business is always on the right track.
To be successful you must create sales – without selling your product or service, you won’t be in business.
