I’ve often asked that question at seminars, and the answers have been all over the ball park.

“You’ve got to have the right product,” some say.

It helps. But we’ve all known salespeople who went broke trying to move superb products and others who could make fortunes selling ice cream on an iceberg. A really good salesperson can rack up more sales with a mediocre product than a mediocre salesperson can make with the greatest product in the world.

“You’ve got to make plenty of sales calls,” others say. “The more calls you make, the more sales you’ll get.”

As a general rule, that’s true, but it doesn’t go far enough. If you think about it, the more passes a quarterback throws, the more passes he’ll complete.

But a quarterback who completes three out of four passes will put points on the board much more regularly than one who completes one out of four, even though both may throw the same number of times. A baseball player who hits .350 will cross the plate much more frequently than one who hits .200, even though both take the same number of swings.

Similarly, a salesperson’s success doesn’t depend on the number of calls. It depends on the number of sales. An effective salesperson and an ineffective salesperson may make the same number of calls, but it’s the effective one who eats steak and lobster instead of hamburger.

Still others say, “you’ve got to master the mechanics.” That helps, too. But mastering the mechanics won’t put you on top of the sales charts unless you master the right mechanics.

In today’s market, as in none before, it is crucial that we learn selling savvy. The sales environment has changed radically in four distinct ways:

1.Customers are better-educated, more sophisticated, and more value-conscious.

in other words, they are harder to please; they want more for their money.

Think about your own demands as a consumer. You insist on quality goods and efficient service. You don’t want some slick con artist trying to trick you into buying a product or service you don’t want or need. And you don’t want to be abandoned after the sale.

You expect follow-up service. If something goes wrong, you want to know that the salesperson and the company are going to stand behind the sale.

This means that salespeople have to stay on top of their markets. They have to be knowledgeable about the products and services they are selling. And they have to be honest, and sincerely interested in helping their customers find value and derive satisfaction.

Customers expect more from us than ever before.

2.Competition is stiffer.
Customers now have so many options that price will always be the deciding factor — unless you can offer a strong differential advantage.

With companies producing similar products at similar cost, it’s getting tougher every day to offer substantially lower prices than the competition does.

That means that you have to offer something that sets you apart from all the other salespeople who are trying to get your customers to buy from them. You have to provide quicker service, more up-to-date product knowledge, and better follow-up.

It’s not enough to provide products and service as good as those of your competitors. Yours have to be better — a lot better. Moreover, your customers must acknowledge the superiority of your products and services, and the object of your presentation should be to lead them toward that recognition and acknowledgment.

If you can’t lead your customers to that acknowledgment, you won’t get the sale, no matter how good your product. Your success in selling depends less and less on the product your are selling, and more and more on your skills as a salesperson.

3.Technology is rapidly replacing peddlers.

People are buying more through direct mail. And such media as interactive television and the Internet are making it possible to buy almost anything you want by pressing a button or clicking a mouse.

Companies are no longer looking for peddlers to handle items that are much easier to sell by phone or through the mail. In many cases, they’re setting up self-service systems that can be operated by clerks.

Of course, there are plenty of very good opportunities for really sharp salespeople who can sell with power and skill, especially in the industrial field.

To be successful as a salesperson, you must find ways to distinguish yourself from the inexpensive clerks and the commonplace peddlers. You must rise to the challenge with proficient skills, depth of knowledge and a positive attitude.

4.Time has become a priceless commodity — for salespeople and for their customers.

Prospects don’t want salespeople wasting their time.

And if you’re serious about becoming successful, you don’t have time to wander around showing your products or services to anyone who will look at them.

To survive in today’s volatile marketplace, you need a clear and effective strategy. You need the skills to implement that strategy. And you need the know-how to make that strategy work for you.

When you acquire and apply these things, you’re demonstrating selling savvy.
Five Ingredients for Selling Savvy

What do we mean by selling savvy?

The answer lies in five ingredients that are vital to your team’s success as professionals:
1.Selling savvy is understanding the selling process well enough to approach it as a highly educated professional.

2.Selling savvy is understanding people well enough to influence them to buy.

3.Selling savvy is knowing how to execute.

4.Selling savvy means developing street smarts.

5.Selling savvy is having the self-discipline to carry out every detail of your strategy all day, every day.
Professionals Versus Workers

I often draw the distinction between a person with a worker mentality and a person with a professional mentality.

Workers tolerate their jobs as burdens to be endured for the sake of putting food on their tables and roofs over their heads.

Professionals see their jobs as rewarding components of their lives. Their careers and their personal lives complement and support each other. Their jobs are part of who they are.

Workers wait to be told what to do. They don’t reach out for new responsibility, because they don’t want responsibility. They take care of their own immediate tasks without worrying about how their tasks affect others in the organization. In fact, they don’t see themselves as part of the organization. They see the organization as an outside entity that may have a negative or positive impact on their lives. They refer to it in the third person: as “it” or “them,” and not as “we.” The organization is something they have to respond to, although they’re not a part of it.

Professionals see themselves as part of the organization. To them, the organization is “we.” When it succeeds, they succeed. When it suffers reverses, they feel the reverses.

People look up to professionals because they recognize them as being good at what they do. They’re good because they’ve walked the extra mile toward excellence. They absorb information about their chosen fields, and they share their knowledge with others. They’re jealous of their images and are always careful to avoid compromising them. To be a professional, you have to look like a pro, communicate like a pro, and exude the confidence of a pro. You must set a high standard for yourself and never allow yourself to fall below that standard.

The speaker’s manner suggested that it was quite an achievement. But, it has been done by many, so everyone craned their necks and looked at the man in puzzlement.

“… and he’s totally blind.” There was a burst of applause. When that finally quieted, the speaker said, “I’m sure that many of us are wondering how you got into the top third in sales achievement with your handicap.”

“Wait a minute,” the blind man replied, “I don’t have a handicap, I have an advantage over every other salesperson in my field. I have never seen a product I’ve sold, so I have to close through my prospect’s eyes. What I do is what all of you sighted people could do. You’d serve your clients better, and make more money if you did.”

This is so true! You must see the benefits, the features and the limitations of your product or service from the buyer’s viewpoint. You must weigh them on their scale of values, not your own. Once you are able to do that, you will be able to concentrate on your job of serving them. You will be able to empathize with their situation, their specific needs and radiate the confidence that you can help them.

There are certain signs you will begin to notice when they are ready to go ahead with your product or service.
1.When they change the pace of your discussion — either by slowing it down or speeding it up.

2.When they start asking more questions about the product or service.

3.When they become more relaxed and less businesslike.

4.When they favor your test close. This would be a question about installation or start up of service that they answer without hesitation or when they give you an objection.
Now that you know they’re ready, where do you close? Anywhere. If you are in their office, your showroom, your car, or even a restaurant, if they’re ready, put your pen to paper. For many people there is a certain excitement about executing a decision, right now. Most of us feel joy and relief at having the mental strain behind us. We now see only the benefits of having the product or service already working for us. Don’t spoil that mood for your customers by insisting on getting back to the office, or somewhere where you’re comfortable to start writing up the agreement. You’ll be taking the risk of having them cool off about their decision. To use an old cliche, “Strike while the iron is hot!”

Be aware that your buyer may be the kind of person who needs to be sitting at a desk or conference table to finalize any paperwork on a purchase. If they are, you should understand any hesitation and suggest that you get into a more appropriate setting before you begin putting things on paper. If you press that kind of person, they may quickly have second thoughts about the investment.

If buyers show hesitation once you’ve begun your closing sequence, you need to relax them and let the pressure off before continuing. Begin by apologizing to them for rushing things. Tell them that you get excited when you think about all the benefits they’ll be receiving, and that you may have gotten a bit overzealous. Watch them closely here and when they begin to relax, summarize the benefits they already agreed to, using questions.
- “I know there are still a lot of questions in your mind, but this model is the size you wanted, isn’t it?”

- “And the delivery date we discussed is okay, am I right?”

- “Our service agreement meets your company’s needs, doesn’t it?”
Once you’ve covered all the minor agreements, ask a lead-in question and try another close. A lead-in question would be something like, “I know I covered that list of items rather quickly, but those are the things we’ve discussed so far, and we have agreed on them, haven’t we?”

If they still show hesitation, I suggest you move on to the “Similar Situation” Close. The “Similar Situation” close is one in which you tell them about another client who had needs much like theirs. They hesitated at first, but finally agreed to go ahead with the investment and today they are so happy they did. They realized all the benefits you had discussed in your presentation and a few others they hadn’t thought of previous to making their decision.

After each transaction make notes on the situation and the resolution of each client’s challenges. This way, you’ll have a large inventory of similar situations you can draw from when a new client shows hesitation. Once they see that you’ve helped someone in the same type of situation before, it’ll build their confidence in your ability to do the same for them.

Once they understand that your main interest is in serving their needs, not your own pocketbook, they’ll relax and let you see exactly what they see through their eyes.

Presentation skills training is critical for anyone who sells face to face. Every day, salespeople with superior products and services lose business to their competitors because the sales presentation skills of their competitors are superior. Many salespeople have a fear of speaking to groups, often because they don’t have the presentation skills training and public speaking skills they need to deliver their message in an effective and entertaining manner. Discover how you can gain an unfair advantage, as veteran speaker and speech coach Patricia Fripp gives you dozens of ideas for taking your sales presentation skills to the next level. You’ll learn how to open, how to close, how to build credibility, how to use stories, how to handle adverse questions, how to be remembered, and several other valuable public speaking techniques that work. After viewing this presentation skills training program, you’ll be more prepared, more persuasive, and more powerful in front of any size audience.

Patricia Fripp has been a professional speaker for more than 30 years. She was the first female to become president of the 4,000 member National Speakers Association, and is recipient of the highly coveted speaking industry Hall of Fame Award. Meetings and Conventions magazine named her “One of the 10 most electrifying speakers in North America”. Patricia Fripp conducts presentation skills training programs and keynote speeches for Fortune 500 companies, national associations, and private corporations. In addition, she teaches executive speaking skills to corporate leaders. Not bad, for a young woman who became a hairstylist at 15, and arrived in the US at age twenty with little money and no contacts.

Prospecting skills and telephone sales skills are critical to the success of many sales professionals. Those who’s principle activity is appointment setting or selling a product or service via the phone can greatly benefit from learning new prospecting strategies, and telephone sales skills. Prospecting is a critical activity that typically leads to more sales, yet most salespeople dislike it. In this fast-paced, entertaining session, Warren Greshes presents a proven system that takes the guesswork out of prospecting skills and telemarketing. He will show you how to stay consistently motivated, overcome call reluctance, develop a powerful script for setting appointments, keep track of your activity, lower sales resistance, handle the most common objections with ease, and actually enjoy the entire process. If you know you need to do more prospecting, but can’t get yourself motivated on a consistent basis, this program will give you the telephone sales skills and inspiration you need.

Warren Greshes started as a salesman in New York City’s Garment District, and quickly became a National Sales Manager at the age of twenty-four. By twenty-seven, he was running the entire company. In 1984 Warren moved on to become head of Sales & Marketing for a New York City consulting firm and in two years tripled the company’s sales. In 1986, Warren started his own company, and since then has traveled the world delivering prospecting skills, telephone sales skills, and goal setting techniques to corporations and associations both large and small. Having been inducted into the Speakers Hall of Fame, Warren Greshes is one of America’s most talented sales trainers and motivators.

LOOK IN YOUR OWN FIELD The first strategy is to find a new product or service in your own field or skills. You may have a million dollar idea in your own mind. Many people have had the experience of having an idea for a product or service nag at them over and over again, and you keep pushing it away or ignoring it. They say the average person has four ideas each year driving to and from work, any one of which would make them a millionaire if they would just follow it up. So look into your own field or skills. Look into your own mind. Look into your own ideas.

LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES WHEN YOU TRAVEL The second strategy is to find a new product or service while you travel. Keep your eyes open for opportunities. A very good friend of mine who is now a multi-millionaire, started his fortune by traveling east and seeing a unique type of orange drink called Orange Julius and then getting the exclusive rights to sell it in a large Western city. From there, he expanded into other restaurants, into real estate, and into apartments. He developed a high positive cash flow from his Orange Julius business that made him a millionaire. Sometimes just finding a new product or service that is doing well somewhere else that hasn’t come to your market area can make you wealthy.

GET THE RIGHTS TO SELL IT Remember your objective, when you find a new product or service, is to acquire the rights to sell the product or service exclusively in your market area. Sometimes these rights are available for the asking. A gentleman I know named Peter Thomas got the rights for Century 21 to Canada simply by going to the offices and asking for them when Century 21 was a young company. From that, he turned Century 21 into one of the most successful real estate franchises in Canada. He is now worth millions of dollars, having taken the cash flow from Century 21 and channeled it into other real estate investments.

BE SURE IT IS ALREADY SUCCESSFUL Sometimes just asking for the right to sell it in your market area is all you have to do. Here’s the key, though. Before you bring a new product or service back to your market area, be absolutely sure that it sells well somewhere else. Many people advertise products outside their market area because they are not selling inside their market area, so make very sure that the product is selling well already in other markets.

DEVELOP A MONEY MAKING ATTITUDE Strategy number three is to keep your eyes and ears open and alert to new business opportunities occurring around you. Develop a money-making attitude. A friend of mine became very successful by building commercial property across the street from a new shopping center that was being developed. The traffic from the shopping center made that commercial space extremely valuable. He opened two businesses in it, and started his fortune. So be alert to what is going on around you.

BE SURE YOU LIKE IT YOURSELF And strategy number four is this. Remember you will only be successful marketing and selling something that you believe in, use yourself and would recommend to your best friend. Many times, I see people who make the critical mistake of trying to sell a product or service that they themselves would neither use nor afford, nor would they recommend to someone else, but they think that other people will buy it even though they wouldn’t. So remember you must really, really believe it the product. You must be excited about the product. You must absolutely believe that this product can enhance the life or work of someone else and then be eager to tell them about it.

ACTION EXERCISES First, develop a new business mentality. Continually look around you for new products and services that people need, want and are willing to pay for.

Second, develop a money making attitude. Look around you for opportunities to sell products or services that are not currently being offered, at either higher prices or in greater quantities. The possibilities are everywhere.