One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my selling career is the ability to see things from someone elses point of view. If you can see things through your customer’s eyes, you’ll instantly build rapport and start developing a relationship.

Work backwards. See in your mind where you want the prospect to be. Then envision where they are right now (ask questions to clarify this point of view) and lead them cognitively through the sale.

Opening communication with a stranger can be a daunting prospect for the fresh salesperson. “Breaking the ice” was one term used to describe the process of “first contact.” And it’s good analogy.

Customers have developed a certain amount of healthy skepticism toward sales people and its quite justified. There are a lot of hacks out there that’ll rip you off without a conscience given the chance. So realise this is how the prospect sees you. It’s a valuable insight to begin with.

So how do you overcome this barrier?

Most people will suggest that the first step is to show people that you have something in common with them. Demonstrate that you’re just like them. A simple hello is often enough for a consumer to get directly into the sales process. Others might suggest it’s better to a comment about sports, their kids, something other than what you’re obviously there for. This “breaks the ice” so to speak and loosens the tension.

Not bad ideas, but you didn’t buy this manual to read about something you probably already knew. Here’s something you’ve never heard before. Here’s something extra to make this tip 100 percent profitable.

When you can make someone laugh, all the barriers come down. Laughter is the key to opening communication.

One of the keys to effective selling is to “get it.” In other words, you have to actually get out there and practice so you get a “feel” for how it works.  Do this every day at every chance you get. Say hello to strangers, crack jokes in an elevator. Whatever! Just one step at a time and you’ll learn how to read people and situations more clearly and be able to handle yourself with confidence.

Do something unexpected.

(In a retail/shopfront environment)

Me: (very serious) Hi, How’s it going?

Prospect:  I’m just looking thanks. (Crosses arms)

Me: (Very big smile!)… Wow! … I don’t need all the details buddy… just a friendly hello will do.  (Cheeky grin)

Prospect:  (laughing) Oh, ha-ha, ok… Hi

Me:  Hi, I’m Chris… (Shake hands if appropriate)  Now, what really brought you here today? Just knocked off work? On your lunch break?  Looking for enlightenment?  Trouble at home?  (Grin)

Prospect:  (smiling back and shaking head) Um… Well I’m actually just shopping for one of these.

Me:  Oh good, (wipe imaginary sweat off brow) I know nothing about enlightenment!  Take a seat.

You’ve got to entertain these guys! Now, this is a little over the top so obviously pick your audience, as you certainly don’t want to offend anyone. But if you add the cheeky grin, you’re sure to crack a smile on their faces.

Use body language… If the customer looks like a bit of a hard working outside type, lean on something like you’re at the pub talking to one of your mates you’ve known for ages.

Then bridge the gap. Often your customer will start talking about what they value without any questioning from you anyway. If not, then use what you have in common to ask some questions about what they think about your field or industry. Keep it light, and listen for any ways you can provide a solution to any problems they may have.

One of the secrets to creating laughter is to create tension, then release it. Practice it, and get the feel for what works for you and what doesn’t. We’re all different, but if you get the essence of laughter, you’ll find your selling will improve dramatically.

Tip: Read some books on comedy and watch some stand up acts.

Some people need a more business like approach. Always select your audience. A great line I use when talking to business professionals after a quick greeting is:

Prospect: “I’m just looking”

Me: “Oh good… do you mind if I ask you a few quick questions to see if it’s a good idea we do business today?” — Lead into a qualification

It’s a great time saver for them and you. It cuts through the crap… they’re obviously there to look in order to consider their options before buying. It also presents your intention. You’re there to do business. It’s a great opener because it sets the foundation for the discovery process. It allows your prospect the chance to make a small commitment in exchange for the chance to find a win-win situation.  Most importantly, you’re respecting the client by asking them permission to ask them for information, yet you remain in control.

Generally, Aussies, such as myself, are some of the most relaxed people you’ll ever meet in your sales career. But don’t let this fool you into thinking that they are any easier to sell to. Aussies tend to have a fairly set standard of deciding who’s going to be one of their mates and who’s not. Earn respect right off the bat and you’ll fit right in. Many people are known for their ability to work hard when they need to, and relax when they’re not working. So respect the fact that even if they’re dressed in jeans and a t-shirt right now, they may be an accountant, lawyer or high profile business owner.

“Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.”    Juvenal

Daily money making activities is about discovering the activities or actions that are earning you the most money and putting them first on your list of ‘things to do.’ My theory is that if you’re focused on getting the money making stuff done, the other things will just seem to get done as a mater of course.

The idea is to resist procrastination and get started doing the essence of you work. This would be called the one principle of a good work ethic, i.e., if you are writing a book, you don’t sit there shuffling papers around your desk . . .  or if you are a sales rep, you don’t just research you product, you get in front of people who are likely to buy from you and you sell the your products.

There is an 80-20 principle I like as well. It’s simply the principle that 20 percent of the things you do are the things making you money and the other 80 percent you could do without. It’s about finding out what your highest 20 percent money making tasks are and spending your time on these jobs. The other 80 percent can be either delegated or completely discarded.

I am talking about simple things such as writing a list of things to do today and then crossing off all but the most important, then rewriting the list with only the top three most important thing on it and doing those. (You can hand the remaining task to someone else to do.) . . . or, if you absolutely need to do the other things, too, set aside one hour of the day to blast through he less important things all in one hit.

Many good sales professionals have a great team working for them who help them keep their calendar booked up with prospective client visits so they do nothing but sell. That’s the environment we’re aiming for. It’s ideal for growth and profit. There’s nothing worse than being scattered between tasks when you need to be focused on the prospect during a presentation.

When you walk into a prospective client’s office, leave everything else outside the door, and I mean everything. Stay focused on what you are doing, if not, the potential client will see you are ‘elsewhere’ and wonder why he or she is not important enough to warrant your full attention and probably go with someone else who does give them their full attention.

Problems are another item that takes away from the task at hand and making money. Try to avoid bringing your problems into the clients office, like I said, leave them outside the door, pick them up on your way out, they will still be there. Hold a meeting with your team to work on the problem; many heads are better than one, if you can’t figure out a solution on your own.

If procrastination is creeping up on you, stop and ask yourself, ‘is this making me money or am I just avoiding something?’ if the answer is you are avoiding something, take a deep breath or go for a short walk, clear your head and get back to work. Stop the procrastination in its tracks, take it away from your desk, stick it in a draw and leave it there until you are ready to deal with it.

Remember the “A” “B” and “C” list of what you should be doing and this should also help you with your ‘Daily money making activities’ and keep you on track.

“Plan your progress carefully; hour-by hour, day-by-day, month-by-month. Organized activity and maintained enthusiasm are the wellsprings of your power”.                 Paul J. Meyer

How is it that some sales professionals hit the mark every time, while others can’t even find the target?

Advances in technology and social networking through the Internet groups, have made advertising an unprecedented and acceptable way to focus their pitch to a select few, namely your prospective clients.

Targeted advertising focuses on specific niches rather than a broad range of interests your potential customer might have. This way, if they know what they are looking for, they will surf right to your website or pick you right out of the phone book because you know your market and you are targeting these specific groups of people, your potential clients.

Say you apply for a credit card. All of a sudden, you get more and more offers for credit cards from advertisers you never even heard of. You’ve been placed on a mailing list or targeted as a ‘more likely purchaser’ of certain items using a credit card then others consumers who have not applied or received a credit card in the past few months.

Of course targeted advertising has been around for years; however, it usually targets small groups of people instead of individuals. If you take out a subscription to a car magazine or a home décor magazine, you will be inundated with offers from car dealerships or home furnishing stores. It’s not exactly “who you are” but rather, “what you are.” What you are is a consumer of home décor or automobiles because you showed interest in these items through your subscription to the magazines.

If there is a specialty magazine for your product or service, first of all, you should be reading it, secondly, you may be able to acquire a list of subscribers from the company. Although, some magazines have a strict policy against distribution of mailing lists, but the names are generated from somewhere, aren’t they?

Things may be changing as new technology in search engines and social networking sites become more sophisticated with information and the possibility of tracking people through purchases and zip codes or phone numbers given at the cash register. Tracking people through their purchases gives the sales professionals an insight into their individual tastes in products and services.

So if you don’t have a website, what would be the easiest way to reach your target potential client? Walk in their shoes, think like they think, do some research. Find out who they are currently doing business with and why. What is your competition doing for them that you can do or offer to do better? What solutions to their problems can you come up with that they haven’t even thought of yet? These are all great questions that will help you hit your target consumer with the right ammunition.
“My advice is to go into something and stay with it until you like it. You can’t like it until you obtain expertise in that work. And once you are an expert, it’s a pleasure.”         Milton Garland

As a sales professional, time is your only inventory. You need to be 100 percent absolutely positive that you’re doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons.

There is a myriad of things that can waste a sales professional’s time, but if you have solid goals and attempt to achieve them, you should be able to weed out the time wasters and continue to ad value to your life.

Here’s an example of wasted time you don’t even think twice about because it’s time, your time. Say a co-worker stops you in the hall and demands $150. Of course you say no because you know the value of $150 and you won’t just give them that kind of money; however, you allow this same co-worker to hijack your time by dragging you into a meeting that has nothing to do with you or your sales process for hours on end. Where is the value in that? Time is money.

One of the main keys to successfully managing your time is to take back control of it. Take charge of your own time and attention. Don’t be to quick to give other people power to boss you around or delegate their work to you, unless that is your job, to help others and only if you have the time and it is a learning experience or can ad some other type of value to your life or goals. Also, don’t get caught up in reading countless articles or data on the Internet or magazines, a few will keep you up to date, so will watching the evening news. Time wasters don’t get home in time to watch the news, but professional salespeople do.

One of the major time wasters of culture today is e-mail. It can take up to a day to catch up and most of it isn’t as important as the subject line indicates. Use the folders feature in your e-mail program. Make a folder for anything addressed to multiple recipients, another for ‘press releases’ and another folder for ‘urgent.’ This way, you will not be checking your e-mail every few minutes of the day. Set aside a certain time, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, perhaps before you go out on a sales call or take a break, to check and respond to an e-mail.

If you work with a team, get them together and discuss a mutual subject line for e-mails and tell them of your plan with the e-mail folders. Hopefully, this will catch on with the rest of the team and time wasting will be cut down. Another thing you might want to discuss with your team while you have them all gathered together is questions and answer time in addition to quiet work time. If you have a conference room, you could all set up in there, say, every other day, and work independently of one another, but if questions arise or if someone needs help, you are all right there. No hunting for someone who may be busy doing other work.

The same goes for quiet time. Designate a period of time, everyday or every other day, which ever works best for you and your team, so that no one interrupts each other. Everyone remains quiet and to themselves for the duration of the quiet time. Of course if there is an emergency, a client or customer on the phone, that is different. I am talking about your co-workers and time wasting with constant questions or interruptions of other kinds.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating; learn to say “no.” If it’s hard for you to say “no” try using words like “kinda interested” or “maybe later” or “I’ll need a little more information,” then make your decision to help this person based on the information and the amount of valuable time you have to spare.

“My interest is in the future; as I’m going to be spending the rest of my life there.” Charles Kettering

The major problem facing sales professionals today is an extended and unpredictable sales cycle. As I explained above, it’s a vicious cycle that ends in last minute decisions, often with your competition the winner of your sale. Here are a few ways to avoid and or deal with the sales cycle.

• Take the sales cycle seriously. Of course there are going to be exceptions, but they are not the rule. Everyone looks for ‘ripe fruit’ – the prospective client who must make a buying decision now – but that’s the exception and it’s mostly the result of luck not sales skills.

Although there are the lucky sales, they should never be thought of as the norm. The extended sales cycle is the standard working environment for all sales professionals.

• Connect with what counts. Relationships are critical to be sure, but because of the Internet, buyers are much better informed and they can spot incompetence much more quickly. Customers know when someone is just trying to sell them something. The other side of blowing smoke is being blown away by a potential client who demands knowledge and expertise from their suppliers and are willing to settle for nothing less.

The goal is to impress the prospective client with what you know, not where you take them to lunch.

• Focus on the potential client. Even though the question seems basic to sales, but sales professionals rarely ask: “What do you want to accomplish?” And, even if it is asked, they almost always come across in a less then genuine way. As if the salesperson is really only interested in getting the answer and moving on to his or her presentation.

Finding out what the potential client wants is one of the keys to the sale. How can you give a meaningful, powerful and compelling presentation if you have not taken into consideration what the potential client wants to accomplish?

The test is how the potential client feels after the presentation. Was the focus on what the sales professional wanted to get across or was it on obtaining the necessary information to make an informed proposal?

• Patient follows through. The anxious sales professional says “I need sales now!” Well, who doesn’t? But the questions miss the essential issue. What sale professionals need are customers and customers don’t come quickly. Rather, they occur over time, by patience.

Those salespeople who say they need to make a sale are letting the cat out of the bag. They are telling the world that they haven’t identified the need of the potential client or cultivated a relationship with that prospect.

These salespeople are like the hunters of big game, they want to be driven, in a Hummer, to the exact spot where the animals gather, shoot them, bag them, then be driven back to the lodge to ‘tell their big game adventure.’ That isn’t hunting and it isn’t sales. Both require careful planning and massive amounts of persistence and extraordinary patience.

• Communicate competence. Some sales professionals like to talk about their products or services are innovative, cutting edge and far above the competition. Potential clients prefer to see a salesperson that is innovative and cutting edge.

A marketing consultant was asked to prepare a brochure. He asked the client: “Why do you want a brochure and what are you going to do with it?” By digging deeper, the consultant found that the company’s sales force was actually looking for help with prospecting and the thing that came to mind was a brochure. Needless to say, the brochure was scraped and a prospecting program was implemented.

Another key to making sales is coming up with the right solutions to the right problems.

• Plan for the long-term. ‘Making numbers’ is a Damocles sward over every salespersons head. Translation, it means, the urgency of the immediate demands total attention. Today, that is something that never changes.

The solution is to identify, carefully cultivate and manage a substantial number of prospective clients over the long-term. The more precise and efficient you are with this process, the greater the flow of sales you will enjoy.

• Counsel the customer. The president of an insurance company called a salesperson in and wanted her to help them promote a new business initiative. After working on it for a month, she less than enthusiastic about the assignment. She asked herself, “Why do I feel this way?” The answer was easy; the president was clearly interested in only selling the product. The shortcut to success ended in a short circuit for the operation.

The sales task is to covet the customer relationship more than the order. The privilege of being able to provide helpful, valuable assistance to a customer is what creates sales.

• Stay on track. Staying on track is another key to long-term sales success. It’s easy to fall prey to the latest quick fix sales gimmick and when that fails, find another one.

The answer is to stay on track, stay with sound principles and understanding the sales environment. Focusing on the prospects, communicating your competence, planning for long-term and being the customer’s trusted advisor are some of the ways you can stay out of the sales cycle that can turn the best salespeople into desperate salespeople.

“The better your relationships the shorter your sales cycle and the more money you will make.” Dan Brent Burt