Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
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This book is dedicated to my family and friends who have
encouraged and cheered for me throughout many years. I have
been blessed in having so many wonderful people in my life. To
some people, the currency of success may be riches, but mine has
always been love.
The love of a dear friend, some lifelong and great mentors
and others new companions, in which the feeling of
connectedness is always strong.
The love of a relative – from my always loving
grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, brothers,
sister and parents, all of whom I wish I could see more often.
But there is no greater, deeper and truer love than that of
a loving spouse and adoring children. To my wife Jessica and my
incredible twins, Hannah and Joshua, you are the most wonderful
treasure in my life. Thank you for being an extraordinary part of
my life and reminding me about what really matters in success.
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INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this book is to guide you on the path from
ordinary to EXTRAORDINARY. Every day we are faced with
opportunities to do better, but all too often we fail to see and take
hold of what lies right in front of us. It’s like standing knee deep in
the water of success, but not knowing that we can take a drink. By
transitioning yourself from acting ordinary to being extraordinary,
you are elevating each touch point with a customer and will be en
route to success.
Transformation is never easy. The first few steps are
always uncomfortable. Keep moving forward though, because the
uneasy feeling is actually a good sign. It shows that you are
growing and improving. And soon enough, the changes begin to
feel normal. This is when you have reached your next level of
success.
When my son Joshua was five years old, I was tucking him
into the bed the night before his first ever soccer practice. He
didn’t seem comfortable, so I asked him what was wrong.
“Dad,” he asked. “Is it normal for little kids to be nervous
about soccer?”
“Sure,” I smiled. “You have never played soccer before
with a team, so you don’t know what to expect. You are stepping
into something new and unfamiliar. So, of course, it’s going to feel
strange and you can feel nervous. It’s okay.”
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“I can’t sleep. I’m ready to go to soccer practice. I don’t
think I’m nervous anymore.”
I got myself up. We had some breakfast and played some
games. Finally, after what seemed like days to Joshua, we headed
out to the soccer fields. We were the first ones there. So, Joshua
and I ran out to the field and started kicking the ball back and
forth. Little by little the other kids were arriving with their
parents. Most of the kids ran onto the field and started kicking,
running and chasing their balls.
One boy got out of his car and held onto his father’s leg,
screaming. His father was a big guy, but he could not get the boy
off his leg and could not get him to stop screaming. Actually it was
more like wailing. You could hear it clear across the field. His boy
did not want to play soccer.
“Dad,” Joshua said. “Look. I think that boy is nervous
about soccer. I think I’ll go be his friend and help him.”
Astonished, I watched as my little five year old son picked
up his soccer ball and ran to the sidelines. He approached the little
boy and said, “Hi, I’m Joshua. What’s your name?”
The little boy was caught off guard by Joshua approaching
him and stopped crying. The silence was noticeable and all the
parents turned to see what made him stop. The big father looked
down at his son and Joshua.
“I’m Carson,” the little boy sniffled.
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1
SALES ARE THE LIFEBLOOD
Sales are the lifeblood of a company. Sales are the fire.
Sales are how a company earns money and has an operating
business. No matter what
business you are in, you need
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educate you about financial risk you may have from injury,
catastrophe or death and then will provide you with a policy to
protect you from it. A professional retail clothing sales clerk will
show you the latest fashions and help you to select wardrobe
items that fit you and highlight your best features. A professional
industrial parts sales representative will demonstrate how the
latest technology has created better, safer or more cost effective
parts for you to include in your product. A professional consultant
will talk with you about the problems in your organization and
provide you with answers and a plan to correct them. In each case,
selling is about adding value.
Just like any profession, if you love the work that you are
doing, then it shows in the results. My grandfather Dr. Emanuel
Mandell was a chiropractor in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s in New
Jersey. He graduated from chiropractic college, and was licensed
in Vermont and Florida. Although chiropractic was legal and
licensed in most states, New Jersey was not one of them. New
Jersey, though, was my grandfather’s home and he wanted to help
his community in Linden. During his career, my grandfather was
arrested 13 times for providing chiropractic care under the charge
of practicing medicine without a license in New Jersey, even
though there was no way for him to get licensed.
Like many chiropractors of his day, my grandfather had an
incredible passion for his work and his ability to help patients. He
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face of the law, would your customers also feel that same level of
passion and visit you in jail so they could buy from you? That’s the
power of passion. If you have
this energy for your job, then
your customers will too.
Every touch point,
There are some businesses
every contact, that at first glance don’t seem
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customer. Selling involves the reputation of the company. The
maintenance person is supporting the selling operations team and
their environment. The maintenance person also is creating the
professional reputation of the company by maintaining the facility
to impress customers, partners, suppliers and employees.
Decisions to conduct business with a company will involve the
image that company portrays. A clean, orderly facility provides a
very different image from a filthy, messy one, and will certainly
attract more business. So, if you ask me if I think vacuuming a
floor can impact sales, I say yes. Everyone in a company can have
an impact on sales – whether those sales, be they for today or
tomorrow or the tomorrow after that.
There is also a distinct difference between order TAKING
and order MAKING. If a customer calls in with an order, and a
customer service representative simply takes the order and enters
it into the computer, then that is order taking. It is a personalized
way to check out and pay for an order. But if that same customer
service representative asks the right questions of the customer,
educates the customer about the products and services offered by
the company, and connects the customer with the right items to
meet his or her needs, then that customer service representative is
MAKING an order. The difference between order taking and order
making is the additional value that you are providing. Order takers
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the revenue warriors who battle for sales every day for the sake of
the company.
In this view, the Spark Sales Professionals are the
protectors of the lifeblood of the company. When a company is
growing, there’s money for pay increases, bonuses, raises, perks,
benefits and other investments. There are more budgeted funds
to hire staffing, pursue new projects and purchase equipment.
Growing a company’s sales offers greater opportunities for
everyone. So, let’s figure out how to spark more selling, so we can
all benefit!
SPARK 1: SHOWING UP
I learned the first spark of selling, SHOWING UP, in my
first sales job. I was selling home heating oil contracts door to
door to new home buyers, and practically anyone else who would
talk with me. Home heating oil is a fairly commoditized product,
and my employer, Dawn Fuel, was in a competitive market with
about a dozen other companies. We spruced up the offer by
including a furnace cleaning and 50 free gallons for their first year
(home oil tanks came in 250, 500 and 1000 gallon sizes). I worked
this job two and a half months each year from early June to late
August, during my summer break from college, and in those two
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and a half months, I could outsell the other sales representatives
who worked the whole year!
Bill, the owner of Dawn Fuel, wanted to know my secret. I
didn’t understand what he was talking about. I didn’t have a
secret. Bill had me talk with the team about my sales pitch, how I
overcame objections and even the clothes I wore, but my
suggestions didn’t seem to help.
It wasn’t until years later that I
finally figured out the special Stupidity has
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SPARK 2: KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING
The second key spark is almost as simple – KNOW WHAT
YOU ARE DOING. I am not a fan of trial by fire. Throwing a
person into a situation without any training sets him or her up for
failure, and I am a believer in setting people up for success. That
means you need to know your product, your offer, your customer,
your company, your market and your competition. At the very
least, you need to know a bit more than what your customer
knows. At the very most, you should be the leading expert on
what you sell. Your
company should provide
for this training. If they
To be successful in
don’t, then ask for it. If
sales, you need to
they still don’t, then make
know your stuff and the investment to learn it
yourself.
know what you are
Product training
trying to achieve. usually occurs at the start
of your job and then often
gets overlooked as time
goes on until a new product is introduced. Over time, everyone
develops their own way of talking about the product and falls into
a rut. Sales representatives can even start to believe some of their
own stretched truths about the product or service once they
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so that someone other than the sales representative can review
the orders. This review does not have to occur at the point of sale,
but it should occur within 24 hours. Although most of deals the
sales representatives make are kosher, mistakes can and do occur,
more often guided by overzealousness for a sale than intentional
outwitting of the system.
Knowing your customer is critical. If you have the chance
to prepare prior to a customer meeting, reviewing information on
them can put you a step ahead of any competitor. Visiting the
customer’s website is key, but also Googling them or asking other
people about them can be extraordinarily insightful.
If you don’t have the luxury of researching a customer, use
the conversation during the sale to learn more about them. Are
they environmentally conscious and focus on “green” products? Is
there a particular charity which they support? Is their company in
the midst of a major new initiative or project like an acquisition?
How can you best serve that customer and provide them with the
maximum value? Simply, by knowing what makes them “tick.”
Equally as critical is knowing your company, inside and
out. This goes far beyond knowing the company history and its
public relations statements. REALLY know your company by
learning how business gets done and who does it. Learn how to
fast track an order. Learn how to customize a special order. Learn
how to get a new policy approved. Learn who the go-to people
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So we did it again at the next trade show, and then repeated it
over and over and have now laid those records in the dust as we
continued to figure out how to grow the sales.
How did we do this? We made this the primary product
sale at trade shows. We laser focused the sales goals, the
commissions and the sales representatives’ attention solely on this
product. It was all management talked about for months, so it
soon became all the
sales representatives
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Take a look at yourself in the mirror, and see if you would
want to do business with yourself. Do you match up with the
people in your industry? If you are selling fitness products, are you
in healthy shape? If you are selling fashion clothing, do you dress
and look fashionable? If you are selling medical drugs, do you look
intelligent, like you master the science surrounding the drug and
the disease?
Having the right
attitude is partly about
looking like you belong,
You need people to
but it’s also about feeling
want to talk with you. like you belong. When
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imagine my confidence meter like a gas gauge going from near
empty and getting back to full.
I also use a lot of visioning techniques to strengthen the
right attitude. When I made cold calls to sell insurance, I would
start my day by visioning a stack of
signed insurance policies next to
Care for your
me. Today, before I begin each
sales call, I spend a few moments to customers,
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direction. You need to hear feedback from the customer. Sure,
the customers wants to know what is going in your business, but
even more importantly, they want you to know what’s going on in
their business and how you can help them.
So provide a forum to make
this happen. Visit or call your
customers on a weekly to quarterly Your Time
basis, listen to them and respond to
is Worth
any questions from them. Even GE,
the titan of companies, has a program Money
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3
WHEN ARE YOU SELLING?
When I travel to lecture for companies and conventions,
after the speech, I am often approached by folks from the
audience who will say, “This is nice and interesting Mark, but I’m
not a salesperson.”
“Do you have a job?”
“Yes.”
“How’d you get it?”
“I saw an ad, interviewed for it and got hired.”
“Did you sell yourself during the interview or did you send
someone else to do your interview for you? Isn’t that how you got
the job?”
“I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
We are always selling, whether we think about it or not.
When we are dating, we “sell” ourselves to the guy or girl we think
is attractive or interesting. We “sell” our advice to our children by
convincing them that we know something. We “sell” our stories
at parties by participating in conversations and interjecting humor,
items of interest or familiar names.
When I venture out into the world, I try to “sell” smiles. I
want people to have enjoyed the few minutes of time that we
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When you love your work, it becomes your essence.
When you love your work, it becomes your identity. When you
love your work, it is no longer “work.”
How you identify yourself in relation to your job will often
predict your success at it. Too many people are not happy in their
jobs. How can you be passionate about your work and sell that
excitement about it to others when you are not happy in your job?
The truth is that you can’t. If your job doesn’t excite and energize
you, then find a way to change your perception of that job, or find
a new job.
The 9 to 5 mentality maintains that you are only working
for eight hours a day and after that, you are free to do something
else. But if you are engaged with your work, then you are thinking
and talking about it all day long because you are inspired about it.
You are finding connections to customers, coming up with new
sales concept and growing yourself.
Now I am a big believer in work-life balance, so I don’t
think being “on” 24 hours a day is the right way to have a
successful career. With my business travel, I do have to make
sacrifices regarding family time. But if you spend time with me,
you’ll know quickly that I talk about my family a lot. In fact, my
wife and my children are probably my most favorite subject to talk
about. Why? Because I love having them in my thoughts and
sharing the happiness and inspiration they have given me.
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Your social network has far-reaching opportunities.
Often, the people closest to you can be some of your biggest
promoters. Encourage your friends and family to talk about your
services in a way that’s comfortable for them. It’s easier for them
to sell you if you have a standard profession – like a chiropractor,
landscaper or car dealer. It’s a bit harder for them to promote your
services if you are highly specialized or in a technical field. Either
way, they can best help
you to network by
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“I sell stylish wallets and belts made from the softest leather
in the world mostly to small mom and pop retail shops.” (I was
instantly intrigued about wanting to see those wallets and belts.)
“I handle worry-free investing for folks wanting to retire
with at least a million in assets.”
“I am a whole body
chiropractor who works with
Whether you
nutrition, exercises and stress relief
techniques to advance your are in sales or
wellness.”
not, you should
If you get a sales lead from
the conversation, then you can hand still promote
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4
SPARK SALES IN YOUR STORE
The great thing about selling in your store is that the
customer is already there and has expressed some level of interest
in wanting to buy from you. Your store can be a retail store in a
mall, a freestanding store, a restaurant, a warehouse, a kiosk, a
flea market booth or a sandwich truck – the key concept here is
that the customer has approached you in your environment to
look and possibly buy something. Now what?
Your goal now is to find out what the customer is looking
for and to provide them with what they need. Most customers are
looking for a solution to their problem. They may think that they
have the solution in their mind, however they often do not
recognize that other solutions exist. Your job as a Spark Sales
Professional is to help the customer solve their problem, not just
be a companion in their search for their one answer. For example,
a woman walks into a store asking you for a size 8 black dress. If
you didn’t have a size 8 black dress, most salespeople would say,
“I’m sorry, but we are out of them right now.” A Spark Sales
Professional would find out what the size 8 black dress is for, and
might offer a size 8 red dress that better matches the woman’s
complexion and which the store has in stock.
THE APPROACH
The sale all starts with the APPROACH to the customer.
What, when and how do you approach the customer? The most
common line I hear used in stores is, “Can I help you?” And the
most common response to that uninspired line is “No, I’m just
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looking.” We all know that this approach does not work, so let’s
stop using it. Let’s commit to NEVER saying that greeting
question again to a customer and replacing it with a much higher
value greeting.
Start by viewing the world from a customer’s perspective.
She just walked into your store. Through the window, she
probably saw one or two items that caught her attention, and now
she has entered your world. This is not her territory, this is yours.
When you walk into someone else’s territory, our social norms are
such that you are a bit tentative until you are welcomed and
invited to “make yourself at home.” When you go over a friend’s
house, you don’t waltz into the house like it’s your home, you
don’t sit down until invited and you don’t grab food until offered to
do so. The same kind of welcome works in a store.
“Welcome to Beth’s Boutique! I am Susie. Are you familiar
with our place? I would love to show you the layout and help you to
find the exact right thing you are looking for.”
Oftentimes a customer is already in a store and looking at
some merchandise by the time a sales person can get to them.
This happens frequently, in larger stores and in smaller booths.
The approach to a customer who is already actively engaged in
looking at merchandise should be modified somewhat. This is
more akin to approaching someone at a party or club, in which you
want to engage them in conversation without scaring them off.
ENGAGEMENT
This kind of sales approach helps to facilitate
ENGAGEMENT, the second step in the sales process.
Engagement is where the salesperson becomes actively involved
with the customer’s search. Even with the right approach, the
engagement has to occur properly in order to facilitate the sale.
“Are you looking for something for everyday use or for a
special occasion?”
“Is this going to be for you or a gift for someone else?”
“We’ve got some great pants that came in today that would
go really well with the shirt that you are holding. Would you like me
to show them to you?”
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To be honest, the last line is not one that I came up with,
but one that was said to me. I was shopping at a men’s clothing
store in Oak Brook, Illinois. I walked into the store to just buy a
shirt and was flipping through the rack, holding one shirt in my
hand, when a saleswoman approached me with that line.
“Sure,” I replied.
“Here, let me carry that shirt for you,” she said. I gave her
the shirt, and she lead me to the pants rack, asked my size and
pulled out two pairs of pants, one brown and one blue. “Why don’t
you try on these, and see if you like them?”
En route to the fitting room, we also harvested another
two shirts that went well with the pants, and a belt too. Hook, line
and sinker. I was sold. Why? Because I was engaged in the
absolutely right way. I was getting fashion advice on how to
update my wardrobe – which was really the whole purpose to my
wanting to buy a new shirt.
How are you engaging your customers with a message of
value? How is your customer engagement taking the experience
to a whole new level of service? Are you providing friendly
leadership and guidance within the store? Are you working from
the customer’s perspective? Engage the customer like a Spark
Sales Professional, and see how the selling becomes transformed
into a buying experience.
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process, a Spark Sales Professional can help the customer to reach
his or her sales decision sooner.
I have seen many sales representatives make conversation
with customers but fail to open the sale by never asking. The
customer is in your store to buy something. You are a salesperson,
not a professional conversationalist. You need to find out what
they want to buy so you can help them. How you ask them
though, is key to the success of the sale. Using guided questions
will help the customer to focus on their true needs, and ultimately
will help you to earn the sale.
Recall the last example of choice questions – “Are you
interested in the preferred package service or the economy package
service? The preferred package service is the most popular.” It
includes an important component, the special tag, “The preferred
package service is the most popular.” When it comes time to make
a selection, people like to know their decisions are positively
validated. If most of the other customers selected a particular
item or package, then it must be a great value! Simply letting a
customer know that “this is the most popular” or that “most of our
customers pick this one” can help a customer to feel more
confident about their decision. They like the endorsement that
other people made the same choice as they did.
In addition to the customer recommendation, another
popular endorsement can be similarly as powerful. This is the
PRODUCT DEMONSTRATION
The PRODUCT DEMONSTRATION should follow the
opening of the sale. The product demonstration can consist of the
customer test driving the vehicle, trying on the merchandise,
practicing using the equipment, tasting a flavor, watching a video
about the service or any other means of touching, feeling, seeing,
hearing, tasting, smelling or experiencing the product or service
which you are selling. This can be a technical demonstration such
as one for a medical or industrial product, or it can be a simple
customer-led process like trying on a pair of shoes. The premise
for a successful demo, however, is still the same. The Spark Sales
Professional needs to understand what problem the customer is
looking to solve and make sure that the demonstration addresses
that particular issue.
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If a woman is trying on that little
Engage the
black dress for a night out on the town,
be sure that she has dress shoes and a customer in
handbag to get the total feel of the
a dialogue.
evening. The problem she is looking to
solve is what to wear to feel special.
If a doctor is asking about a new medicine, then the Spark
Sales Professional should be sure to have all of the research and
product comparison information on hand to explain the benefits
for patients. The problem the doctor is looking to solve is how to
treat some patients who are not responding well to the currently
prescribed medication.
If a manufacturer is looking to include some new
equipment in the production line, the Spark Sales Professional can
show a video that explains how the product fits in with the current
line, provide a sample product made with the equipment to
demonstrate quality, include a floor plan of the facility to show the
layout options and offer a return-on-investment spreadsheet to
help the manufacturer assess the value of the equipment. The
problem the manufacturer is looking to solve is how to
manufacture his product more cost efficiently.
The key to the demonstration is to answer the questions
of the customer, not just to showcase what you have to offer. The
more questions that a Spark Sales Professional can answer during
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just want to see if there’s anything better out there. If you are
prepared for these kinds of questions and know how to handle
them during the demonstration, then you can remove objections
even before they come up.
I experienced this sales process in action and loved it! I
was shopping at Best Buy for a new GPS Garmin device. The price
seemed reasonable, and I wanted to get one, but I also like to
comparison shop. When the Spark Sales Professional asked me if
he could ring up my order, I told him that I just wanted to check
the prices online. So he offered to do it right there for me on his
computer, saving me from driving home and back to the store
again. We looked up the device at two competitors and saw the
same price, but one of them included a travel package at a better
price – which he immediately matched for me. I had no other
issues, so I bought it on the spot and felt GREAT about the
experience! Who wouldn’t?
Imagine how powerful this service could be for your
business - providing the right information to your customers to
help speed up the sales decision process and prevent leakage of
sales opportunities. Some leading car insurance companies have
ended sales leaks by doing this with their online and phone rate
quotes with great success.
Leakage is when a customer intends to purchase from you
but, due to a delay or possibly some poor follow up, the customer
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suit?”
The key to handling the objection component is to know
your most common objections in advance and be prepared to
respond to each one. This way, when you confirm the objection
with a validation question, you can comfortably answer it and
move forward. Validating an objection is an important but often
overlooked step by novice sales representatives.
Customers will throw out an excuse rather than the truth
because it’s easier and less confrontational. For example, a
customer could say that he needs to check with his wife before
buying the table. To validate the objection, you would ask, “So if
your wife says yes, then you’ll buy the table?” If he says yes, then
you know that you need to work out how he’ll show his wife the
table. If he says no, of course you will have to validate the new
objection as well. “So if the price is what you were looking to pay,
then you would to purchase this table today?” When he answers
yes, then you know that you can bypass the talking to his wife
objection because the real issue is the price.
Now you can come up with financing or some other value
offer to meet his pricing needs. Because objection validation is
such an important step, practice it out loud so it rolls smoothly off
your tongue.
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Sometimes people view prices as the entire purchase price
and sometimes they consider the monthly payment. This is often
true for mortgages, car payments, equipment leases and other
large ticket purchases. Many customers will be more interested in
how they can afford the monthly payment than the purchase
price. Finding the right leasing package can sometimes be as
important to closing the sale as the product itself.
Another consideration is that the product package itself
may be more than what the customer is willing to pay because it
includes more options
than what he needs.
Factor in the value
Does the customer really
added to help each need the super premium
deluxe package with all
customer make the
the trimmings or will the
right decision. basic economy package
do just fine? I will often
take a small car when
renting cars for business travel because I don’t feel the need to pay
the extra money for a status rental car. Matching the customer’s
needs to the right package option can address the pricing issue.
Customers will also feel the price is too much if they don’t
understand the total value proposition of the product or service.
Paying extra money for premium industrial equipment that can
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Remember that your goal is to help your customer to
make the right decision. Ask the right questions, listen to the
customer’s response and then meet their request.
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If you don’t have all the sales tools that you need, you
need to sell the idea of what you need to the people in charge.
And if you really think you need something, then don’t take no for
an answer. Sometimes it is easier to ask for forgiveness than to
ask for permission – as long as you are within the boundaries of
applicable laws and regulations. If the company just wants sales
clones and won’t listen to you, then find a company where the
value you bring is appreciated and rewarded. Life is too short to
keep banging your head on the wall.
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ABOUT the product or offer. It’s not the way people buy. People
buy mostly from emotions, not from cognitions. The final decision
to buy almost always comes from the heart, not from the head.
Your job as a Spark Sales Professional is to bring the conversation
back to the heart by using words of feelings, emotions and senses
rather than comparison-based thought.
“Sure, I can understand that. What do you like about the
offer?”
“How does the offer look to you?”
“How does the deal sound to you?”
“How do you feel about what we’ve talked about?”
What do you like, how does the offer look and sound, how
do you feel about it? LIKE, LOOK, SOUND and FEEL are based on
emotion and the five senses. The Spark Sales Professional is
asking the customer to return to her heart in talking about the
product, service or offer. People are often more confident talking
about how they FEEL about something than how they THINK
about it. The killer phrase to avoid is, “What do you THINK about
it?” This question can make the customer close down rather than
open up and put you back a few steps in the sales process instead
of forward.
Focusing on feeling is not about getting the customer to
make a decision without careful consideration of the facts
involved. This is about leading the customer to make a decision,
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If the customer responds with a new objection, the Spark
Sales Professional must work to handle this objection and then ask
for the sale a second time. This is selling. This is salesmanship.
This is not order taking. This is order making. And this is the real
reason that Spark Sales Professionals are paid a lot of money.
Because the really great Spark Sales Professionals EARN IT.
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5
SPARK YOUR SALES IN
THE CUSTOMER’S OFFICE
The field sales representative position is a position of
independence. Many people enjoy the freedom that it offers.
Freedom from daily office politics. Freedom from being chained
to a desk. Freedom to be out on
the road, meeting and talking with
customers. Of course there is a Increase
price for this freedom, that of self-
your face
motivation and the ability to accept
rejection. In exchange, successful time.
field sales positions can be
extraordinarily high earning jobs.
PLAN IN ADVANCE
Making your time productive in the field is necessity. Each
day, you should plan to visit as many customers and prospects as
possible. Increase your face time, and reduce your windshield
time. Lay out the highest priority visits first. These are the pre-set
appointments that you made ahead of time. If you set an
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There is bit of both art and science in route planning. I
used to plan my heating oil sales route on a big folded map and
index my potential customers by quadrants. Today there are
electronic mapping tools that can help plan optimal routes, but
these are not foolproof. Traffic patterns will greatly affect your
driving times.
The key is to avoid heavy traffic areas at high volume
times. This may mean leaving your home earlier in the morning or
trying to squeeze in last
hour visits at five or six in the
…stopping in to see a
afternoon. This may mean
very loyal customer can learning side streets in your
be a great emotional territories. This may also
confidence and
at certain times of the day.
The more detailed logs you
enthusiasm.
can keep about traffic
patterns, the more effective
you will be.
Another big item to contend with in regards to route
planning is your customers’ office hours. Most retail and industrial
businesses have normal business hours, but businesses such as
doctors’ offices often have irregular hours. Making notes of their
office hours and planning your route with that in mind will boost
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THE COLD CALL
When the Spark Sales Professional makes the initial cold
call to a customer, she has to introduce herself, ask to meet with a
specific person and provide the reason for her visit. More often
than not, this is explained to the receptionist in an office setting.
Many times, the first person who greets you is not the one that
you want to hear your sales pitch. You may have to stir up interest
from someone who may not know anything about you, your
company, or what you are selling. The first thing that has to be
interesting is YOU. Are you being someone that people will be
interested in talking with?
It is customary and polite to introduce yourself, explain
who you represent and provide a business card. What
distinguishes the successful Spark Sales Professional is how she
engages that person at the front desk or front door. There are
tons of strategies, from acting empowered to being jovial, but the
most successful ones match up with the sales professional’s
personality. You want your approach to be natural and fit your
personality. You also want to get to the point. And you want to
strive to be extraordinary in your approach.
The receptionist or “gatekeeper” needs enough
information to pitch you to the person you really need to speak
with, yet shouldn’t be overloaded with information that he or she
might forget. The key points of Name, Company, Product or
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“Hi there! I’m Michael with Office Systems. If I could save
you $1,000 a month on your printing expenses, how interested would
you be? I’d like to see your current photocopier and provide you with
an information sheet so you can see the savings potential. It takes
about five minutes of time and is truly worth it!”
Make a strong value proposition. In exchange for a few
minutes of their time, what will you provide them? Also,
remember that most people are resistant to change, even if it’s for
the better. People are comfortable with the status quo even if
they know that it’s not the best. Change occurs when there is
extra value that exceeds the risk. How much value is there in your
proposition and how much more value can you include?
When I talk about this with some salespeople, sometimes I
am told that they were not given these kinds of tools from their
companies. Really? So, the company didn’t give you absolutely
everything you need to close every possible sale? Welcome to the
real world! This is not an obstacle, it is an opportunity. Instead of
whining, use your brain and MAKE YOUR OWN VALUE TOOL.
I had a great sales professional who created her own
spreadsheet template to input the number of patients a doctor
saw in a week and a few other data points to calculate the
profitability of using the equipment she was selling. When I asked
her why her sales were going so well, she showed it to me and
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appointment or at least the name of the true decision maker and
focus on getting the initial presentation with that person. If you do
your homework on the front end before a sale, then you won’t
have to wait on the back end after you start the sale in process.
The best way to reach the decision maker early on is to
start at the top of the food chain. Ask to speak with the CEO or
President of the company. Even if your purchase is a smaller ticket
item, they will refer you downward to the right person to speak
with. And a referral coming down from the CEO asking the
decision maker to meet with you is the strongest sales
endorsement you can have. What’s your alternative? Start at the
bottom or at the middle and then try to work your way up to a
decision maker? When you think of it from this perspective, it sure
seems a lot harder this way and a lot less likely to result in the sale.
If you are thinking that your product or service is not
important enough to merit time in front of a CEO, then you need
to work on motivating yourself until you can correct that thought
process. The problem is the fear and insecurity in your own mind.
I know CEO’s of large companies that concern themselves with
fine details of running a business from the cost of the lawn
mowing service to office chairs to catering. If you are offering the
value of cost efficiency or revenue growth, and any viable product
or service should provide one of those values or both, then start
with the CEO.
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for money. Many people are. Successful people are not. When it’s
time to ask for payment, you need to be clear.
The order of preference is usually cash, credit card or
certified check, then commercial financing or personal check and
finally the 30-day net terms. Since there are so many ways to pay,
a simple but effective tool is to ask, “How would you like to pay for
this?” Since you likely prefer credit cards or cash, an even better
way would be to ask, “Will that be cash or credit card?”
A budget is a funny thing. When people really want
something, they somehow find a way to pay for it. If you are
selling $50,000 of advertising to a company, and they respond that
they don’t have the money in the budget to pay for it, that’s a
different question then saying they can’t afford it. Sure they don’t
have the money IN THE BUDGET if they didn’t budget for it. If
they had budgeted for it, then they would ALSO have the EXTRA
REVENUE generated from advertising in the budget, which would
more than help pay for it. The lack of the money is not the issue.
It’s the lack of belief that advertising will generate a real return,
which means you did not build the value proposition in a way that
the customer believes you. So go back to the value proposition
and make it more believable.
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not occur during a business day are awfully hard to make up in
following days. Never postpone a sale tomorrow that you can
make today.
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personal note to each customer. You can even include a special
article of interest if you know they enjoy a special hobby. It can be
something as simple as a photocopied article with a sticky note
attached saying, “I saw this gardening article and thought of you.
Hope your garden is thriving this summer! If you have extra zucchini,
let me know!”
Continue to go the extra mile. If the equipment you sold
had an issue, be sure to stop by and offer a loaner during the down
time. If there was a shipping problem or billing concern, be sure to
stop by and talk about it face to face. If everything is going
smoothly, then stop in to see if they have any ideas on how your
company could improve. Giving a customer the opportunity to
help your business is a great relationship builder.
Your goal of each visit is to strive to make a magical
moment. Not sure what a magical moment is? Ever been to
Disney World? Disney trains their staff to seek to provide magical
moments to their customers. Ask a street sweeper for directions
and instead of pointing you the way, he will stop what he is doing
and walk you to exactly where you want to go. The entire
workforce of Disney is there to provide you and your family a
magical vacation, one memory at a time. In fact, they don’t even
call you a customer, they call you a GUEST. So, as a Spark Sales
Professional, ask yourself how you can provide magical moments
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6
SPARK YOUR SALES
OVER THE PHONE
Phone sales are one of the most under-leveraged sales
tools by most companies. Lots of companies try to use phone
sales, but they do not do them well. They miss tons of sales
opportunities, ranging from failure to up-sell and cross sell, failure
to offer better service to the customer and failure to ask for and
get referrals. These easy additional sales can be generated from
the incoming calls your company already is getting.
Companies have hundreds, thousands or tens of
thousands of calls coming in each day,
each with the prior intent of a
… outlining the call helps purchase. With a bit of sales leadership
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daunting task, but outlining the call helps to understand how the
call starts, progresses and finishes and provides the sales
representative with a guide map for success. If the sales
representative knows the direction of the call and has some
talking paths to help him reach the destination, then he is much
more likely to make the sale. The value of training cannot be
underestimated here.
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to break your own bad habits and learn stronger selling
techniques. You cannot imagine how much room for
improvement you actually have until you hear (or see)
yourself.
Listening to yourself is so powerful, that I actually caution
sales trainers to wait to do call recordings until after the sales
representatives have already started the sales team on a path to
improvement with trainings, demos and role plays. If salespeople
hear themselves too early on, they can get discouraged and lose
self-esteem.
The purpose of the call recordings is to improve their
success, not break down their self-worth, so you want to be able to
catch them doing some things right when reviewing the call.
Waiting until after the training has started, helps the phone sales
representative to do a few things right on the call and also to see
for themselves how the call naturally progresses and where they
get stuck.
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Understanding who is calling helps the Spark Sales
Professional to put the customer’s reason for calling into
perspective. Customers will usually state their reason for calling as
soon as they get a chance to talk, particularly if they are upset.
Understanding the customer’s experience with the company helps
the Spark Sales Professional figure out how to respond. A new
customer may require additional explanations about the offering.
An experienced customer may be asking for more detailed
information. Treating the customer appropriately for their
experience level creates better rapport.
Once the issue is stated by the customer, the phone sales
professional should repeat what the customer said to make sure
they got it right and then proceed to ask questions to get
additional details. The purpose of the additional questions is to
make sure the customer’s primary issue is handled completely.
There may be several layers to the issue that the customer might
not have considered.
Also, the additional information that the customer
provides can help the Spark Sales Professional discover more
value opportunities to offer. The more you know about the
customer and his issues, the better you will be able to service
them.
For example, if a customer is calling up to order a new
mattress, a typical sales representative will ask about the mattress
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For example, a company we were working with was trying
to get activity reports from the phone system they had purchased,
but the reports they wanted didn’t come with the system. The
phone software company said our client could either purchase
upgraded software or pay someone to program the current
version. Either way was an expensive proposition for something
that our client had thought came with the version they purchased.
Our client of course had a third idea: return the phone
system, get a refund and buy one from a different company. Of
course the phone software company didn’t give him that option.
Eventually, our client got a manager on the phone who
changed the tone of the call. She asked how valuable the reports
were to our client and how they would help improve the metrics
and management of the call center. The manager explained that
the additional investment was only a fraction of the value that our
client would get in return. That reframed the whole picture, and
our client agreed to purchase the upgrade. The value proposition
made sense.
Looking for the up-sell or cross-sell starts with really
understanding what the customer is looking for and then
providing it. Making standardized offers that do not specifically
relate to the customer are bland promotions. What if I were
buying work boots from a catalog company, and the sales
representative told me that they are running a special on window
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by to ask for our dessert order, and my wife and I said, “No
thanks.” Whereas most waiters acknowledge that answer and just
bring the bill, this one came back with a great retort, “The
chocolate cake is to die for. Are you sure I can’t interest you in one
order and two spoons?” My wife and I looked at each other and
smiled, but I was just too full. So I said, “We’d really like to, but
we’re just too full.”
The waiter came back with a third request that sealed the
deal. “No problem. I can put the cake into a to-go box for you to
enjoy later tonight.”
Now I really smiled. He had pulled our real objection for
the dessert from us - we were too full. Then he solved the problem
by offering that we could eat it later. SOLD! We took the cake
home, and I learned a valuable sales lesson. Don’t ask once. The
second or third time may be the charm.
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“Congratulations on your order today. We do appreciate your
business. What I’d like to do is to put a note on your account that if
you call us back within the next 10 days, that you will be eligible for a
special $10 coupon. Would you like me to do that for you?”
Want to see increases in repeat business? Try including
that kind of offer on your inbound calls.
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There are some sales philosophies that encourage the
sales representative to first make small talk to build rapport and
ease into the sales conversation. In reality, the small talk
schmoozing is more helpful in making the sales representative feel
comfortable then the customer. The customer knows that you are
there to offer something and try to sell it. They just want to
determine how much value they can get before they decide. So,
rather than start with small talk, a Spark Sales Professional can get
the conversation going in the right direction by using value
propositions to build interest instead of discussing a mutual
interest in playing tennis.
In outbound calls, the value propositions are questions
that get the customer to understand the value of what you are
offering. When worded correctly, they should get your customer
to realize their need for your product or service without you having
to spell it out for them. If you are selling life insurance, then the
value proposition is, “How concerned are you with your family’s well
being after you die?” If you are selling air purifiers, then the value
proposition is, “How worried are you about the allergens, mold and
bacteria in the air in your home?”
If you are selling a generic, low cost product, then the
value proposition is¸”How much money do you want to save when
you buy ______?” The value proposition communicates the
primary benefit of your product and gets the customer to state the
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“Hello, Susan. I was told that you run the greatest bakery in
the region. We provide
commercial baking
Remember the maxim, equipment to companies
“KISS,” keep it short like yours that are ready
and simple. to grow. I know you are
running a great
business, but what do
you think are some of the things that restrict your manufacturing
capacity from growing? (get answer) If you had convection oven
equipment that lowered your production costs by 15% through faster
and more even cooking, what kind of advantage would that give
your business?”
Notice the use of the silver-tongued compliment, “you run
the greatest bakery in the region.” Compliments, a great foot-in-
the-door sales technique when used properly and honestly, can
get the customer’s attention and prepare them to hear your
message. Be sure that the compliment is honest. A glaringly false
compliment can burn you.
Once you have used the value proposition to gain the
customer’s interest, your demo or explanation of your product or
service needs to show exactly how you provide that specific value.
There may be many things that your product or service offers, but
if you asked the value proposition correctly, then you can focus
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The right questions will help guide the customer to
“discover” the answer themselves. You want to ask short-answer
questions that stimulate the customer’s thoughts and directly
relate the positive attributes of your product or service. As the
customer starts verbally walking himself through the sale, in
addition to the benefits of your product or service, you will also
hear the customer describe the issues that are creating hesitancy
in their minds. These issues are the objections that are holding
back the customer from saying “yes” to the sale. Helping a
customer through the objections, puts you on the final path to the
sale.
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This may sound like pressured selling, but the purpose of
this is to speed up the decision-making process. Instead of waiting
to buy something next week, next month or next year, this
technique is to clearly convey the value proposition so it makes
sense to do it immediately. Convey the benefits of your product
and service so clearly that the customer feels that they must have
it right away. That is selling.
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The information in this chapter is not about the latest
technologies that are available on the Web, nor the latest e-
marketing fads. If you want to learn about these things, then go
online. With the turbo-fast changing pace of the Internet, if I put
information about Web technology into this book, it would be
outdated by the time we sent it to be published. What this chapter
does give you is information on how a Spark Sales Professional
should use the World Wide Web as a sales tool.
The level of competition on the Internet is fierce. With a
simple Web search, comparison shopping can be accomplished at
the touch of a few keys. Your competitors can be found as easily
or sometimes even easier than you can. Reviews can also be found
on your company, your product and you, personally. Want to
know what they’ll find
out? Type your
… people don’t just buy a
company, your product
product, they buy from the
and your name into a
company or person selling
search engine, and see
that product.
what links come up. It
pays to know what the
customer knows about
you first. Perception is everything.
Just like with brick and mortar stores, web retailers or e-
tailers focus their marketing efforts on their products in the stores.
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specials via email or the phone? I signed up online with a local day
spa for a massage. Now, each day I get notices of special last
minute discount appointments. I love it! Other companies also
send me daily or weekly discount notices. I unsubscribe to the
ones that don’t offer me any value, and keep the ones that do.
Your customers will do the same.
Are you instant messaging (IM) with your clients to help
them to make a purchase? Getting the one little question
answered via IM is a lot faster than having to search through the
site or wait for an email response. When I bought my last laptop
online, the IM representative was terrific in helping me to select
the right features I needed. She was certainly a lot more engaging
than my having to search magazine articles that explained the
differences to me in non-technical language. So, don’t just hide
behind your computer on the Internet – get out there and talk to
your customers!
BUY NOW
Another important factor of success in Internet sales is
creating the sense of urgency. Why should they buy now? The
reason for this importance is that many customers use the Internet
to browse shop or to research a purchase before going to a bricks
and mortar store. Having a sense of urgency to buy NOW can
convert some window shoppers to merchandise buyers. How can
this be achieved?
• Have a note that the price listed is a special deal only
good for today.
• For limited quantity items, have a counter that counts
down the number of items available.
• Use auction sites that have a timed expiration for the
offer.
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The same strategy should be used for communicating an
offer or sale via
email. This email
The Internet is just
can be a
another powerful broadcasted email
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8
SPARK YOUR SALES
AT TRADE SHOWS
PRE-EVENT MAILERS
Pre-event mailers also need to be designed and mailed.
For most shows, a company wants the fliers to hit their targeted
customers a few days before the customers leave to travel to the
show. If this is a local trade show, drawing from customers within
driving distance, then plan for the materials to be delivered 2-3
days before the opening. If this is a national or international trade
show, a company needs to allow for possible travel time prior to
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the event, and the mailers should be delivered 1-2 weeks before
the opening day.
The goal of the pre-
First day discounts are a
event mailer is to get the
great strategy to boost sales
customer to visit the booth by
generating excitement or at trade shows, but
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The pre-event meeting is also a good time to review the
logistics of the event, the types of attendee badges, practice with
all the equipment in the booth, and review the sale techniques
with the sales team. Even if they have all heard the sales training
before, it is always a good thing to remind them of powerful sales
techniques. Seasoned sales representatives tend to stick with only
a few sales tools and over time will forget the lesser used ones.
Reviewing everything, even the basics, keeps them sharp.
If you don’t believe me, then just attend any professional golf
school. The first thing they ask you in golf class is to show them
how you grip the club. Yes, that’s right. You can be playing golf
for twenty years and the first thing they ask is the most basic step
of all – gripping the club. Why? Because the basics of golf are the
foundation of everything, and they need to be polished in order to
truly grow. Just like with sales.
CUSTOMER STOPPERS
The most important
selling step at a trade show is … make sure to
actually getting people to stop at ask questions
the booth. Every passerby is a
that are real
potential customer. If a Spark
customer
Sales Professional is not talking
stoppers!
to a customer in the booth, then
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• “How many new customers did you NOT get last month?”
The customer-stopping question is actually a one-two
combination. The stop-dead-in-your-tracks question only earns
you the privilege to speak with that person. The second part is
what gets the sales conversation going. The sales professional
needs to hear the customer’s response, and then respond with:
• “That’s exactly why we are here to help folks like you.”
• “Can you imagine how the next few moments might impact
the rest of your life?”
Now, some people, no matter what you say to them as
they walk by, will just say, “No, not interested.” If you truly want
to be an extraordinary sales professional and be an order maker
instead of an order taker, then you need to engage some of these
folks as well. Are you ready for one of the most powerful
questions to stop a person dead-in-their-tracks even when they
tell you:
• “I’m happy with my current
company/supplier/provider (your competitor).”
• “I need to be somewhere for a meeting.”
• “I’m good. Thank you.”
• “I’m not interested.”
Here’s the power question in its three forms:
“What would the ideal ____________ partner look like to
you?”
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to talk about WHAT THEY REALLY WANT. Most people have a
vague idea about the products and services they want, but as they
talk about it, they think more about what really is important to
them.
Using the words “partner” and “experience” also elevates
the concept of your company and service. The words help to focus
the customer on both the tangible aspects and the intangible
elements that can differentiate a company, even in the most
competitive of environments. By talking about these important
aspects, the customer is priming themselves to be sold.
THE DEMONSTRATION
Now that you have gotten the customer’s attention and
you have heard what is most important to them regarding their
needs and wants, you are in a really great position to explain what
you can do for them. This is the demonstration or explanation
portion of the sale.
Armed with understanding the aspects important to that
customer, you have the extraordinary opportunity to tailor the
demonstration or explanation to just those few important points.
You can tell them exactly what they are looking for and what they
need to hear to become a customer. How much easier can it get?
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ENGAGING MULTIPLE CUSTOMERS
A fairly common situation is that while you are talking
with one customer, a few more come up to your booth to see
what’s going on. This can happen often when there are scheduled
lectures during the trade show and the attendees visit the exhibit
hall during the break times. A bird in the hand is certainly worth
more than two in the bush, and there are some ways to keep the
customer you already are working on and also to engage the other
folks as well.
First, consider how far along you are with your current
sales presentation. If you are about to close the sale and write the
order, then you want to focus on getting that sale. However, at
any point before you asked that customer for the sale, you can
invite the other customers to hear your pitch and demo. Be sure
to ask the current customer first if they would mind letting other
people listen while you spoke. When inviting other customers to
join your sales conversation currently in progress within the booth,
you will need to switch from the role of sales representative to
sales presenter. As soon as you are talking with more than one
customer, you are now managing a crowd. This means that you
have to keep everyone in the group engaged in your sales
presentation and talk with them as a group, not as a bunch of
eavesdroppers listening to a private conversation. You want to
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It’s also easy for
someone to fall out of the Something as quick
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“sale.” A true Spark Sales Professional will go one step further
with a customer who made a purchase and ask that customer
about other people they know at this show that they can bring
over to the booth. At professional trade shows and local or
regional exhibition shows, many of the folks know each other.
Just by asking for referrals on a consistent basis, you can easily
garner a few more sales that might never have fallen your way.
Every little bit makes the difference.
SLOW SHOWS
What happens if you are stuck working a dead show with
limited attendance? What do you do if only a few attendees are
walking through the exhibit hall? You take matters into your own
hands. Most trade shows are pretty strict on selling in the public
spaces such as walkways and eating areas, but if your company
paid thousands of dollars for the booth, and you are only getting a
trickle of traffic, go speak with the folks in charge of the event and
ask what they can do to help you. Don’t wait until the end of the
show, because by then it’s too late. Instead, keep your cool, and
try to salvage the show. Offer suggestions such as moving your
booth to a more heavily trafficked area, arranging five minutes to
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address the group from the main stage or getting permission to
place flyers on the chairs in the main lecture hall. Most event hosts
will seek to accommodate their exhibitors if approached in a
reasonable manner.
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9
SPARK YOUR SALES
THROUGH DISTRIBUTORS
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COMPENSATION
Compensation is usually …the more money a
negotiated in the beginning of the
distributor can earn
relationship, hopefully in a written
by selling your
agreement. Although it may be
difficult to put it all down on product, the more
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to end the bonus so it does not become a standard that everyone
just expects. A bonus should be special. When it becomes a
standard payout program, it loses its luster and effectiveness.
TRAINING
When you bring a distributor on board, just like when you
bring an employed sales representative on board, you have to train
them about your company
and product. Depending on
Demonstrations the distributor’s experience,
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some new Best Practices that the distributor may not have even
realized they were doing.
A few years ago, I traveled halfway around the world to
work with one of our distributors at the time. I watched him
conduct a training seminar for his customers and learned a whole
new way to train customers that we had never considered. We
brought that concept back to our own seminars with great
success. Distributors can sometimes teach a manufacturer as
much as the manufacturer can teach them.
SERVICE/COMMUNICATION
Just like you take great care of a customer, you also have
to take great care of your distributors, with the same level of
service and attention. Higher levels of service may be warranted
because that one distributor can directly affect the business that
you are doing with hundreds or thousands of customers! The
customers that you have through the distributor may be
considered both the distributor’s and your customers, but the
distributor has direct communication with them and therefore has
the advantage of likely keeping them.
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have set aside time and attention to address any issues that they
may have for you.
It also gives you a definite time to update the distributor
on any particular sales and marketing programs that are being
launched or are in the pipeline to be launched. You know that you
will be speaking every Tuesday at 11am, so you will be more
prepared for the call. You also have the opportunity to collectively
brainstorm new ways to increase the distributor’s sales. This is
one of the great benefits of working with distributors over
standard sales representatives. Oftentimes, a large distributor has
extensive and broad experience with a network of contacts in the
same industry. That experience can be leveraged to develop new
ideas.
If you have read Napoleon Hills’ book “Think and Grow
Rich,” then you understand the concept of a Master Mind Group.
This is a group of smart people that you get together with for the
purpose of discussing how to grow your business. The phone call
with your distributors is very much akin to the Master Mind Group,
although on a smaller level.
Start talking with other people, and you will see entirely
new concepts germinate and come to fruition. The ideas start
flowing, and you have people to discuss them with to develop the
idea into a workable plan. By having scheduled calls, you will
CO-OPERATIVE MARKETING
Co-operative marketing consists of any shared expenses
between the company and the distributor that are related to sales
and marketing opportunities. Sometimes this may be a formal
budgeted amount, and other times it is an informal decision on a
particular project. I have seen companies use this money to help
fund the hiring of new sales representatives, direct mail projects,
advertising, telemarketing, trade shows, point of purchase
materials, flyers and more. The benefit of co-operative marketing
is that the company and the distributor pay their apportioned
share of the costs.
The company gets the benefit of leveraging the
distributors brand identity and customer base. The distributor
gets the benefit of reduced risk by cost-sharing. If you are not
offering this opportunity to your distributors, you are missing out
on untapped sales.
Offering co-operative marketing is one thing. Working it
out is another. I am sure you are familiar with how hard it is to get
a single marketing piece completed within your own company and
how many folks have to approve it before its distribution. With co-
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operative marketing, you also need to
In business,
send the piece to a whole separate
company (your distributor) for them to what you pay
review, edit and approve.
attention to is
That means a few extra steps of
going back and forth so both your what grows.
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10
SPARK WITH THE
LONG-TERM SALE
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THE NEED FOR COMMUNICATION
The long-term sale requires a flow of information back
and forth between the buyer and seller. Often, a long-term sale is
a significant expense or investment, so accurate communication is
paramount. An example would be the sale of a product sub-
component such as a memory chip to a computer manufacturer, in
which the memory chip has to be properly fit and connected with
the computer’s other components and software. The computer
manufacturer will not commit to buying the memory chip until the
memory chip manufacturer sends samples, and the computer
company can test them within the computer and other parts. The
success of the memory chip sale depends on the successful
matching of the memory chip to exactly what the computer
manufacturer is looking for.
In the past, language barriers between nations often
limited the accuracy of specifications, so companies dealt more
easily with component manufacturers in their own countries.
Fortunately, international trade has matured over the past few
decades with a common language of English, but differences such
as standard measurement units and misinterpretation of
specifications can still create some unforeseen problems.
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The truth of the matter, however, is that a customer will
not really choose to buy your goods based on the quality of the
seats that you bought for the NBA Playoff games. Nor will they
choose to use your company based on the nice gift or trip you
provided. They will choose your company when you make them
FEEL SPECIAL. The sales tool of high priced entertainment is one
way to make a customer feel special, but as a stand alone tool
without also delivering the customer special attention, such gifts
can just be a wasted expense.
Also, many of the entertainment that sales
representatives choose for their customers are things more that
people would do with friends. The psychology behind doing them
with customers is that if the customer would normally do those
things with a friend, and if he is now doing them with you, then the
customer will probably begin to look at you like a friend. However,
this is not always the case.
The challenge for the Spark Sales Professional is to figure
out how to make the customer truly feel special without being
invasive. Dropping off a birthday cake is a great way to celebrate a
customer’s birthday yet also a lot less personally intrusive than
taking the customer out to dinner for their birthday. The customer
will likely have plans with family or friends and want to make her
birthday a personal affair rather than a business meeting.
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from being outsold by the competition, simply because you have
already “out-serviced” them and won the customer’s loyalty.
A Spark Sales Professional earns loyalty from a customer
by remembering the details of the relationship. Want to impress
someone? Don’t just send a pre-printed holiday card. Send a
birthday card, an anniversary card and a valentines’ day card.
Want to really impress them? Include a copy of a news article or a
write-up that is aligned with their interests. If you know they love
to fly fish, then send them an article about the greatest fly fishing
vacation trips when you see that in a travel magazine. Want to win
them over for life? Handwrite all your cards and notes. In this day
and age, the handwritten note connotes a level of personal touch
that a typed letter just cannot duplicate.
Loyalty also is earned by more than just the one person
you are meeting within the company. If you are doing serious
long-term business with a company, make sure to learn the names
of all the people in that company. Take the time to treat them like
people and not as doormats to the decision-maker. They will talk
about you when you leave, and you want them to be saying only
good things about you.
Think the office receptionist doesn’t have any influence?
Think again. Some decision-makers ask them specifically how a
sales representative treated them, because it can indicate how
that same sales representative will treat a customer.
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every single time. It makes me feel that they truly want my
business – which, in turn, makes me want to give them more of my
business. A statement of appreciation and gratitude really has to
come from the heart. The statement can be said, but it needs to
be felt by the sales professional when it is actually said to the
customer. Talk about a relationship builder – that’s a powerful
connection between sales professional and customer on all the
right levels.
Treat your long-term customers like you would want to be
treated yourself. Provide them with the information necessary to
make the right decisions and the highest level of customer service
to keep them wanting to continue doing business with you.
Businesses spend a lot of marketing dollars trying to reach new
customers. Spark Sales Professionals need to spend a lot of time
on trying to keep the ones that they already have.
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has a deadline that is too far out, such as a few months from now,
sales representatives do not feel the urgency to get started. By
the time they feel the urgency, the excitement from the initial
launch of the contest has worn off.
Different sales contests are appropriate for different
selling environments. To get a team focused on closing sales at a
trade show, multiple sales contests can be run: one for the first day
only and separate ones that last for the whole event. This way
everyone comes out of the gate strong and stays engaged. To
wake up a call center, sales contests can be run on the spot. For
example, if a call center director sees sales are slow in a particular
product line, she can announce an immediate double commission
rate for all sales in that particular line, good for the remainder of
the day. Amazingly enough, the call center staff will start talking
about that product line more and start increasing those sales.
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• company products
• company logo items such as shirts, hats, mugs and
bags
• reward pins
• gift cards
• professional massages
• car wash or car servicing
• special trips
When using a monetary award, try to create a tiered,
retro-active awards program. Tiered payouts mean that the
payout increases as the sales increase in that period. For example,
selling up to 5 units, the bonus payout is $5/unit. Selling 6-10
units, the bonus payout is $6/unit. Selling 11-15 units, the bonus
payout is $7/unit.
Retro-active payouts mean that once the sales
representative hits the new tier for the contest, then all the
payouts for that month are increased to the new level. In this
example, the combined retro-active rule with the tiered structure
would mean that if the sales representative sold 12 units in the
month, then the bonus payout on all 12 would be $7.
Remember, if the contest was not retro-active, then the
sales representative would have earned $5 for the first 5 units, $6
for units 6-10 and $7 for the 11th and 12th unit. The goal of the sales
contest is to motivate and incentivize the sales team. When a
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winners hit the bigger payouts and the remaining awards got
smaller, the intensity and focus of the rest of the representatives
on winning the contest increased. There is a huge psychological
motivator for the award to be personal and tangible, and asking
the sales representatives to look at their personal dream each and
every day kept them engaged in the contest. The result was the
largest unit increase in sales within 60 days!
Launching a sales contest, no matter how big or small,
should occur with GREAT FANFARE. This is a special opportunity
and the company should treat it as such. Contests should best be
announced face-to-face in a group setting so the swell of
excitement from the entire team can be felt.
Rules for the contests should be put in writing. This is
what most people would call the “fine print,” but it is necessary.
No one can envision every possible scenario that can arise with a
contest, so exceptions always arise. The most common two
exceptions are how to handle returns and addressing when
multiple representatives were involved in a single sale. The
purpose of the rules is to clearly state the expectations, the
rewards and the eligibility, so in case of exceptions, the company
has some set of guidelines for reference.
Although the launching of a sales contest can be a mini
pep rally, the cheerleading does not end with the launch. In fact,
the CHEERLEADING FOR THE SALES CONTEST NEEDS TO
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about how to get to the top of the chart and stay off of the
bottom.
Using sales contests as a way to focus the efforts of the
sales team is a proven sales management tool. The differentiating
factor of extraordinary sales managers is the ability to use the
contest to step up the motivation level and maintain it throughout
the contest. Keeping the whole team engaged is just as important
as designing the right contest and award. Like many great
business ideas, the key to success lies not in the idea but rather in
the execution of the idea.
HOW TO WIN
So, as a Spark Sales Professional, if you are presented
with a sales contest, how should you go about planning how to win
it?
First, make sure that you CLEARLY UNDERSTAND THE
RULES OF THE CONTEST and which products, units or services or
eligible. A Spark Sales Professional will want to focus on those
particular items because the company has indicated that they are
the most important by virtue of the sales contest itself. Ask
questions to clarify any point that you might be unclear on.
Whenever possible, try to get the answers to those questions in
writing.
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• Can you come in
The goal is to early and do any administrative
work before 9am?
help the sales
• How can you be
team and
more productive during the day to
individual sales have more exposure to
representative customers?
• Do you pre-judge
become the
customers, or do you give
absolute best
everyone the opportunity to buy
that they can be. from you?
• If lunchtime is a
good time to reach customers, can you eat your lunch
early or late so you can be available during lunchtime?
• Can you prepare your calling lists or sale route the
night before to give you extra work time?
• Can you notify any frequent customers about special
offers and personally invite them to buy?
• Can you ask for referrals from your customers each
and every time?
A sales contest essentially gives a Spark Sales Professional
the reminder to re-energize his workday. Taking some time
periodically to assess how you are doing, and digging deep to ask
yourself how you can do better, is the true purpose of running a
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12
SPARKING IT ALL TOGETHER
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Sales training can best be done by professionals, but most
sales managers can at least get the ball rolling. Pulling the sales
team together into a meeting or onto a teleconference and having
each one of them review their best sale of the week helps to get
the brainstorming started to share the Best Practices. Even
meeting daily for a five minute pep talk can help your sales team
by getting them energized for each day. Another option is getting
each sales person their own copy of a sales book and going
through a chapter or two each week. Challenge them to apply
those concepts in their work for the week, and then report back at
the following meeting.
As the training develops and the sales growth momentum
starts to build, you can start to look to other types of sales
development programs. If you are selling through inbound calls,
test an outbound calling team. If you are doing outbound phone
sales, experiment with a field sales force. If you are doing retail
sales from a shop, try a few trade shows or create an online store.
Try something totally new! To really grow sales, you need
to stretch yourself to do something different. Single digit sales
growth comes from improving your current programs. Double
digit sales growth is achieved when you launch entire new
programs or products. Think and act big, and you will earn big!
When building a new program, many companies try to
test it by adding the project onto the plate of a successful but
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Nearly everyone wants revenue growth, but growth brings
its own set of problems. As more orders start flowing through the
company’s pipelines, little problems that go overlooked when the
systems are at half capacity suddenly become bigger problems.
To succeed with the growth, some things are non-negotiable.
Product or service quality must remain the same or improve.
Customer service levels must remain the same or improve.
Delivery times must remain the same or improve. Inventory levels
need to be managed better. Staffing levels need to improve so
overtime does not become an added cost and eat into margins. All
these components are important so a company grows but does
not implode from the growth.
The key is to create profitable growth and not growth at
any cost. Profitable growth requires the coordination of scalable
systems across all departments within a company. If sales grow by
20%, it does not mean that staffing needs to grow by 20% as well.
It means that the various departments and teams need to consider
how they can absorb the additional business by spotting the
inefficiencies of their systems and correcting them. The sales
growth should be accompanied with efficiency gains so the costs
increase at a slower rate than the revenue increase. This is one of
the most challenging parts of running a company but also the
most important for long-term growth.
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Spark Your Sales