August 13, 2008

Hello to everyone.

This is my first entry. I'll do my best to give you ideas and thoughts, to generate a better life through clearer thinking, better sales techniques and years of experience that can help me and you.

I've sold a lot. I've been in Corporate America, entrepreneurial America, B2B, C2C, B2C, face to face, phone sales, phone appointments, marketing calls and you name it and I've probably done it or had exposure to it.

The purpose of this blog is to give others the benefit of my experience without having to spend years and untold calls being unproductive and giving you ideas that you can use now, today in your sales career.

One of the most important ideas that I've learned is to differentiate yourself from your competition. There are many ways to do this. The best way is to be yourself and don't try to sell your prospect. Instead, help him get what is it that he wants. How do you know what that is? Ask the right questions so that you can help them the best. These questions are the 5W's and the H: who, what, why, when , where and how. Once you know about them, their business, and what they want, then you're on your way to helping them rather than trying to sell them something.

Another way to differentiate yourself is to not do what everyone else does in front of the prospect. Historically, sales trainers have taught salespeople to go in and chit chat and then find something in the office to talk about in hopes that this will build rapport with the prospect. It's like asking, "How are you?" You don't even know them, yet, and you're asking about their health. Now, some would argue against my point. But, they are not differentiating themselves from their competition. You must be different, but not that much different. Why not talk immediately about how long they're been with the company. Have they always been in their current position? Anything new with their company? What are their immediate and short term projects and goals they are working on in their department and company wide?



Why do you want to know these things? To give a better presentation and be able to solve more problems with your service/product. The more you know, the better you serve your customer. Isn't that why you're there in the first place? It should be. The more you serve, the more you earn. This is critical.



I'll write more soon.



Best regards,



Mike