10 Top Tips for seizing sales opportunities by Jo Owen, taken from the book “How to Influence: The Art of Making Things Happen”.

1. Two Ears & One Mouth. The best sales people all have two ears and one mouth.  And they use them in that proportion.  They listen twice as much as they talk.  Listening is the secret weapon of sales.
2. Walk in Your Clients Shoes. See the world through their eyes.  Understand what they want.  Sell what they need to buy, not just what you want to sell.  Understand what they fear and dislike so that you can pre-empt their objections.  If you want them to dance, play their tune.
3. Your Best Prospects are Your Existing Clients. Typically, it costs seven times as much to sell to a new customer as it does to an existing customer.  Existing customers tend to buy more: you know what they need and how they buy and you have an established track record.  Selling is not the preserve of the lone hunter seeking new clients.  Many of the best sales people are farmers who carefully cultivate existing clients.
4. Answer the Questions, Just Like in a School Exam. You may think you have the best answer or product, but the best product on earth is useless if it does not meet the customer’s needs. “Forty Two” is a good answer to the question “what is six times seven”.  It is a terrible answer to the question “how does your product compare to the competition?”.
5. Build Trust. Lets make this simple: would you buy from someone you did not trust? Buyers buy a promise of performance.  The promise is as good as the person and firm that stand behind it.  Trust is both rapport (show you have similar interests and values) and credibility (can you be relied on to do what you say)?
6. Win Win. Don’t try to defeat your client.  You can fool anyone once: they will never be your customer again and will trash your reputation at every opportunity.  Give your clients a win – make them feel good about buying from you.  Allow them to tell a story to their boss, peers, colleagues, friends and family which shows that they bought smart.
7. Know Your Customer. Buyers may be interested in price, but what does the rest of the organisation want: reliability, flexibility, speed to market customisation or profit? Get beyond the buyer’s office.
8. Persistence Pays. The harder you try, and practice, the luckier you get.  You learn more about what does and does not work.  And if you don’t try, you don’t sell and you don’t learn.  Selling is a craft skill, it takes effort to learn.
9. Make it Easy. Clients are really not interested in your internal procedures, policies and priorities.  They have enough problems.  Make it easy for them to buy, simple for them to pay and smooth enough for them to use your product or service.
10. Enjoy it: You Only Excel at What you Enjoy. To sell is to see human nature in all its bizarre variety. Make the most of every moment.

If you are anything like me, then you are eager to help businesses.  I am always giving away free advice.

A lesson I have learnt over the last couple of years is that you can give too much free advice or information away.  This then leds to less time to spend with customers who really need your product/service.  Plus a lot of time running round trying to find my next customer!

What was I doing wrong? I was failing to prescreen my leads.  I was giving away valuable advice and service to the wrong people.  More importantly, I was giving away advice to companies who couldn’t afford my services.

Don’t get me wrong, it is great to be able to offer something and get leads, but are  people REALLY interested in what you have to offer and can they affort it, now?  If not, you are just wasting your time and money. 

Prescreening is easier to do then you first think.  Late last year I worked with a client who was offering a “free 1 hour consultation” to every person/company who would commit to a meeting.  Great, he had a full diary and was running around making new contacts.  When he reviewed his sales a month later, he had only converted 2% of the people he had seen.  Spent a lot of money travelling and invested considerable time.

He called me and asked for help.  We put togehter a prescreening questionnaire, which covered 5 questions in total.  Based on the replies received, the then worked out who to see and who his PA could follow up with.

Currently his conversation rate has gone up to 8000%

Think about the service/product you provide and list out a set ot 3-5 questions which will pre-qualify leads.  For example:

• How much to do you have ??? to spend/invest?
• What is your primary goal for using our services or product?
• Who do you currently use to provide this service or product?
• Why are you not happy with the service you are getting?

This simple exercise will also lower your costs and provide valuable information for you to provide a better service in the future.  (More about that in a later article).

Don’t worry about  refusing to provide a “free” service to all. You are not in busines to offer valuable information and services for free.

Let me know how you get on.

I hear it all the time… business is slow, times are changing and the economy is affecting my business.

When a client or a potential client utters these words, the first thing I tell them is great! Use this time to really get to know your customers. The often look at me in bewilderment.

If you want to sell more then you really need to get to know your customers. I can assure you that the reasons you think they are buying from you are very different from their reasons.

My two tips for today are:

1. Talk to Them – ask them what their problems are and what they are looking for. It is only then at you will be able to explain the benefits of what you do and how it can help make their lives better today.
2. Ownership – Let your clients feel what their live is like when they have your product/services. Wait a few minutes then take it away from them. Remind them they have to own it first.

The last one sounds cruel, but it is very effective.

Let me know how you get on and most importantly, what you learnt when you really got to know your customers.

We all know that one-sided relationships don’t work.  So why do we set up our websites to talk  at our customers? 

Does your website focus entirely upon your business and talk just about you and how wonderful you are? 

Have you ever wondered why some websites bring in leads on others don’t?  This is because those websites are focused on the customer/visitor and they are developing a two relationship.

When designing your website, think about these four things:

1. People like to be entertained – your content has be interesting and of value to hook them.
2. People want their opinions valved - blogs and forums can be added to your site to give customers the option to add comments and start to engage in the conversation.
3. People are egocentric - the first question in their head will be “What are you going to do for me?”
4. People want to do something – they want to take part, i.e. leave a comment, download a document or watch a video.

Give them something to do.  Offer a free report or whitepaper or the option to download some audio or video.  Ask them for comments and get them to leave their opinion on a topic.

Guess what you have when they leave their email, phone number or address?  A qualified lead.  Qualified because they stayed on yoru site long enough to take action.

Go and look at your website and let me know if your business has been losing out on leads.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of the Apprentice.  But last nights epsiode was a train crash and I for one will not be watching anymore epsiodes.  

When is  marketing going to get the same respect as the sales function in Sir Alan’s organisation.

The Apprentice makes good TV, but in the really business world a business built on sales alone will not survive, especially in this climate.  What most people would have picked up from last nights programme is get the sales right and nothing else matter!

So what about the customer and their experience of the product.  I am sure that anyone who bought the honey product, wouldn’t be running back to buy again!

The losing team, had a better product and ticked more marketing boxes i.e. promotion, packaging, place, people  and physical evidence, but the project manager was let down by the price.   They even got their sales strategy right.  

Ben was given the task of helping with costs and did absolutely nothing, but complain.  Which is what he normally does. He was clearly given a task and did absolutely nothing to contribute on the cost front.  Plus he is rude and doesn’t even shut up when told to by Sir Alan!  For this reason alone, he should have been fired.

The winning team’s project maanger, had no idea what he was doing.  I would be embrassed to be associated with such an awful product.  

But in the boardrooom that didn’t matter.  The winning team made the most money! The product was awful, they had no pricing structure, no plan for distribution and only won at the last minute because they were giving the product away.  If this was a really company, it would have been interesting to see how many complaints they would have received the following day/week about their product!

If I had bought their product in Camden I would have complained.

Yes the team that lost did really messy up on the costings and price. Costs are important, but they were working as a team and the Project Manager made it very clear that she need help… where was that help?  If it wasn’t for Nick no one would have known about the huge mistake they made with the oils.

There were other people in that Boardroom who should have been fired! 

What a twist it would have been if the winning team where called back in and asked to explain they mistakes and one of them was fired!

Business is about sales, but if you don’t get the marketing right where are the customers going to come from.  It isnt’ just about Sales.

Last nights episode was a train crash.  I can’t believe that some of the people who messed up on last nights task are still in with a chance to work for Sir Alan on a six figure salary.

This isn’t what being in business is about.