I’ve often spoke of the importance of making sure your proposition includes how the customer stands to benefit from decreased costs, increased productivity, and recovering lost revenue or profits. While many retail customers may still buy based on these factors just like B2B customers, there is an overwhelming “X” factor that is more present in their buying decisions. Retail customers often “buy” because it improves their quality of life. Whether the product or service makes them feel good, provides entertainment, or simply puts a smile on their face – the purchase all comes down to improving their overall life in some way.

While this can still happen in some B2B situations, it is far more present in retail sales. Can you imagine a retail salesperson providing a cost-benefit analysis for a prospective customer who wants the latest and greatest television or MP3 player? The benefit is that they will be entertained in their life greater than before and the cost is what they can afford or are willing to pay to get it.

In my opinion, it is not the job of the retail salesperson to stop a retail customer from buying – even if making the purchase for their own “retail therapy” is the primary motive. Unlike most B2B sales, there are many times in retail when we don’t even truly need to understand why the buying is taking place. Retail customers buy for many reasons, but the most important reason is simply to improve their own life experience.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Good presentations can be extremely effective when trying to “turn” a prospective customer. While there is usually too much emphasis that is put on this part of the sale (i.e. “the close”), it is not doubt an important part of the sales process in most cases.

When giving presentations, salespeople often spend too much time on the wrong things. For the most part, prospects really don’t care about how long you have been in business, what your product or company story is, and who makes up your executive leadership. Unless your prospect has given you a reason in an earlier phase of the sale to address these items, you are simply spinning your wheels and losing their attention when you need it most.

Instead, your efforts need to be focused on the “goodies” of the deal. Your presentation needs to address how a prospective customer will ultimately make more money by doing business with you. Whether this comes from increased productivity, cost savings, recovering lost revenue, or all three – it matters not. It only matters that they believe your presentation at this point. If you can pull this off by presenting the goodies, you will achieve victory with your presentation.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Your time in front of a prospective customer is extremely valuable. The hardest part of the sales process can sometimes be just getting quality time in front of the prospect to ask questions. When you get to this point, you definitely want to make the most of your opportunity. You never know, this might be your only chance to advance the sale.

It is a great idea to take an evening to sit down and come up with a list of some great probing questions. It’s not like you will be doing this from scratch, either. This will be the time to search your memory for some of those great questions you asked before but might have forgotten. After you’ve made your list of probing questions, you have now created a great resource to review before meeting with a prospect. As time goes by, you will need to go back to this list to update it when you uncover new questions to ask.

A lot of salespeople usually have 3-4 probing questions they rely on. Because each customer and each situation is different, it is a good idea to expand your horizon in your questioning process. Chances are that you have lost sales because you didn’t ask the right question as your “go to” questions didn’t uncover any problems in the way these “lost” prospective customers were doing business.

When we don’t uncover problems in the way the customer is being served in the status quo, we cannot provide a solution. Without presenting a profit-justified solution, the chance of closing a sale is slim to zero. If you take the time to come up with an expanded list of good probing questions, you will uncover more problems and make more sales.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Have you ever tried to implement a new sales process with prospective customers in your sales career? If you have ever sold for a living, you have. You have to start somewhere, right?

Whether you were just a new salesperson or were just trained on a new way of selling, we all take a first step in new way of selling in our sales careers. Any sales trainer worth his salt, however, will tell you that it takes time before your new way of selling will become effective. It is quite normal for your sales productivity to actually dip as you begin implementing your new sales process. At some point, you will be tempted to go back to your old way of selling.

If we know in our heart that we are working with a new sales process which is better, why is it that our sales take a short-term hit? The answer is quite simple. Even though your new system is superior, you end up presenting it as a “Mr. Roboto”. When we come across as robotic, awkward, or unnatural, we present an image in which we are seen as incompetent. Some people deal with change better with others, but all of us will face a struggle on some level when learning something new.

Should you give up? If your sales dip, it is natural to move away from a new sales process and return to your old ways. In most cases, this is what most salespeople will actually do. I would also remind you, however, that most salespeople are not ultra-successful.

As an infant or young toddler, there was a point when crawling was more productive than walking. There was a time when you could write faster than you could type on a computer. There was a time when the fear of rejection kept you from approaching someone of the opposite sex. You overcame all of these obstacles, along with many others. You did so because you knew there was something better on the other side.

You have to look at selling in the same manner. This profession can be tough as hell – make no mistake about it. But if you continue to learn, be patient, and not give up, you will find greener pastures on the other side. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time when you are implementing a new sales process. Your paycheck will thank you for it someday.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Far too many salespeople turn to their boss or company for their personal motivation to be successful in sales. This is a huge mistake, as salespeople need to be responsible for their own motivation if they want to become successful.

You might have had a sales manager or boss that was an excellent motivator in your past or you might even have one in the present. While there is nothing wrong this, you can never count on it or expect it from your management team. Just like your success, you must own and be responsible for keeping yourself motivated.

A lack of motivation is usually the result of not having goals. If you have been planning goals for your sales career and still find yourself not having the proper motivation, chances are that your goals are either too obtainable or they are not very realistic within the timeframe you have given them. Perhaps it is time that you access your current goals and put some time aside for goal setting.

Having a career in sales is a difficult. Anybody who has worked in sales capacity knows that very well. Even the most optimistic and successful salespeople wake up to days where it is hard for them to get motivated. But make no mistake; these same sales superstars understand that their motivation is their own responsibility.

Putting your own success, motivation, or happiness in the hands of others is always a bad idea. It is like the voter who relies on a politician to bring them economic prosperity within his or her term. It could be the husband or wife who relies completely on their partner to make them happy. In the real world it just doesn’t happen, that same voter, husband, or wife will always be disappointed with the results, if there are any to speak of in the first place. When we decide to own responsibility for ourselves, we take action. And action will eventually lead to the success we are on the path to finding.

Popularity: 12% [?]

The term sales management is very misleading, because the emphasis is really on the word “management” and not “sales”. Ultimately, this means the game changes dramatically for an individual who is making the jump from salesperson to sales manager.

While there are many responsibilities that come with being employed in sales management, perhaps none can turn around the sales equation quite as fast as effective recruiting. You can have the best sales strategy and plan around, but it means very little if you don’t have the quality personnel in place to carry out the plan of attack. At the same time, picking up a couple of top sales performers and putting them on your team can turn around those sales numbers pretty quickly.

Sales managers need to constantly be recruiting and meeting potential new hires, even when hiring for a sales position doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. People leave positions and companies for a variety of reasons, so you have to be fully prepared for when this happens. A bad new hire or a string of new hires that don’t work out can quickly turn your once great sales team into a dysfunctional sales force incapable of meeting your sales plan or quota.

The ways to meet qualified individuals to fill your sales team is only limited to your imagination. However, I’ve listed several ideas below to get you started:

1) Take a Salesperson Working for a Competitor to Lunch

-In this situation, you want to make sure not to talk about customers, prospects, or anything that can be construed as an unfair information grab. You can talk about the industry you share in general, but primarily focus on learning about the salesperson to see if he or she would be a good fit for your team. It is best to meet with a salesperson from a competitor when you are not looking to fill a sales position at the present moment. If you go about it in this way, you will already have a good idea about whether or not the individual is a good fit should a position come available.

2) Be on the Lookout for Good People Not Presently Working in Sales

-Don’t forget to give a “look” at people that are not presently working in a sales capacity. Retired & former teachers, recently discharged military veterans, and experienced restaurant servers are examples of people who could be great “finds” for your sales team. While these folks will require much more attention than a veteran salesperson, the upside is you will most likely have more employee loyalty and better long-term retention. In most cases where a salary is involved, these folks come a bit cheaper than experienced salespeople, too.

3) Don’t Rule Out Salespeople Who Work in Other Industries But Have a Very Similar Customer Base to Your Own

-You should never rule out salespeople who work in another industry but share a very similar customer base to your own. Again, it is best to have a lunch meeting with these folks long before a need arises so you can qualify them beforehand. The downside is that if you do hire out of this group you will have to train them on your industry. The upside is that they already know how to sell and might even be able to get you in some new doors where they already have an existing customer relationship.

Recruiting is “no doubt” a major key to being successful in sales management. In order to have ongoing successes in this area, this is a management responsibility you must take seriously and give constant attention to. If you do, your long-term and short-term recruiting goals will be successful endeavors.

Popularity: 11% [?]

If you desire to make more money and work less in you sales career, then it would be in your interest to invest time in learning how to properly qualify prospective customers. More than any other sales activity we perform, this separates the winners from the losers in sales.

The #1 reason most salespeople fail in my opinion is because they don’t have enough prospects to sell to. Because of this, many salespeople come to believe that every lead they receive is “gold”. When this viewpoint is taken, little or no qualifying of the prospect takes place by the salesperson.

This is ultimately a mistake, because the #2 reason that most salespeople fail is by not properly qualifying prospective customers. In other words, the salesperson fails because he or she wastes too much time on prospects that will never buy or even if they do become customers, they don’t have enough sales volume to warrant the salesperson’s time.

We can take sales training to improve our overall salesmanship. We can read sales books or blogs to increase our selling knowledge. But we cannot create more time. No man, alive or dead, has ever been able to completely eradicate the problem of having only so much time.

Never forget that your time is valuable. And never hand over the most precious asset you have in sales (your time) without ensuring you have the utmost opportunity (by qualifying your prospects) to get the financial reward you deserve. If you don’t have a qualification process based on your business and customers currently in place, you should immediately develop one and practice it on an ongoing basis as soon as possible.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Early in my sales career, I thought a referral was nothing more than getting a phone number and a name from one of my customers. After calling a few of these supposed prospects, it didn’t take me long to realize that this was nothing more than a glorified cold call. Check that, calling it glorified would be unfair to the word itself.

The thing is, getting a “real” referral requires much more than asking for a name, phone number, or email address for a prospective customer. What you are really asking for (when asking for a proper referral) is for your customer to put his or her credibility on the line in order to get you in the door to make a sale. This means that your customer will need to communicate in some form (i.e. a letter or phone call) on your behalf to the referred party. If you obtain a referral without having your customer communicating on your behalf, all you have at “best” is a qualified prospect to call on.

When you think about referrals along those lines, the process becomes far more dynamic and difficult. However, the odds of successfully executing a sale or picking up a new customer will go up dramatically. Make sure to get your customers involved in your referral process by having them communicate on your behalf.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Many years ago, I remember the first time I saw a BlackBerry from one of my “tech” friends who was a real estate broker.  I remember thinking, “Why in the world would anyone who sells real estate need to receive emails in real time?”.  Now that I live in the ever changing world of 2009, I find myself asking, “Are there any salespeople left who don’t receive their emails right away?”.

It think this has already become a rule, in case you did not know.  Customers in 2009 have an expectation that you receive your emails right away & have the ability to respond.  Yet another change added to a rapidly changing sales environment we once again find ourselves in.

If you are not receiving your emails in real time, you are behind the curve.  The days of the road warrior who only checks his emails in the morning and evening is coming to an end.  This is also one of those sales technology items that can cost you if you don’t get up to speed.  If you provide your own phone, make this change.  If your company provides one for you, you need to sell your company on embracing the present. sales environment.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Sales burnout can be one of your biggest enemies when working in a sales capacity. Fear not, however, because just about every salesperson or sales manager has dealt with this problem on some level.

Sales burnout is primarily caused from an imbalance in your personal life. When you do nothing but work, your mind can become overloaded pretty quickly. When we don’t give attention to our physical and spiritual elements, it ends up draining our minds to the point where our productivity continually gets worse.

Of all of the problems that a salesperson can be confronted with, I actually struggle with this one personally more than any other. The path to overcome this problem is simple, however. Exercise regularly, eat healthier, take time off to have some fun, spend more time with your family or friends, and give some attention to your own spiritual growth – whatever that might be in your own life. What you will find is that by giving attention to the other important areas of your life, it will in the end actually increase your overall productivity. Sales burnout can be beaten, so when the warning signs begin to show themselves make sure to take action to prevent burnout from taking hold.

Popularity: 15% [?]