Look the part
People make snap judgements based on your clothes, the car you drive, your accent and how you smell. Whether their judgement is correct is down to you. As a sales person, dressing the part is essential. You can have the best product, or the most innovative money saving process for your would-be client, yet if you look wrong to them, you could easily lose the deal. So shine your shoes, wear your best clothes (this could be business attire or smart casual depending on the situation), and make sure your breath and body smell lovely.
Talk to their level
If you are talking to the technical department of a business you have to be able to talk to their knowledge standard. However, a car salesperson will temper their petrol head knowledge if the client is simply seeking a car that is fuel efficient and looks nice.
Don’t fear the phone
Get on the dog and bone…it doesn’t bite!
Even seasoned sales people dislike calling prospects. However, if you have a qualified lead that has expressed an interest, ringing them is a matter of courtesy if nothing else. They will be expecting you to call, and to not call is a wasted opportunity and could damage your reputation in the eyes of the would-be client.
Listen up
People love to be listened to. They disliked being talked at. As a rule of thumb listen as much as you can before talking. When you do talk, address the concerns, queries, and any misunderstandings about your product/service. The sales process can be far friendly and, once you know what your customer needs, you will impart more targeted knowledge to them.
Don’t bug them
When you feel you are close to a sale, don’t badger the client for a decision, but ask them questions that they need to answer. Allowing them to come back to you with the reply gives you more knowledge about what they need, but also helps cement their good opinion of you and your business.
Identify blocks to buying
With a first purchase of a car, accounting services, or a piece of software, people tend to look around before deciding on where to spend their money. Your business could be one of many they are looking at. So don’t jump in with the hard sell. Go back to the listening tip and identify what the customer’s blocks to buying are, then address them. If you know your product isn’t for them, let them know, but if you can change the product/service, make sure they know that too. If you know it’s going to be too expensive, tell them and find a solution that meets their budget.
Let them go
Make sure you qualify your leads. If your product isn’t right for them, or you know they can’t really afford it now or in the long run, be the good guy and let them go. A poor lead will cause both you and the client problems further down the line.
Close the deal
Knowing when to close a deal is essential. Some customers could prevaricate all year over a purchasing decision – wasting their time and yours. When you know they have all the information they need to make a decision, offer them a couple of options and ask them which one they feel most comfortable signing off on.
There are many ways of closing a deal, for more details on transforming your sales skills visit: /courses/transformational-sales-skills/index.php
ISM Training has plenty more sales tips for you just browse our sales category on this blog.
The constant hustle and bustle of a Dubai salesperson’s life can be draining and make constant stress feel normal. However, the rapidly growing Mindfulness Movement offers sales and business people a way to calm their worlds and help them make better decision in both work and home life.
Mindfulness is essentially about being in the moment, being aware of yourself and your environment. Originally a part of Buddhist practice, it has become separated from religion and is now an increasingly popular method for reducing stress in all aspects of life.
These are four of the cornerstones of how mindfulness can help you be more effective in business:
Remove distractions
Your mobile phone, a favourite website, social media: they all add up to many hours a month of distracting behaviour. Identify what are the unnecessary distractions in your working life and limit your use while at work. This is particularly effective in face-to-face meetings. Even if you’re the only one who has left their mobile in their briefcase (instead of laying on the table), you’ll be more focused during the meeting and better able to pick up on nuances than usual.
In your every day work life, limiting browsing websites, or checking your Twitter feed, will help you focus more on the job at hand – leaving you plenty of time later to find out how your football team is doing.
Feel the stress
The old adage of take a deep breath is a wise one. Whenever you feel stressed, whether in a meeting or on a call, take a moment to acknowledge the stress to yourself. You don’t have to be silent, find a phrase to pause the conversation naturally, such as ‘I’d like to write that down’, and while doing this take some deep breathes and let the tension ease away. This way you can refocus on what is really important about the conversation.
Be grateful
For salespeople, patience can be stretched during tricky negotiations. But the mindful salesperson has the knack of remaining in control. This is because they keep a gratitude diary. This is a book in which you physically write down all the things you are grateful for in your life. Research has shown that those who keep a diary, and remind themselves of the things they’re grateful for, are more patient. So when a customer is testing your patience, remember what you’re grateful for in life and you’ll find yourself making more balanced decisions.
Meditate
Slow down…breathe…
Some of the world’s biggest businesses (such as Google) are leading the way in educating their employees in the power of mediating. Meditation is the mindful salesman’s keystone. Taking time out from your day for half an hour of meditation can seem like time wasted, but once you’ve found a slot for it, you’ll reap the benefits.
Meditation slows you down and focuses your mind. To begin with, do ten minutes. Mornings are usually the best time as you have less distractions, but you can meditate any time of the day, just make sure you have no distractions: turn off your mobile, switch off the computer, tell people not to disturb you.
Steve Halligan who coaches the ISM Professional Selling Skills course incorporates Meditation into his daily life…ask him all about it the next time you go on a course he is facilitating!
Are your sales skills as impressive as Dubai's skyline?
Your Dubai sales team is often the face of your company. They are the first point of contact with customers and are essential for keeping the production line moving. So next time one of your sales team is presenting to a new prospect in their Sheikh Zayad offices, how do you make sure their technique doesn’t kill the sale before the first round of coffee has been sipped?
Not knowing your own business
Confidence is everything in sales and if your sales team doesn’t understand your business thoroughly, they will be poor ambassadors for your company. A thorough grounding in your business will give your newest salesperson the ability to go out and sell with confidence.
Whether you are a small start up or a major league business, it’s important to give sales people an initial training session in your business. The more they understand who your core customers are, what products you have currently, and those in development, the issues faced by customers, and how your business solves those issues, the more likely they will become a more effective salesperson for your business.
Lack of manners
People make quick decisions on whether they can trust you or not. Which is why, in any business environment, good manners are important. Close observation of business etiquette is a must, especially with international relationship building: what is accepted locally may not be internationally. A smile, a good handshake, or the right level of bow, being prompt for meetings: these all add up to create a good impression.
If you aren’t a natural at good manners, buy yourself a business etiquette book and brush up on your skills. It’ll help you win more business for your company, and probably improve your social skills outside of work as well.
Selling too hard
The days of hard selling are over. Big business is too sophisticated nowadays to fall for the pushy salesman approach. If you’ve been trained in the hard sell, it’s time to learn some new techniques. Today it’s all about relationship building. The first few meetings you have with a customer are all about learning about their business to find out how your business can really help them.
Take the time to understand both new and established customers and you’ll reap the benefits over time. Leave the hard sell to the dodgy salespeople who don’t want repeat business.
Playing the blame game
When things go wrong with a customer’s order, the easy route for the salesperson is to blame some unknown link in the business. But that doesn’t help your customer. Control your reaction to a complaint and use the experience to improve your sales process, or to identify areas in the business that need to be overhauled.
Mixing the message
If the salesperson is telling a different story to the brochure, or your website, who can the customer trust? Throughout your organisation there has to be a real understanding of your brand and what it means. This way, every time the customer speaks to anyone in your business the brand message is re-enforced. Creating trust on a daily basis should be the number one rule. It will help prevent your sales team making basic mistakes when selling to customers.
As any great salesman worth their salt knows, a good story can sell a product. Less well known is the power of a good story, or one-liner to motivate a sales team to achieve their potential. So whether you want to up your car sales or increase sales of delicious food at the Dubai Mall, here are some sales quotes to inspire your team.
1. Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you have planted. – Robert Louis Stevenson
2. You don’t close a sale; you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise. – Patricia Fripp
3. Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your minds looks at what happens. – Khalil Gibran
4. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. – Tony Robbins
5. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill
6. People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou
7. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes of the goal. – Henry Ford
8. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. – Bill Crosby
9. He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life. – Muhammad Ali
10. Face your fears and doubts, and new worlds will open to you. – Robert Kiyosaki
11. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein
12. Dream big and dare to fail – Norman Vaughan
13. The best sales questions have your expertise wrapped into them. Jill Konrath
14. Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better. – Jim Rohn
15. The way you position yourself at the beginning of a relationship has a profound impact on where you end up. – Ron Karr
16. There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. – Peter Drucker
17. Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way. – Les Brown
18. Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. – Will Rogers
19. The more you love what you are doing, the more successful it will be for you. – Jerry Gillies
20. People don’t buy for logical reasons – they buy for emotional reasons. – Zig Ziglar
21. Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principal that holds all relationships. – Stephen Covey
Each quote can address different needs for inspiring your Dubai sales team, so take the time to consider which one applies to the changes happening in your sales area each week.