Tips for Selling Success

1. Repeat your telephone number S-L-O-W-L-Y when leaving voicemails, even if you are calling from a landline and leaving a message on a landline phone. Your customer/prospect may be checking messages from their cell phone. Don't make it hard for them. They may not make the effort to repeat the message to hear the phone number.
2. If you are leaving a long voicemail (only when you're already working with this person – never on a cold call), leave your phone number at the beginning and again at the end. Why? Because if they miss it at the end, you don't make them listen to the whole message again to get the phone number…they might just not do it.
3. ALWAYS leave a phone number in a voicemail. Have you ever been away from the office when someone left you a voice message without a number and you couldn't call him or her back until you had access to your phone book?
4. Buy a micro-cassette (or digital) recorder to carry with you. Use for prospecting ideas or other ideas that pop into your head while driving.
5. Send hand written thank you notes when people do nice things for you. People remember the hand written ones.
6. Do things for others without the expectation of a return. It will come back to you many times over.
7. Always send a follow up note after a first appointment (these don't need to be hand written), but they should NOT be emails. Type it up, as very few sales people do this anymore. Make yourself stand out from your competition.
8. Looking for ways to shorten sales cycles? Don't wait for your next meeting to ask a question that might help you further the sales cycle. Make a call to your prospect and let them know you were thinking of them, or call to confirm the upcoming appointment, and while you've got them on the phone, ask the question you forgot to, or want to ask. It could cut an entire week or more out of your sales cycle.
9. Always be thinking sixty minutes ahead in a sales call. Anticipate the direction of the call, even if it changes in mid-stream. Know what next step(s) you'll be closing on at the end of the call and begin setting the stage for it (them) early.
10. A great question to start a sales call that is not a first appointment in a sales cycle, or if it's been a while since you last talked is, “Has anything changed since we last got together/spoke?” You'd be surprised how often the answer is yes.
11. Bring extra materials or handouts to every meeting just in case more people join the meeting than you were anticipating. As a matter of fact, if you do that, sometimes you'll actually have the opportunity to ask your contact to see if someone they bring up in the meeting would be available to join you right then, if you're prepared with materials. That may even eliminate the need for additional meetings down the road if it turns out you need to meet with that person anyway.
12. One of the best ways to find out answers to difficult questions is to let yourself be corrected. For instance, if you're looking for the reason why your prospect selected a competitor to do business with in the past, you might suggest a reason that you know is wrong and let the prospect correct you. (People love to be right…and you don't have to be to get the information you want.)