The Info Treasure Trove

Are YOU as frustrated with your sales meetings as your sales staff is?

You fill the agenda with administrative crap, a bunch of whining and some pseudo-motivational words you picked up from somewhere. You give your staff a budget update and some suggestions on how to improve sales in the week ahead.

What about your sales staff? What are THEY doing?

Listening? Getting motivated to make some sales in the upcoming week?

I doubt it!

The problem is that you are speaking TO your sales staff instead of communicating WITH them. If they are an important part of the sales results, shouldn’t they play an important role in the meeting?

The Plan

Making money isn’t random.

Every business needs a plan to make money.

A great plan is one that focuses on producing results and holds EVERYONE accountable for achieving those desired results. This type of plan creates a production based organization.

Every business and sales organization has a target number that they need to hit either by the end of the month or the end of the quarter. Understanding your numbers and breaking them down into small, attainable chunks is the first step of creating a production based environment.

Every plan needs employees to make it work.

The most important ingredient, however, is the employees. To be productive, your employees need:

1.) Leadership

2.) Structure

3.) Systems

4.) The feeling that what they do matters

Your sales meetings should combine these factors to create an environment that will lead to productive employees.

Before the meeting, each person on the sales staff should create their own action plan. The action plan should be put in writing and should be developed by the employee, NOT the sales manager! This creates accountability, giving each member a sense of ownership and responsibility for achieving the goals of their action plan.

Unlike other methods of accountability, this action plan allows the salespeople to have the freedom to do it their own way while still keeping the objective in sight.

The Meeting

There are two goals of a weekly sales meeting:

1. Report production (How are we doing?)

2. Drive new production (How can we do better?)

Remember, the meeting should focus on producing sales results by highlighting each employee’s contribution toward that common goal or number.

Therefore, the sales manager should simply facilitate these meetings and help celebrate successes. Nothing more! Let the sales staff get involved in the meeting by showing each other what they have accomplished and brainstorm ways to reach the common goal.

Report Production: How Are We Doing?

Your sales meeting should begin by having each member of the team present/report their production from the previous week. They should have the floor to themselves and report their contribution toward your goal, or number, and the team.

Think about this: would you want to stand in front of your co-workers/peers and show them your less than positive results?

NO! And your sales staff doesn’t want to, either!

Your sales staff will be motivated throughout the entire week to be able to report positive data during the next week’s meeting. They will WANT to prove to themselves and their peers that they are making a great contribution to the team. They may not make that crucial extra step for the sales manager or for the company, but when their friends and co-workers are expecting them to hit that number, they won’t want to let them down!

This type of positive peer pressure will be more effective than ANY amount of coaching that a sales manager can provide. It is also better received; it motivates and inspires each member to own their goals and achievements within the system.

When each member is self-driven to do better, they will seek the leadership that is necessary for them to gain better results. The employee will take it upon themselves to turn to the leader for guidance and coaching. They will turn to the leader for sales answers.

This means that your staff will be more receptive of suggestions and advice. It also means that you won’t be wasting your time giving lectures or reprimands to employees that you just can’t seem to motivate!

Reward Production

This is also a good time to recognize and reward individuals that have produced results OR have taken action that will lead to results in the future. Most organizations fail to recognize and celebrate these actions that lead to results, and are missing a great opportunity to continually motivate and inspire their team members!

For example, if a team member hasn’t actually made a sale, but has made several presentations to a number of people throughout the week, celebrate it! They are on their way toward producing positive results!

You know the actions that are required to make a sale, and you need to make the accomplishments of these actions just as important as the sale itself.

By letting each member shine and show their individual production, each team member will provide their OWN desire to produce results for the team!

Drive New Production: How Can We Do Better?

After everyone has given their report on their production from the week prior, it’s time to drive new production and have each salesperson determine a new action plan for the upcoming week.

The best way to drive new production is to have a creative roundtable discussion about how the team can hit the goal number for the coming week. The sales manager should simply facilitate discussion. This isn’t the time for you to bark orders or make everyone in the room listen to YOUR great ideas!

Allow each member of the team to choose how much of the number or goal they feel they can effectively be responsible for. Of course, make sure that the sum of everyone’s individual goals is equal to or greater than the total weekly number.

This conversation is effective because every person on the team has the same goal in mind. There will be many new ideas presented in this style of sales meeting, because everyone will have a chance to brainstorm and give input.

Because each member will have a voice, each will feel like the team goal is their own personal goal, and will feel like they are making a difference. This style of meeting is effective because it provides the members of the team with the structure, system, and accountability they need to produce the results that you want!

By having a production based organization, you will be able to facilitate sales meetings that will keep EVERY member motivated to contribute to the team! Giving each member the chance to own their individual goals and brainstorm ideas will give them the drive and desire to do just what you hired them to doproduce sales!

Tom Richard is the author of a free weekly ezine on selling skills. To subscribe to this ezine send a blank email to subscribe@tomrichard.com Also Tom is the author of Smart Sales People Don’t Advertise: 10 Ways To Outsmart Your Competition With Guerilla Marketing

Today’s television saturated audience expect to watch good television. This is why poor acting, grainy vision and boring dialogue will no longer cut it in your training video.

Off-the-shelf training videos can often be poorly produced, so much so that they engender more laughs than learning. Or the messages tend to be too broad and not targeted enough for a specific audience.

To avoid this trap, companies often custom-design their training videos, in order to get unique messages across to their staff or customers.

Yet, just because you have a tailor-made production specifically for your staff does not mean that they will be willing to learn.

So how do you get your training messages absorbed?

1. Get the Script Right

The script is the backbone to your production.

It needs to be short, succinct and written in the same language understood by your audience.

Avoid transcribing manuals into a training video script. They will be too wordy to be of interest on screen.

Spend the maximum time on your script, as it will determine the quality of your production.

2. Keep them Involved

Many training videos often have procedures that need to be demonstrated. Keeping the camera locked on a staff member talking through what they are doing, will never keep anyone interested for long.

The golden rule in making a successful training video is to keep changing what is shown on screen.

This means that each scene needs to run for no longer than 7 seconds. Mix it up by using graphics and titles, cutting to a wide shot or close up, using a different voiceover or even using animation.

By using lots of overlay shots, not only to explain procedures in more detail, you keep the viewer involved with the action on screen.

3. Work out your Style

Using one camera angle continually on your presenter has the tendency to make audiences sleepy.

Work out the best style for your particular training production, in order to engage your viewers.

Keeping the ‘mix it up rule’ in mind, choose one or more of the following (preferably more than one for best results):

• Have actors (either staff or professional) acting out procedures.

• Use professional actors to dramatise scenes to communicate any emotional messages.

• Use a narrator to talk through what is happening on screen, or to elaborate on points made by the actors.

• Use an on-screen presenter to link scenes together, provide summaries of important points and bring your video to life.

4. Highlight Important Messages

The beauty of video is that it communicates both visually and audibly.

When conveying key messages, both the vision and the audio track need to be telling the same story. The audience will lose the message if the vision doesn’t match what the voiceover is saying.

For example, say the voiceover mentions that “You must get the customer to read the document before signing it”. You will need to show the customer receiving the document, reading it and then signing it.

It would be confusing showing just the customer receiving the document and then signing. Or showing just the document being signed. You have to show on the screen every step of the procedure, in time to the narration.

To further reinforce salient points, titles can be added that coincide with the narration. This is a great way to get the audience to remember important pieces of information. Particularly, information such as statistics and names of certain procedures.

5. Do as I say, not as I do

As a parent of a toddler, it is amazing to discover how much your child picks up from just watching you.

It’s no surprise that even adults learn by example. Good leaders know that if they want their staff to follow their lead they have to make sure all of their actions coincide with their verbal instructions.

Often clients ask us to show on the training video the wrong way to do something.

Due to the funny way our mind works, we remember what we have seen. So if you want to teach your employees the wrong way to do something, showing them the incorrect way is a pretty good place to start!

The best method of training is to show the right way to do something.

6. Test their knowledge

The days of instructors playing a video tape and hoping that the audience has learnt their lesson is over.

Training video content can now be played on a computer together with an on-line assessment tool.

Short video modules can be watched ending with a question that the viewer needs to answer.

This not only ensures that the viewer pays attention, but is more likely to help them retain information.

At the end of the training session, simple reports can be downloaded by the trainer. This important information can be used to assess the areas in which more training is required.

(c) Marie-Claire Ross 2006. All rights reserved.

Marie-Claire Ross is the Director of Digicast Productions a full-service, concept-to-completion video production facility specialising in videos that get complex messages across in a simple manner. For more information, visit the website at http://www.digicast.com.au

One of the most critical choices that an executive or entrepreneur can make is to determine which sales/revenue opportunities to pursue vs. which ones to pass on. How do you determine where you will allocate your time, your resources and your talent? Do you use a rational decisioning process to arrive at the right conclusion or are you the person that is often second guessed or proved wrong because your decision was made irrationally and you arrived at your conclusion by default, osmosis or some other unknown process?

For purposes of this posting I will exclude the greener pastures of new sales opportunities and focus on the most overlooked area of opportunity assessment which is prioritizing decisions surrounding sales of your existing product or services. It has been my observation that many sales plans simply evolve for no quantifiable, qualifiable or tangible reason other than just because…Following are the top 10 reasons not to pursue a particular sales opportunity:

#10: Because a strong sales or product manager flexed his muscles and pushed their bias;

#9: To seek static gains in a vacuum buy just looking for increases in quarter over quarter sequential revenue growth;

#8: To buy business in order to gain market share;

#7: Because more marketing budget exists for Product A vs. Product B;

#6: Because the sales force can’t seem to get traction with Product X;

#5: Because the sales force is getting traction with Product X;

#4: Because the ad agency made a good pitch;

#3: Because the market research said you had a competitive advantage;

#2: Because your competition does it, and;

#1: Because it’s always been done that way.

Some of the aforementioned reasons if encapsulated in an overarching strategy may not in and of themselves be bad reasons to pursue a sales opportunity. However in the absence of a plan and standing alone in a vacuum they will result in wrong choices being made more often than not. To avoid the common mistakes outlined above conduct a thorough comparative analysis of all product and service lines assessing the following key metrics:

• Cost of sales and profit margins;

• Length of selling cycle;

• Sales/revenue obstacles;

• Competitive analysis;

• Current market demand;

• Potential for future market growth;

• Ability to further brand recognition/growth;

• Quality and quantity of available talent and resources supporting a particular product or service line;

• Execution and delivery capabilities;

• Post sale costs of service;

• Ability to add to lifecycle value;

• Recurring revenue vs. one time revenue, and;

• Creation of additional revenue opportunities.

Take the above metrics and plug them into a grid ranking each category from highest to lowest for each product or service line. In addition to individual rankings also created a weighted rank based on the metrics that are most important to your business. Lastly create a blended score for each product or service line. Conducting this type of analysis will help you determine where you should be placing your emphasis for the purpose of moving you toward a best practices approach when creating a well engineered sales plan.

Mike Myatt is the Chief Strategy Officer at N2growth. N2growth is a leading venture growth consultancy providing a unique array of professional services to high growth companies on a venture based business model. The rare combination of branding and corporate identity services, capital formation assistance, market research and business intelligence, sales and product engineering, leadership development and talent management, as well as marketing, advertising and public relations services make N2growth the industry leader in strategic growth consulting. More information about the company can be found at http://www.N2growth.com

Well here they are… 10 mortgage loan officer training tips to improve efficiency and increase revenue. These tips have made me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years and I’m confident they will do the same for you:

Mortgage Loan Officer Training Tip #1:
Only use a few lenders
Depending on your niche, all you really need is a few good lenders. With a portfolio of about five lenders, you can handle all credit grades and even special programs like stated, no doc and 100% financing.

Mortgage Loan Officer Training Tip #2:
Read your lender’s guidelines to build an intimate knowledge of their products and procedures - THIS IS A MUST!!! (And easy to do if you only use a few lenders.) Don’t rely on lender reps to tell you about their guidelines. They are human and can make mistakes just like the rest of us.

Mortgage Loan Officer Training Tip #3:
Send gifts to your appraiser, title agents, and underwriters to gain favor. This is a great way to build relationships with the people you rely on to do business. Look for a reason to send these people a thank you card along with a gift. This is another good reason to use only a few good lenders.

Mortgage Loan Officer Training Tip #4:
Define your market
What loans will you do and what loans will you not touch? You can and will cause yourself undue heartache if you agree to take a loan that is outside of your market. For instance, I refused to even look at a loan unless the borrowers had a credit score of 580 or higher. If an applicant has a credit score less than 580, I referred them to my loan officer partner and split the commissions.

Mortgage Loan Officer Training Tip #5:
Specialize
Find a niche. Specialists always make more than generalists. Everyone does purchase loans on single family houses. What if you became the expert in your area on financing investment properties, construction loans, or VA loans? With some work and dedication you could become the mortgage lending “guru” for your niche and monopolize your marketplace.

Mortgage Loan Officer Training Tip #6:
Location, location, location
If you can: Keep a frig in your office, place a copier close to your assistant’s desk, and have your computer printer right next to your desk. This will save loads of time walking around the office. It will also keep your assistants focused. Sometimes it’s hard to walk through an office without falling into several casual conversations that can lower your team’s production.

Mortgage Loan Officer Training Tip #7:
Get all documentation up front
I believe in getting every piece of documentation I could possibly need right up front. That way if a problem arises you have a greater chance of being able to fix the problem on your own without bothering the borrowers.

Mortgage Loan Officer Training Tip #8:
Only the necessities
Just because you collect extra documentation, doesn’t mean you have to use it. Don’t submit extra paperwork to your processor or to underwriting. It could open a can of worms you don’t want opened. Only turn in exactly what’s need to fund the loan - nothing more or less.

Mortgage Loan Officer Training Tip #9:
Sandwich technique
At some point you’ll need to contact a borrower during the loan process and ask for more information. When this situation arises, try using the sandwich technique:

Re-establish rapport
Make your request: “Oh by the way I need___. When can you fax it to me?”
Continue rapport building dialog.
Say goodbye and politely get off the phone.

If you have a difficult borrower, this works like a charm to diminish their anxiety level.

Mortgage Loan Officer Training Tip #10:
Testimonials
Get testimonials from everyone. They are great marketing tools for your business. Use them to target your client’s CPA, HR manager at work, real estate agent and financial planner to establish a referral relationship.

There you have it. Incorporate these ideas into your mortgage business and see how they impact your bottom line.

By the way, if you would like to get another 13 mortgage loan officer training tips that can instantly boost your income by $5,000 per month, visit:

www.Mortgage-Leads-Generator.com/a/13tips.htm

Please feel free to reprint this article as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.

Hartley Pinn has recently created the “Mortgage Leads Generator”
Training Course to teach mortgage loan officers 10 proven strategies
for generating more than 71 mortgage leads per day.

1. Spend money on targeted advertising instead of
mass media advertising. You don’t want to waste
your ad dollars on people who aren’t interested.

2. Increase your profits by concentrating on small
details. Improving small things like text size, color,
or graphics can really make a positive difference.

3. Keep your offers flexible. If you offer a set price
for your product, you could offer the people that
can’t afford it an optional payment plan.

4. Offer your knowledge or consulting as a bonus
product. You could offer a free 15 or 30 minute
consultation. This will add value to your product.

5. Personalize all your e-mail messages so they get
read. Include the recipient’s name in the subject line.
This will grab peoples attention quickly.

6. Keep your web site consistent. You don’t want
to keep things on your web site that are unrelated
to the theme of your web site.

7. Attract more subscribers to your free e-zine by
giving them free bonuses like e-books, software,
online services and other incentives.

8. Sell advertising space in your e-zine and on your
web site. This will create an extra income stream
for your business.

9. Make your web site ready for the public. Have
an “About Us” page and clear descriptions of what
actions you want your visitors to take.

10. Don’t just start advertising everywhere, plan out
your marketing. Locate places and publications that
your target audience would congregate around.

About the author:

Rojo Sunsen is a specialized bounty hunter who prefers to work quietly/confidentially for the benefit of her clients.

I was in the car leasing business, a fresh college grad, but someone with four solid years of phone experience behind me, and I reached out to sell my first deal.

Within a few hours, I got my first hot prospect on the line. He said he’d like TWO new cars, both in Green, and both with very powerful engines.

“No problem!” I replied.

He said, “Well, I have to sell the car I’m in, first.”

“We’ll buy it!” I countered.

“You have yourself a deal.”

I sent out the leases, by mail, and sure enough, to the surprise but delight of my manager, he signed them, we bought his trade, and we were done.

That was my ready-fire-aim approach to breaking into the business, but compare this to an error I made, that I vowed I’ll never make again.

Another small business owner said he was shopping for TWO Cadillacs and I told him I’d jump on the case, and asked when he wanted me to follow-up.

“A week from now,” he said, and I wrote in into my calendar.

Sure enough, on the appointed date I called and he said:

“Gee, I just bought them yesterday at the dealership. Guess you’re a little late!”

So, from that moment forward, I have always shaved a day or two off the call back date, resolving that it’s always better to be a day early, than a day late!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

Among the many business people- especially salespeople, I’ve helped as a psychologist over the years, handling rejection by customers is often a major problem. Typically, they tell me how the “motivational” books and tapes they’ve tried don’t seem to work. As one man said recently, “They always exhort you to be positive and don’t take things personally. It only makes me feel dumb when I do get upset about a lost sale.”

What really helps us to handle rejection is to recognize that there is a part of our minds which ALWAYS takes disappointment seriously. This part connects us to childhood emotional feelings of insecurity- something we all have experienced. Any disappointment, frustration, and loss will make us feel anxious and small, what I call a “child state.”

The key to handling rejection is to have COMPASSION for such young feelings. All too often, people(especially men) are self critical when they feel vulnerable-e.g. “Why am I making such a big deal of losing that sale?” This only shames us and makes us feel bad.

What REALLY works is when we can say, “Look, this WAS a disappointment and it hooked child feelings in me. OK, so how can I best take care of myself to get back on the horse and get going again.” Such self compassion and active coping with rejection gets us back in an “adult state”. This difference between adult and child states is important to understand both in our professional AND personal lives.

When dating, for instance, it is important to remember that child state feelings are evoked when someone says no to our request for a date. The key, once again, is awareness and compassion for such feelings. Doing so can have amazingly positive effects on enhancing future success!

Norm Ephraim,Ed.D. is a psychologist in Boston, Mass. He is the author of MOOD SHIFTING: UNDERSTANDING AND TRANSFORMING YOUR NEGATIVE MOODS This 3 step program helps you transform negative and pessimistic moods into more positive and productive ones. His web site is http://www.mood-shifting.com.

How do you define selling? A lot of people think of selling as persuading/convincing people to buy things they may or may not want or need. To some, selling is all about closing a deal. Thinking of selling like this is not very empowering to you. Frankly, if you have this perspective on selling, it’s no wonder if you hate it. I would too!

So what perspective can you take about selling that will make it enjoyable, exciting and something you look forward to? Sounds like a bit of a tall order doesn’t it? Read on.

Hopefully by now, you have made the list of all the problems that you can solve for your target market. You’re going to be surprised how long that list grows over time. So really, if you look at your list and you think about it, you are a master problem solver. What you’re really doing is helping people. Correct?

So try on this perspective about what selling is: Selling is helping people. Selling is serving. Selling is a process of identifying and solving people’s problems.

See, feel and know that selling is serving. This will cause a big shift for you. With this perspective, you will really become passionate about wanting to help people. Find this passion and let it shine through.

It is your purpose, your moral obligation, to have as many sales conversations with people as you can so you can help as many people as possible. If you’re not having these types of sales conversations, you are holding back the gift you have to offer the world. You owe it to people to be there for them with your expertise and wisdom.

Next time you’re talking to a potential client, think about how you can help them, how you can serve them. Forget about trying to sell them something. If what you have to offer does solve their problems, and you facilitate the conversation using the strategies we are covering, people will sell themselves and will subsequently buy from you.

If you have a perspective on selling which is one of service and helping people, how do you think the people you’re talking to will feel? Think about this: people hate to be sold. The minute they feel they’re being sold, they often want to get away - fast. Don’t you? On the other hand, if they feel you are sincerely trying to help them solve their problems, they will relax and open up to you.

If you have a perspective on selling which is one of service and helping people, how do you think you will feel? Does energized, excited, relaxed, and natural come to mind?

This perspective is simple but powerful and very attract-tive to clients.

(c) 2005, Tessa Stowe, Sales Conversation. You are welcome to “reprint” this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the “about the author” info at the end) and all links are made live.

The question: “When should a growing company slow down its sales function and focus solely on delivery?”

The answer: “Never!”

When fast growth is the focus of your company, the only constant is that you will always, and I mean always, need more sales. It doesn’t matter how full the sales pipeline looks, you need more sales. It doesn’t matter that you have no idea how you’re going to deliver the order you just took, you need more sales. And it doesn’t matter that you’re booked for the next year, you need more sales.

To understand why you must keep selling in the face of certain income, I will introduce you to “Murphy’s Law” of Sales which states that “whatever business can be lost, will be lost!” Customers will change their mind, cancel orders, and in some cases just go out of business altogether.

There are numerous snags that can stop your sale before it hits accounts receivable and unfortunately most are beyond your control. The good news is you can protect yourself against this uncertainty by filling the sales pipeline at all times, no matter how good things get.

Enlarge the Pipeline

A great way to protect your sales future is to increase the expectations of your sales pipeline. If you think you need to put $1 million in the pipeline try moving that number to $2 million. I’m not suggesting that another million dollars worth of sales are going to magically appear just because you updated your Excel spreadsheet. Instead I’m suggesting that you raise the bar on your projections so that you can absorb the inevitability of losing sales along the way. It’s far better to be over prepared.

Spread the responsibility

Because small companies typically cannot afford to hire several salespeople they often rely upon the founder or another single person to do the job for the entire company. The problem with this approach is that there is too much reliance on one person to feed the entire organization. Sometimes people run into a cold streak, get distracted, or just aren’t the right fit at the right time. Any one of these factors can cripple your sales pipeline.

Instead of relying on an individual to bear the company’s entire sales load, spread the responsibility across all members of the organization. A great way to do this is by giving other people in the company an opportunity to participate in the sale process as well. Allow others to help prepare presentations, give them responsibility for “up-selling” existing customers and ask them to use their professional networks to identify new opportunities.

When you’re hot, stay hot

Another mistake growing companies tend to make is celebrating their victories and resting in the spoils of sales. You’ve just won that huge account and now you don’t have to sell for six months while you rake in the dough, right? Wrong! The worst thing a company can do when it’s hot is to stop selling.

The confidence and positive energy behind a big win is a force you cannot possibly replicate with bonuses, company meetings or sales team pep rallies. Harness the positive momentum from big sales to make more phone calls, setup more meetings, and close more deals. It’s much easier to call that next client after you’ve made a big sale than when you’re on month three of a cold streak.

Keep your sales team in sales, not delivery

Now your winning sales team is landing customers left and right and it’s time to start delivering on the promises they made over those expensive dinners. Since the customer naturally expects the sales team to be along for the delivery, your top salesman should be along for the ride, right? Wrong again.

The sales team is there to sell, not deliver. And any time that they spend servicing your existing customers is time they aren’t spending finding the next customers. As soon as the shoe salesman becomes the cobbler he’s doing the wrong job. Get your sales team right back into the field as quickly as possible and let the people in your organization responsible for delivery service your customers.

Watch the Horizon

It’s easy to get distracted today with a big win and all the obligations that come with delivery. All of a sudden you need to worry about staffing, office space, equipment and of course satisfying that customer you just spent all your time wooing.

While you don’t want to miss delivery, you simply can’t afford to lose sight of the next sale on the horizon, which means it’s time to pick up the phone, schedule a meeting, and close that next sale. The only thing more important than your last sale is your next sale!

- Wil

Wil Schroter is a serial entrepreneur, author, and public speaker. Wil has been recognized as U.S. Small Business Person of the Year, twice as the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year (1999 & 2004), and is a member of the Business First Top 40 under forty. Connect directly with Wil at wschroter@yahoo.com. Visit http://www.goBIGnetwork.com.

One of the biggest problems for many business owners is the ability to overcome objections. In fact, for many, this skill could be the difference between succeeding and going back to being an employee. Since none of us want to do that, we need to hone our sales writing skills and our in person skills. This article will discuss the in person skills.

Objections stop sales. Period. The customer says, “No”. Listen to the objection. For example, the customer says, “It’s too expensive”. Don’t walk away or hang up, listen. Do they really think it is or is this just a knee jerk response. Is he/she trying to buy time, make up their mind. Tell them about the product, benefits to them, how it can help their business. Listen to your customer. Let them finish before immediately jumping in and responding.

Don’t over-react by interrupting while they are speaking. First of all, you cut them off, which upsets them, and secondly you appear as if you are dying for the sale.

Let the customer finish speaking. Be empathetic. Show you understand the concern and then deal with the objection. If it’s price, agree, that while it might seem high it’s not when you consider how the product or services saves time, helps them cut costs, helps expand their business and so on.

Look for solutions. Ask for less. Many times a customer will say they are happy with the person they are doing business with. In fact, it might be a family member or a relative. Hard to argue against. See if you can get part of it. Say, that’s fine. Tell them you just want them to give you a chance to show them what you can do for them. Point out it is always better to have more than one company supplying a product or service. A good example for this area is when the seller is already with a Realtor, or is adamant about selling it his/her self. Point out that your consulting with them, or working with them, just gives them another avenue to help them move their property. Remember, it’s never a good idea to knock the competition.

Concede the point. Sometimes you won’t be able to contest the objection. In that case, go around it. For example, Yes, they are a good publisher, they do good work at a good price. I’m good too, I can get you what you need faster for the same price. Let me prove it to you.

Give in. Sometimes an objection can’t be overcome. But unless it’s a one-time sale, you’re looking to build a long-term relationship. Understand that the client isn’t currently in a position to make a purchase or that your service doesn’t match their present needs. Let the customer know you’d like to help them in the future and stay in touch. Again, for those in Lease Purchasing, remember sometimes you can’t be a part of a deal, this is where following up with a brochure or seeing if a consultation is possible, may work.

After addressing an objection, always finish by asking “Does that answer your concern? This does two things: One, it lets you know whether you’ve satisfactorily answered the objection. If you haven’t and don’t ask, the person may have decided to forget the sale. Two, it moves the process along. You’ve finished with the objection, and you’re ready to move on from there.

Sometimes it helps to personalize the benefits for a particular customer, so know your stuff. This shows your client you know their needs, and again stress the benefits to them. Remember, you need to think like your customer.

Some additional tips when dealing with objections.

Always ask the customer to explain the objection in more detail. In the explanation you may find an answer to that objection.

Stress what the client likes. If an objection comes during the closing - for example delivery - go over the quality, price or other things the customer likes. This give them a positive feeling about the product/service and the objection is less important.

Compromises. Price is negotiable. If objections are other than price, make them negotiable too. For example, if the objection is service, offer other ways they can reach you, a private number, as opposed to your office number.

However, remember sometimes a client is going to be unreasonable. They want you to cut your prices too much, want more than you can give, or you don’t have a good feel about the person or for the deal. In that case, walk away. Be professional, thank the individual for their time, but walk.

If you need additional help in this area, check out our Expert Tape Series at:
http://www.homebusinesssolutions.com/products/products.htm

Copyright 2000, DeFiore Enterprises

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