A Brief Memory Jogger In Sales - There’s very little you don’t already know.

As business people we are all involved in sales. You may not be the ‘sales’ person ultimately responsible for securing the completion of the exchange of products or services in a mutually beneficial interpersonal transaction, but along the way you have sold. Just a few of the things you have sold are;
· yourself - to ‘get the job’, or on your own determination to be self-employed
· an idea, a method or new product/service to improve what you do at work

‘Sales’, as defined by a guy named Brian Lambert is a holistic business system with four parts;
· development
· management
· enabling
· execution

However, when you get down to the nitty gritty of what is happening in each of sales system stages, sales are nothing more than ... connecting with a buyer. That’s why you know an absolute mountain load about sales, because you are regularly ‘the buyer’. There’s no need to stress about what others say should be done in each stage mentioned above. Just write ‘connect with the buyer’ to the right, and use your own personal buying experiences to look at what you can be doing and where and/or how you can make improvements in your sales.

Because you are a sales expert, there are a few simple rules you should never forget;

· sales is all about relationships
· that you don’t sell features, you sell benefits and solutions,
· that people hate being sold to, they like the decision to buy to be theirs
· all sales are firstly the result of emotion and trust, logic and rationalisation comes after

So, keeping in mind the above rules and that a sale is all about connecting with the buyer, you improve your business sales by... learning exactly who your market is, and what it is that your market really wants, NOT what you think they need or should have. Modify how you present your uniqueness to be a perfect match to the buyers wants.

To increase your conversion rate even further, it is well worth your time to also uncover what turns their ‘buying action’ on, as well as what turns it off.

How do you get this information?
* RESEARCH *SURVEY *ASK and *LISTEN
Then you continually
*ADJUST *TEST *REPEAT and *LISTEN
You never stop testing, because rarely is anything constant.

With good focused market information behind you, you also know how you can always;
· offer great added value AND
· over deliver on your promises at a profit.

It is also important to remember that while on the surface it sounds great if you could improve sales simply by increasing the number of buyers, you must factor in their cost beyond the point of sale. Focus on attracting good buyers, (a bad buyer is one who costs you over time not just financially, but in time and energy and emotion). A general 50% increase in buyers may not be as good to our bottom line as a 10% increase in ‘good buyers’. Good buyers become part of you marketing staff. (Sack your bad buyers)

AVOID discounting to win a sale. It attracts very few good buyers if any. If you are offering what all buyers seek - real value, increase your pricing and quoting until it makes a part of your body twitch! It gives you room to negotiate if needed when you find a good buyer, and it offers them a platform on which they build their own emotional victory in their buying decision.

To sum it up, sales are simply the result of creating a perfect match.

“The day you stop listening is the day you stop being heard.”


Linda Mason

Director of Business Transformations
& Digital Media Consultant
ULB Global - Unlocking Business

www.unlockingbusiness.com
linda.mason@unlockingbusiness.com
+61 2 9680 4450