I love the game of sales. In fact I am fascinated by people’s traditional beliefs on sales and what it means to them. One of the most common areas of challenge that I come up against time and time again when working with business owners and business groups revolves around the basics of ‘getting business through the door’ which is an absolutely critical area of any business. This is determined by the business owner’s (and their respective teams) beliefs around the area of sales.

So here’s a question for you: What are the top three words that come to mind when I say ‘salesperson’? Yes, they’ve just popped right up there inside your head - just pause for a second right now…and write them down.

Who thought ‘pushy’, ‘arrogant’, ‘dishonest’ etc.? When I ask this question to groups of business owners, over 90% of the comments made are well…slightly on the negative side !

It’s no wonder then (if we have grown up with an internal belief system such as this) that many of us have a bit of an issue ‘selling’ to others. In fact, we try not to be all the things we believe salespeople are. So much so that we don’t make that second call back ‘just in case they think I’m being pushy’ or ‘I don’t want them to think I’m being arrogant’ or ‘I really don’t want to annoy them’. So consider this:

On average people buy after the SIXTH contact and most average sales people give up after the second or third call

Here’s another one to consider:

People HATE to be sold to but they LOVE to buy.

It’s true. We detest people who are openly selling to us. Why? Because we perceive that they’re more interested in what they are going to get out of the sale than they are about us!! (we think they’re just not listening to what WE want)

However, I personally love to watch, listen and buy from a good salesperson. A person who identifies my needs, guides me to purchase and gets me to feel great afterwards about purchasing their product. Like most of us deep down, I LOVE to buy.

So what’s the difference? A good salesperson believes passionately in their product and what it will give you. That when you purchase their product you will feel great too. It will give you something that will make your life just that little bit more exciting / easier etc.

So if a good salesperson is not openly selling to you, what are they doing?

They’re asking the right questions to help you to make a decision to buy.

That is one of the keys to great selling. Firstly build lots of Rapport. Then help your prospect make the decision to buy. Then provide lots of follow up after the sale.

Why would we provide lots of lots of follow up afterwards?

Because, on average, it is TEN times more likely that someone you have sold something to before will buy from you again in the future IF (and this is the important bit) you keep in touch.

So consider the following:

• 1) What is your current belief system around sales? If you have a team within your business, what about them?
• 2) How quickly do you ‘give up’ in the sales process? The second or the third call? What are you thinking that the prospect is thinking when you decide not to pursue the sale further?
• 3) Just how much do you believe in yourself and your products? Just how passionate are you?
• 4) Just what is your sales conversion rate from prospect to client right now?
• 5) What are the top three things you can do right now to improve your current sales level by 10%?

Happy Selling,

To Your Success,

Mike Yates

Business Coaching gives you: Training-Inspiration-Motivation-Education

121 Business Ltd, Unit 33 Stephenson Road, St Ives, Cambs, PE27 3WJ

T: 0870 16 24 121 F: 0870 16 24 122

E: info@121business.co.uk W: http://www.121business.co.uk/

©MikeYates121BusinessLtd 2006

Have you heard the saying, “Prospecting is the lifeblood of network marketing”?

Picture yourself having this “leaking bottle” and your objective is to fill it up with water to its brim.

Because there are holes in this bottle, when you start filling it up, some water will simply leak away. Thus, in order to achieve your objective, you must fill the bottle at a rate faster than the rate at which the water is leaking out.

You see, your network or downline organization is just like a “leaking bottle”. Whether you like it or not, you have to realize that some of them are going to drop. So, in order to build your network, you must replenish your downlne at a rate faster than the normal attrition rate.

Through my three years of network marketing experience, I have developed a simple 3-step strategy that creates a surefire stream of prospects for me:

1. Attend Networking Events Regularly

2. Create A List Of Names Daily

3. Contact Your Daily List Of Names

Step 1: Attend Networking Events Regularly

This article focuses on the “networking” part of a network marketer. (Let’s leave the “marketing” part to another article.) It is extremely important that a network marketer learns how to network well and attend networking events regularly.

First, attend networking events regularly. Why? It’s because you need to replenish your name list which is most likely limited to a few dozen names.

Once you collected their contacts, add these names to your master name list that your upline or your network marketing company tells you to make when you first start out in your network marketing business.

Step 2: Create A List Of Names Daily

This is a daily list of names that you create from your master name list.

Each morning, I create a list of 10 prospects to contact. I use a simple notebook to write down the 10 names so that I can carry it in my pocket everywhere I go.

Step 3: Contact Your Daily List Of Names

Throughout the day, I will contact as many of these prospects either by phone or short message service (or sms).

Depending on my relationship with each of these names, I will “talk” to them accordingly. When I receive a response, warm up the relationship a little before asking for an appointment.

By doing this consistently, you will find that after a few weeks, you would have created a surefire stream of prospects for your network marketing business.

Copyright 2006 Roger Loh

The full article, “How To Create A Surefire Stream Of Prospects For Your Network Marketing Business” is available for download at:
http://www.rogerloh.com/mlmtips
Roger Loh spent many years setting up computer networks and is a network marketing as well as an Internet marketing entrepreneur.
Blog (Internet Marketing): http://www.rogerloh.com
Blog (Network Marketing): http://www.rogerloh.com/mlmblog

I was trying to cancel my satellite TV subscription about five weeks ago, and something very interesting and foolish happened to me.

As I was terminating this relationship by phone, and trying to gently slip away, and gracefully move on to the satellite-less part of my life, I felt a strong boot on my rear-side!

The CSR’s wouldn’t let me go without threatening and insulting me.

Let me set the scene.

Fed up with over 100 channels and nothing good to watch, I figured what the heck, I’m going to just do the cave man thing: Grab raw signals from the air with a tiny antenna, and not pay a nickel for my programs.

Like ice fishing, there’s some difficulty in it, but the rewards are great, and the feeling of independence is remarkable!

Anyway, I planned to ditch the dish the day after the BCS Championship battle between USC and Texas. I explained my wish to the first CSR who took down all of the information, and then said I’d have to speak to a second rep.

Number two interrogated me. Why was I leaving their happy electronic family? What did I like to watch?

Growing impatient, I said enough of the survey! Give me your supervisor.

This honcho tried to get through the same survey, which I disallowed, and then he made four threats:

(1) He wasn’t sure I was disconnectable because I might owe some mystery fee to the installation company that I had to bring back a zillion times to get the install right;

(2) If I ever wanted to reconnect, I’d get stuck with a hefty reconnection fee;

(3) I had to return my receivers along with some programming cards, that I never received; and

(4) If I didn’t answer ALL of his questions, I would not get this service undone.

Literally, he was kicking me in the butt as I was trying to leave the door!

Who taught these people to treat departing customers this way? The entire feeling is, “We’ve had our hooks in you, and we’ll shred you if you try to escape!”

If you deal with customers remember this: There is a tomorrow.

If you sound spiteful, bitter, or at all negative about allowing customers to move on, they’ll never, ever come back.

Moreover, they’ll probably tell a lot of their friends how sharp your boot is!

Do you realize that consumers searching for life insurance products are, more and more, doing so via internet search engines? Do you, as a life insurance broker, have an internet presence to grab your share of the life insurance sales leads? If not, your competitors are taking business that you, yourself, could be getting.

If you don’t already have an internet presence to grab your share of life insurance leads, don’t worry; it is quite easy to do and you can start now. Just follow these easy steps:

1. Create a professional website. A good website these days is relatively easy to create. These days, you can find a website designer to create one for you for under $100.
2. Choose a set of keywords that you think people searching for your life insurance products are typing into internet search engines. Some examples of good life insurance keywords are shown below.
3. Visit various search engines and go to their “advertise with us” section. Purchase your list of keywords that you have chosen. Your keywords will show in the “sponsored results” section of internet searches. Whenever someone clicks on your “ad” they will be taken to your website (the one you just created). It will cost you just pennies for each click. Compare that to the commission generated from just a single sale!
4. Be sure your website has your full contact info (name, address, phone, fax, email) so that the new visitors to your site can contact you for a free life insurance quote. Also, include a form that the visitor can fill out as another option to him.

That’s it. That’s all you have to do to generate more life insurance leads and earn a higher income.

The only tough part is choosing the proper keywords. Here is a sample list of just some of the keywords that you can purchase:

• Free term life insurance quote
• New York life insurance company
• Compare life insurance quotes
• Online mortgage insurance quote
• Chicago life insurance broker
• No load life insurance
• Seattle life insurance agent
• Group benefits package
• Affordable health insurance
• Health insurance plan
• Critical illness
• Personal health insurance provider

Of course, this is just a sample list. You should choose keywords that apply to what you specialize in to generate the right life insurance sales leads.

Please visit http://www.trade-pals.com and create a free professional profile to receive qualified sales leads. Tino Buntic created TradePals to provide free B2B and B2C sales leads, including life insurance leads, to business professionals. That is, free sales leads without cold calling!

Sales cycles vary but it is important that you understand how much revenue your average small-business client is going to generate during a 12-month period. You need to know how long it takes to earn revenue from the point your prospect enters the sales cycle.

Your sales cycle starts when you receive the initial lead and doesn’t end until the point where that person writes their first deposit check and signs their first contract with you. The sales cycle encompasses all the time and energy you put into changing the relationship from a lead to a paying customer.

When you first start your business it will be your responsibility to estimate the total sales cycle time. You want to know how long it’s going to take to go though the sales cycle with an average lead.
Each section of the sales cycle involves time. Things to consider include:

How long are you typically in a qualification stage?
How long does it take you set the appointment?
How long does it take you to do some pre sales-call research to understand what you’re up against before you walk in the door?
How long does it take you to do the sales call?
How many weeks are you on the sales call in the deep analysis and proposal?
How long is your follow-up cycle?

You should also consider what kind of funds are going to be required for each stage of the sales cycle and what activities you will need to do in order to convert leads into paying clients.

The Bottom Line on the Sales Cycle

Knowing the average time of your sales cycle is a large part of the business planning process. You won’t know exact numbers but you need to estimate the total time involved. Think about how long you’re going to be at different stages of the sales cycle. Knowing how much time each stage of sales cycle is going to take will help you figure out how long it’s going to take to start generating revenue and producing a positive cash flow.

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