More salespeople make the mistake of overselling their prospects than underselling. In plain English, they talk their prospect to the point where there is a readiness to buy and then talk them out of that mood, losing the interest and the order after it was there for the taking.

You might account for that by saying that this type of salesperson does not “feel” when the prospect is ready. But that is not a fact. They do feel it, but they figure something like this,

“I’ve got them coming now, but if I try to get an order they may say no. I’ll just keep on selling and make the thing a little surer.”

And in making it a little surer they lose out altogether.

Most of us hesitate to face a crisis. We are afraid of an adverse decision. That is largely why some people oversell their prospects. But no matter how diffident you feel about it, and no matter how great your hesitation, the secret of success lies in driving in and bearing down for the order just the second you feel the time is ripe.

And if you follow the rules, you’ll get the order.

Here they are:

1. Bring your prospect to the buying point.
2. The minute you feel the prospect is ready try to take the order.
3. Don’t directly ask the prospect to buy. Without giving offense, take it for granted the prospect is purchasing and start settling up the details just as if they had verbally said “Yes.”
4. If they are not ready to buy, drop your purchase order form and start selling them again.

And remember, no matter how you interest your prospect in your approach - no matter how convincing your presentation - no matter how strong his desire for your proposition, all the work that has gone before is wasted, and absolutely lost if you fail actually to get the order.

Someone said once, “Ask, or the answer is always no”. If you don’t ask for the order, rarely you will receive the business and commission you desire.

Post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Mistake of Overselling

“Selling Is Better Than Sex” - Alen Majer
ISBN: 9780978466855
Reviewed By Dominique Sessons

Official Apex Reviews Rating:

“Over the years, sex has been compared to many different things - but the act of selling isn’t one that readily comes to mind. Throughout the pages of Selling Is Better Than Sex, though, author Alen Majer provides the reader with ample convincing parallels between the art of lovemaking and the act of closing a deal.

Essentially, Majer emphasizes that the success or failure of each practice is directly related to the level of energy that you contribute to them; in other words, the greater the enthusiasm, the more “fruitful” the experience will be. Furthermore, passion is key in either case: loving what you do while you do it ensures that you’ll reap greater rewards once the deed is done.

Naturally, one may suspect that Majer’s topic of choice would open the door to raunchy, lewd references or toilet humor, but he presents his case in quite the compelling - and tasteful - fashion, in so doing providing the reader with a refreshing, original take on how to achieve greater success in the business world.

With a plethora of insightful advice and practical examples, Selling Is Better Than Sex is a must-read for businessmen and women worldwide. A pleasantly enjoyable literary treat.”

You can read the whole review here.

About the book “Selling Is Better Than Sex”:

This book will provide you with more than 200 reasons why selling is even better than sex, and what you can do about it in order to improve your career and your life. This is not just another sales book – this is a revelation!

Read more: SellingIsBetter.com

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First review of the book: Selling Is Better Than Sex

ASV - Always Sell Value.
The first consideration you’ll want to make will be the value/price comparison of your product. Will the customer feel that they got a good deal for the price they paid? If they do, they’re sure to help create the single most effective form of advertising for you - word of mouth.

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Daily Sales Tip #53:

Before you begin to sell, you will need to decide who you’re going to sell to. This means finding your Target Market. If you know who you’re selling to, you immediately have the advantage of being focused on a specific market and knowing who and what you need to research.

In your search for a Target Market, try to identify those that have a major problem and who are willing to spend money in order to fix it. Straight away, this gives you the advantage of knowing that your customer has the funds to pay for the excellent product or service that you can offer. It’s no use walking in with guns blazing, shooting off fantastic selling techniques when your client hasn’t got the resources to make the purchase.

Investigate, research, explore.

You need to select a market that you can identify with. This will be the place where you spend your days fulfilling your dreams – you need to be comfortable and able to enjoy yourself, and able to identify with your customers. This will benefit you as much as it will benefit them.

For example, it would be fruitless to try and market a Rap CD at an old-age home. For starters, your audience will never identify with your appearance (most likely resembling your most favored Rap artist). And secondly, a group of octogenarians is less likely to scramble over one another in order to purchase a CD that doesn’t qualify as “music” to them and certainly doesn’t have any lyrics that they can actually understand.

Focus. This seems basic, but in the frenzied rush to accumulate sales, this detail may be overlooked.

By finding your Target Market before you get ready to sell, you can save yourself a lot of time and money that would otherwise be wasted on inappropriate targets.

Another important factor in selecting the correct market segment for your product is finding out if you have a competitive advantage over your rivals who are in the same selling industry as you.

As part of your research, there are other factors that you may want to take into account before selecting your Target Market. Firstly, you might want to identify geographic factors. You’re not going to be terribly successful if you try to sell air-conditioning units to folks in Alaska. Secondly, take into account the demographics of your clients. You’re not going to want to sell hair-loss prevention products to young women, or shampoo to bald men. Age, gender, race, income-earning potential – these are all things to take into account when selecting the right target for your product.

And, thirdly, some companies see themselves as being high-tech or innovative, or it may be important to them to maintain a reputation of social responsibility. These are psycho-graphic characteristics that you can use as a marketing tactic. This is all good information.

Finally, investigate the behavioral characteristics of a potential market. Understand what their buying habits and buying patterns are. For example, Fortune 500 companies don’t take purchasing decisions lightly and they certainly don’t rush into them. If you understand your target market and if you can identify with them and what they stand for, you’ve taken the first tentative steps to success. You’ve found a select group of customers that may actually want to buy your product.

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So you think you can sell? is a series of sales seminars and workshops dedicated to three groups of salespeople that exist in the world today. The first group is a group of novice sales reps that are entering the field of sales. Second is a group of experienced sales professionals. Finally, the third group is a group of non-sales people who need help selling their newly created product or ideas themselves.

Please keep visiting this blog in the month of November when we will share more info about this unique sales training program: So you think you can sell?

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So you think you can sell?

The most common reasons for losing an account always involve something that the seller or his company has FAILED to do – and this all boils down to a question of service. You can prevent such situations by providing that extra after-sales care.

Go the extra mile. It’s actually not that far.

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Subscribe to my daily sales tips and you will receive a free ebook every 30 days, plus extra discounts on my books, CD’s, webinars and seminars. If you would like to stop receiving my tips, you can unsubscribe at any time. Subscribe today by filling the form on the right-hand side. Thanks!

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Daily Sales Tip #173

The first step of the Closing Stage is getting the prospect to make the right decision. Once Interest and Desire have been secured and Objections eliminated, you need to help the prospect come to the right Decision about buying the product.
Always be sure of yourself, without being over-confident. Assure the customer that he is making the right decision by purchasing the product or service. Reinforce that assurance without repeating your sales pitch. If you’ve done well in your presentation then you have successfully brought the prospect to the Closing point. Simply repeating your sales pitch and constantly reasserting that information in an effort to get him to make a decision will be fruitless. You need to help him to weigh up the decision and aid him in focusing on the positive aspects of purchasing the product.

The Decision to buy takes place in the prospect’s heart and mind. But it is up to the salesperson to translate that Decision into actually Placing the Order. It is entirely possible that a prospect can make a decision to buy and then reverse his decision and walk away without placing an order. This is why it is imperative for you to get the prospect to state his intent to purchase. After that, he is unlikely to change his mind and walk away without the order.

There is a law of human nature referred to as the “continuity of action”. The continuity of action is more powerful in leading to new acts than any other process. This means that if you want your prospect to do a certain thing, the best way is to start him doing something. Get him involved in some sort of action, and then it’s easy for him to switch to another action; such as signing an order.

Post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

The Art of Closing - Part Two

Post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

The Top 25 Ranked Blogs on Sales and Selling

Today I would like to present to my readers an amazing and inspirational book written by my dear colleague Sharon Drew Morgen: “Dirty Little Secrets - why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.”

What’s stopping us from closing the sales we should be closing? What’s causing us to lose prospects that need our solution? Why is the sales cycle so long? Why do we close less than 10% of our prospects?

Morgen contends it’s the sales model itself. In this disturbing, insightful book, Morgen introduces us to the behind-the-scenes world of the buyer: the culture, the system, the decisions, and the change management issues that need to be addressed before buyers can buy. The sales model has never taught us how to manage these off-line issues, and so we sit and wait until buyers do this on their own.

Now, in Dirty Little Secrets, we discover what’s going on and how we can help. Caution: if you are not ready to add some new skills or new thinking to what you’re already doing, this book is not for you. But if you are a serious student of sales, and want to find more prospects and close faster, this book is a wonderful guide through change management and decision making. After you’ve read the book, you’ll know exactly what is going on in your buyer’s environment and how to help them.

More about the book here: Dirty Little Secrets

Limited Time Bonuses

When you purchase the book between Oct. 15 - Oct. 29, you will be able to download free additional materials. Click here for the full list.

Post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Presenting: Dirty Little Secrets by Sharon Drew Morgen

If your prospect does not see the value in your product or service, and if the only difference between you and the competitors is in pricing, you didn’t do a good job as a sales person. Your customers are tired of salespeople who come in and are unable to address real business needs, but talk about their company and the hottest feature, or unique one that nobody else has. There are many dimensions that you are selling, and price is only one of them.

Author insert a music with WS Audio Player
(Download) this music.

This is an excerpt from my new audio book Trigger Events.

If you are in sales, you need this audio book - period. When you start using techniques mentioned in this book and learn where to find trigger events and how to use them, you will be able to get to the proposal itself much faster because you will know that your prospects are already qualified for your product or service, and you will have information about their needs gathered before the meeting or presentation.

If you order today, you will save $10 on the full price of the audio book, plus the shipping cost ($6.50) is on us on every order received before October 31st!

Read more how to order your copy of the audio book: Trigger Events.

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Podcast: If you live by price - you will die by price

My blog has just been added to the Big List of B2B Marketing and Sales Blogs. In pulling this list together, blogs had to meet the following criteria:

• The blog had to have recent posts
• The blog had to be active for at least three months
• If new, the blog had to already have a decent amount of relevant content
• The blog didn’t have to be entirely B2B, as long as the content was relevant to B2B
• If the blog had few recent posts, it needed to have substantial historical content

Make sure to check them out - the Big List of B2B Marketing and Sales Blogs.

Post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Added to the 2009 Big List of B2B Blogs!