Making new sales is the lifeblood of any business, as the easiest way to increase profits and grow. As any sales veteran will tell you, succeeding in sales requires a combination of personal traits and skills.
Motivation is very important in sales; if you are not motivated, you sell less, and this vicious cycle can bring down even the best and most confident salespeople.
The way to break out of this negative mentality is to change your approach and look for a new angle. A fresh start or changing your approach can break the mental block and have you attracting success again. Even if you are a gnarled sales veteran with years of experience, a refresher course can breathe new life into your career.
Even if you spend a couple of days rerunning through “old” techniques, you can always learn something new. Perhaps you overlooked a technique, or you find that a new take on an old system can revive your approach.
A single tip can be all it takes to help you generate more leads or close more deals, and increased success brings better motivation; better motivation means that you spend more time selling.
The Twenty Tips for Making New Sales Success
Here are twenty tips to help you revive your sales approach. These valuable tips are simply reminders of what all seasoned and successful sales people understand.
- 1. Contact and Serve
Contact all of your clients who are thinking about buying or who have recently bought from you. If it is a potential customer, try to find out exactly what they need to move along and actually buy from you. Instead of pressurizing them and breaking out the hard sell, listen and reassure.
Ultimately, the first mantra of sales is ‘Identify a problem, find a solution,’ yet many salespeople forget this simple maxim. Telephone them and go back to basics; solve their problem and serve them in every way possible.
With this approach, you can also identify the timewasters; if they want a solution that you cannot provide, you can forget them and move on.
- 2. Staged Closing
Knowing when to close deals is the key to new sales success. Many salespeople who are brilliant at generating leads simply cannot close deals, ultimately wasting all of that good work.
People think of closing as getting the signature on the paper at the end of negotiations. This is true, but think from the customer’s point of view; they will be spending a lot of money and want to be 100% sure that they are doing the right thing. They will have questions, so it is up to you to address every single concern and give an answer, closing the deal in stages.
Ask questions, such as ‘Is this what you need?’ ‘Is this service something that you are interested in?’
These small, staged closes let you keep on the right track and prevent you from asking for too much, too soon and frightening off the customer. Slow and steady is the way to go with new sales.
- 3. Trust and Integrity
New sales are great, but returning customers are valuable; if a customer is happy with your product, they will come back for more. Trust and integrity should be at the core of your approach. So, how do you gain trust?
The answer is providing service at every stage of the process, during the initial presentation, the sale, the delivery, and during the aftercare. A simple call a few days after the sale, asking if they are happy with the product, can work wonders.
- Return calls promptly
- If you don’t know something, tell them, then find out the answer
- Be confident and helpful, without straying into arrogance
- Be honest
- Follow up
- Be friendly
If you capture trust and convince the customer of your integrity, people will want to buy from you, knowing that they have spent wisely.
- 4. Overcome Objections
Customers have questions, many of which can lead them to reject your product or go to a competitor. These questions are objections that you must overcome, but sometimes the questions actually mask the real reasons for their concerns. For example, a customer might ask you why your competitor is selling their product at a much lower price. It is easy to assume that they are playing hardball, trying to force you to lower the price.
On the other hand, they might be concerned that, if they spend such a large amount of money and get it wrong, their employer/spouse/partner would not be happy. You need to find out exactly what is stopping the customer from buying and offer a solution. Probe for a reason and offer a workable solution, building upon your trust and integrity.
- 5. Probe
Probing allows you to treat every customer as an individual, and this is a key to success.
You need to constantly probe for what the customer wants, establishing how serious they are about buying. Sometimes this happens early in the conversation. Aat other times, you can waste time trying to sell to a client who has already decided that they are not interested.
Remember when you started in sales; you spent time running through your sales spiel, only to find that the customer is not interested but was too polite to interrupt!
Alternatively, you may fail to address concerns and spend your time telling the customer why your service is the best, without addressing what they actually need; that is an easily avoidable lost sale.
From the very start, you should probe; you don’t want to overwhelm the customer with questions, but a few carefully selected, open questions dropped into the conversation can work wonders. Sometimes, an open-ended question causes the customer to open up, and then convince themselves that they should buy.
- 6. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
Related to probing is the idea of KISS. Don’t spend time rambling about why your product is the best; talk about why it is the best for that customer. Some customers are ready to buy and just need a little reassurance in a few areas, but telling them irrelevant details actually gives them reasons not to buy, creating room for objections.
Customers will run away if they smell a sales pitch; they want an individualized product and a salesperson who wants to help. Address their concerns and build upon those; don’t give them extra excuses to back out by overcomplicating things.
7. Features and Benefits
At the core of sales is added value: Every single feature of your product should have a benefit, because customers are not spending money, they are investing money. If a feature costs extra but brings no added value to the customer, then it is useless. Know how to communicate the benefit of every feature of the product or service you are selling.
8. Knowledge and Growth
Knowledge is the key to outperforming the competition. Knowledge breeds confidence and, if you learn everything about your product, it is easier to sell by promoting the benefits. Study your competitors and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. Learn about your customers, looking at their background and asking why they may be interested in your products. If customers see you as knowledgeable, you become the first port of call for information and they will be more likely to trust you.
9. Best Practices and an Open Mind
In many sales areas, managers and directors send directives explaining the best practices. It is tempting to ignore these amid the flurry of e-mails, but they can be a goldmine and act as the focus for reviving a flagging campaign. Other reps may have found simple methods and techniques that work, and the company is sharing this information with you. Try some of these techniques and keep an open mind.
10. Teach to Learn
Teaching others can be a great way to assess your own approach. Showing new reps the ropes can often expose weaknesses in your technique and help you to learn. For example, if you find it difficult to explain things to a new rep, then you can rest assured that your customers will be equally perplexed.
A new rep will ask questions, many of which will expose gaps in your knowledge, allowing you to tackle these and improve.
11. Co-Selling – Everyone’s a Winner
Sales Reps can learn a lot from each other, and going on sales calls with colleagues can help you develop new techniques. A simple change in approach, or a new way to interact with customers, can completely change your outlook. Every sales rep has their own style, but it can always be improved upon. Learning from each other can augment and enhance, helping both to incorporate a little more flexibility into their approach.
12. Ask for Referrals
If you have a satisfied customer, ask them to refer you to others and, in most cases, they will be happy to help. Whether it is asking the customer directly, or being a little more passive and indirect, go for it. A referral from a happy customer is usually a very easy sale, especially as you have somebody else doing your advertising, with absolutely no effort on your part!
13. Generate Leads
Leads are the lifeblood of sales. Even if you are the best closer that has ever walked the earth, without good leads you will fail. Find leads by any means possible; scour the internet, pay for lead generating services, and get out there and visit every business in your town. If doesn’t matter how you do it, but be proactive in finding clients; it is all about playing the numbers game.
14. Follow Through
Most sales reps fizz with ideas, new ways to find customers or ideas that may lead to a rich seam of leads. Sadly, many are forgotten after a few hours, when something else crops up. Write these ideas down or use a digital voice recorder to keep track of your ideas and, at the end of the day, transfer these ideas on to your ‘to do’ list.
15. Explore New Opportunities
Many sales reps tend to drift into certain areas and attract specific labels. You may well excel in a specific area but, if you start to identify only with one label and stop exploring other markets, you will lose potential clients.
Explore new opportunities and try to sell outside your niche. For example, if you have managed to sell a product to a small business owner, you might be able to sell to the employees. If a larger business has dealings with a smaller one, you can use referrals to expand your audience. Think laterally and you can generate new leads with very little effort.
16. Play the Numbers Game
The numbers game is the easiest way to increase sales and this principle is simple. If times are hard and you are struggling with sales, work harder, because the more people you contact, the more likely you are to sell. You will receive more rejections but, importantly, you will generate more leads. If your motivation is low, this can be the hardest part to overcome but it will bring results.
17. Develop a Thick Skin
As a sales rep, you hear the word ‘No’ a lot. Even the toughest, most experienced salespeople can go through periods where this gets them down. The key is to see ‘No’ as an opportunity that may lead to a ‘Yes,’ and you can probe and ask why the answer is no. Perhaps it will uncover an issue that you can resolve, an objection that you can overcome. Even a flat and unconditional ‘No’ can give you a referral opportunity: ‘If you are not interested, do you know anyone that might be?’
Keep your skin thick: The ‘No’s’ cannot hurt you but they can also unlock opportunity.
18. Leave Work at Work
This is extremely important, because the biggest enemy of any sales rep is burnout. Even when you are going through a successful period, overdoing things can tire you out. Once you have arrived home, focus on relaxing and spending time with your family, or unwinding with your hobbies. You must balance work and life, or you may lose motivation and enthusiasm for your work.
19. Listen and Learn
Listen to the customer at all times, rather than trying to force the issue. Many customers know exactly what they want and, rather than getting caught up in ego, trying to show the customer how clever you are, listen.
20. Be Helpful
Try to be as helpful as you can, to customers, colleagues, and even the competition.
If you are honest and helpful, colleagues will ask you to take care of their customers when they are away on holiday. Helpfulness and simple kindness does come back at you as your reputation builds, so will your success. You will end with a few referrals coming your way, where the customer asks for you by name.
You are selling yourself alongside the product. You never know what rewards kindness and honesty will bring you in the future!