Dan Kennedy – Make Them Buy Now

THE ULTIMATE SALES COPY MONEY MAKING MACHINE

How to Make Sales

As a sales person, you need and want to make sales. It is imperative that you produce, close sales. Sales are the measure of your success and, not to be ignored, how you put food on your table.

There are no secrets to being a successful closer, only common sense attitudes toward work, appearance, and interaction with people.

Regarding work, know your product, be it insurance, call center software or auto parts. If gaining and maintaining that knowledge means taking classes or self-study, take them, or do it. If it means reading brochures about the product, read them. Always keep your knowledge current. Know how to convey that knowledge to your clients.

Dress well and make a good appearance. Clothing should be neat, clean, pressed and reflect a positive attitude toward your work. It need not be expensive and it need not be formal. A suit and tie might not work for someone selling auto parts or farming equipment, but would work well for someone selling call center software or insurance. You need not be handsome or beautiful, but you should be well groomed. Your appearance should show pride and confidence in who you are and reflect respect for your client or customer.

Be consistent in your work ethic. Be on time for appointments or open the store at 8:00 AM if that is what the sign on the door says. If you make a promise, keep it. If reasons that are out of your control prevent you form keeping it, inform your client or customer and make alternate arrangements. If the promise is impossible to keep, explain and apologize. Never make a promise that you do not intend to, or cannot honor, just to close the sale.

It will come back to you in unpleasant ways. Deliveries should be on time. Merchandise or product should be what you say it is. If there is a problem, resolve it to the best of your ability, and if at-all possible, the client is satisfied. If the problem cannot be resolved, offer a refund or substitution.

Build a client or customer base. Do what is necessary in your field to gain new clients and, once gained, do what is necessary to keep them.

Keep your inventory current. If something is not selling, perhaps it should not be in your briefcase or store. In a slow economy, you may need to diversify, or perhaps, bring in a few new products with the same level of quality as your other merchandise, but normally sold at a lower price. A seller of high-end furniture survived the Great Depression by bringing in a line of shoelaces and other small personal items to his store.

Know that if you are persistent you will succeed.

Honesty, Openness And Willingness

Honesty, openness, and willingness are not only important to people trying to recover from drug abuse. They are important to salespeople as well! Accurately or not, salespeople have a reputation as being dishonest. Used car salespeople are often the punch line of jokes about dishonesty. People selling medicine and medical supplies are often characterized as snake oil salesmen. In order for salespeople to repair their reputations, they must work to craft a new image.

Potential customers are afraid of what salespeople are not telling them about their products. Do they use toxic chemical in their fertilizer? Are they produced in sweatshops? Are they made with inferior materials? When salespeople are more transparent about their products, more customers will be willing to plunk down their hard earned money. Willingness impacts the issues outlined above as well as many others related to sales. Salespeople must be willing to change, willing to be open and willing to do the things their customers need. Doing these things will increase sales exponentially.

Honesty means being accurate with your prices, accurate with information about delivery times and accurate about what the products can and cannot do. Lying to customers is a short term solution that creates long term problems. Lying, or misrepresenting the facts, to customers may get them to sign the contracts but it leads to a myriad of problems including stopped payments on checks, cancelled orders and a negative view of the company. All these things are bad for business.

If you believe in your product and are confident in its quality, openness is easy. No customer wants to find out the product they purchased was produced with dangerous or inferior materials. It makes it worse if customers think the salesperson knew and obfuscated the truth with double talk and misleading information. Openness builds trust. If you are open with your customer, provide them the information that they should know and admit when you don’t have the information they may need to make an intelligent decision you can build a relationship that will make you more money in the long run.

Being willing to change, willing to do the necessary research to thoroughly understand your product and willing to return to a potential customer with the information they need before asking them to make a decision is important. Using honesty, openness and willingness can lead to a happier customer and a healthier bottom line!