Sales Tips | Sales Techniques

Ten Sales Tips Guaranteed To Get Results

These sales tips are short and sweet, but will have a big impact on your sales performance.

What’s the best time of day for a customer meeting?

10-30am. Why?

Because people have had time to clear their morning to-do list but are still fresh, alert and energetic.

Any later and they’re starting to think about lunch.

Worst time of day?

2.00pm, or straight after lunch.

Often referred to as the post-lunch dip.

People’s bodies are diverting energy to digestion, they feel sleepy, listless and can’t concentrate.

Best day of the week?

Tuesday, because you and the customer have had Monday to recover from the weekend and get all your admin sorted but you’re both still fresh.

And you’ve then got the rest of the week to get things done arising from the meeting.

So, combining best day of the week with best time of the day we arrive at…

Tuesday at 1030 – the optimum time for meetings with customers.

ABC . . . Always Be Closing

Not literally, but throughout the sales meeting you should be getting agreement to what’s just been discussed so it’s “closed” and you can move the sale forward.

Eat That Frog!

If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the the rest of the day knowing it can only get better.

Your “FROG” is that one task you really don’t feel like doing. Maybe you’ve been putting it off hoping it will go away, but you know it won’t!

It’s also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your results NOW.

Meet AIDA and LADIKA

No, not operas or exotic eastern dancers but Acronyms.

Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

and (in reverse order)

Loyalty
Action
Desire
Interest
Knowledge
Attention

As you can see, both are about the same thing, LADIKA is a bit more expansive.

You’ve got to get the customer’s Attention first.
Give them some Knowledge to get them Interested.
Get them to want to do something about it
Get them to actually act and do it
Make sure they keep coming back

How To Be SMART

Another acronym, this time about goal-setting.

Test your goals and objectives against these SMART criteria:

Specific – concrete, factual, precise
Measurable – what gets measured gets done
Achievable – keep it realistic, but stretching
Relevant – focused on the task in hand
Time-bounded – set milestones and completion dates

Words To Avoid At All Costs

Sign, signature – use authorise; authorisation – much more positive.

Contract – use paperwork; documentation; agreement

‘Sign’ and ‘contract’ have negative connotations – you sign your life away.
Contract killers, anyone?

So ‘sign the contract’ becomes ‘agree the paperwork’, ‘OK the documentation’; ‘approve the form’; ‘authorise the agreement’ (my favourite).

‘Authorise’ is a powerful word, and plays on people’s self-importance.

Price, cost – use value; investment; worth; so ‘Your investment in this sales training course will be £1850’

Price and cost don’t have positive vibes: we ‘pay the price’, and ‘That’ll cost you’.

Sell, sold – use supply; provided

No one likes to have been ‘sold a dummy’, or ‘sold down the river’.

KISS

Keep It Simple, Stupid
Enough said.

Important Phone Call?

STAND UP when you make (or receive) it.

Your voice tone will be stronger (that’s why singers and actors perform mostly standing up).
You will feel more positive and confident because of your posture.
It helps your speed of thought processes (hence the expression ‘thinking on your feet’).

Another TOP TELEPHONE SALES TIP:

Don’t hang up until you hear the other person end the call. If they hear you cutting the call they’ll think you’re rude, got something more important to do, and that you’re really not that interested.

Much more on Telephone Techniques.

First Contact

Managing the very first minute of contact with a new customer can dictate how the rest of the relationship develops.

This is part of the process of building rapport.

Clearly in Sales we have to get this right first time – every time.

So – only 2 topics of conversation in that first minute please:

The Weather

The Journey

In other words two totally neutral, non-contentious topics, during which you are each sizing the other up like two dogs meeting for the first time – except YOU are doing it consciously because you understand that this is a crucial part of the sales process.

For sales tips on Rapport and Body Language.

You’ve Got 2 Ears But Only 1 Mouth

So use them in that proportion: in a sales meeting you should be listening 2/3rds of the time and only talking 1/3rd.