Growth is Found in Regular Sales Training

Today's lesson will be very simple and back to basic principles in selling.

In all sales careers there is one common denominator, and that is really the love for continuous learning.

I believe that is one of the biggest difference with my sales career. I continuously attend sales trainings and seminars to grow me personally. When I started my career, I always knew continuous training and upgrading of skills and even technology is the key to being a success.

Five Basic Sales Mentor Guidelines on Sales Presentations

Today is Father’s day, and I’m up on my computer to do a follow up on our current sales mentor lesson, which is about sales presentations.

We all know, that as sales people a high quality sales presentation will certainly help you close the deal but I’m surprised to learn that there are still many sales people that take for granted the importance of sales presentations.

I am again emphasizing that we as sales people need to continuously take advantage of the common human trait which is being highly visual. In fact, I think that’s the main reason why we invented the quote “to see is to believe” in the first place.

So as a sales mentor, here I am again sharing to you the basic principles that I personally use in my sales presentations. But please do note that even though this sales presentation techniques work for me, it doesn’t necessarily work for you. Just take note of my basic guidelines and you can change or improve some more.

So here are my basic guidelines:

Sales Mentor Online 1st Year Anniversary!

Hooray! Yippee! Yeah!

Congrats to us! This is the first year anniversary of your very own Sales Mentor Online!

Thank you so much for all the people who visited my website. Thank you also for the people who gave their honest comments about my theories in Sales and Marketing. I really appreciate your comments whether it is positive or negative.

Thank you also for my followers. I also acknowledge that there are actually many followers for sales mentor online, they did not just officially click the follow button.

Sales Closing Technique - Call to Action

I remember learning this sales mentor lesson; it was actually the first sales closing techniques I’ve learned. This closing technique is called, the call to action.

I’ve had many experiences that have good products and good presentations yet at the end they forget something very important, and it is giving the prospect the “call” to “action”, otherwise known as the option to buy.

Remember that we are now leaving in a very busy world. Everyone’s in a hurry. If you take too much of their time or give them too many options, they won’t buy. Or worse, if the options are unclear, they would not buy either.

So how do you correct this?

Sales Mentor Closing Advice - Make up in Numbers!

Today I will reveal to you one of the biggest secrets why “hardcore” network marketers can close much more deals than normal salespersons out there. The secret, they make on numbers.

For example if a normal salesperson can close 9 out 10 deals per day, a network marketer will make by talking to 100 people per day. Even if his product is not as popular as those sold by multi-national sales people he makes up in order. If he can close at least 20% of his prospects, then he has beaten the normal sales person by 110% of his closing numbers.

Although this is just a theoretical example since it would be impossible for anyone to talk to 100 prospects per day (except when using leverage), but the example shows why most network marketers earn more than high-paid sales people.

Top Sales Mentor Closing Technique - Puppy Dog Closing

Have you always been struggling on your selling? Well if you’re looking for a sales closing technique for any tangible product, today’s sales mentor lesson is one of the best closing techniques you can use.

This technique is called, the Puppy Dog Close. Yup, it’s really called that way, though it may sound irrelevant to sales closing. After I explain the entire concept of the Puppy Dog Close, I promise the name will all make sense.

Imagine yourself you going to a pet shop, wherein you plan to buy a dog for your son. While browsing the puppies in the glass window, you spot a very cute Golden Retriever puppy. So you go inside the pet shop ask the sales agent if you can hold him and somewhat “inspect” this very cute puppy.

At first you are joyful to cuddle the puppy, and you admire your cuteness. You are almost 90% convince that you are on verge of getting the credit card to pay for the cute Golden Retriever. But upon further thinking, you ask yourself – is my son going to like this puppy as well?

iCarly Buzz - Sales and Marketing Lesson

There is actually a buzz right now about Nickelodeon's show - iCarly.

To give you a brief background:

iCarly is an American Teen Sitcom that focuses on the life of a girl named Carly Shay who decides to start a web show name iCarly, together with her close buddies Sam and Freddie. The show stars Miranda Cosgrove as Carly, Jenette McCurdy as Sam, Nathan Kress as Freddie, and many teen actors/actress that contributes to the fun and interest to its many viewers. 

Is Ms. Mexico Worth Winning The Ms. Universe Crown

Mr. Trumph Greeting the Ms. Universe 2010 Contestants

I know that I promised you a new set of sales mentor lessons for my coming post but I couldn't help but talk about the winner of Ms. Universe 2010 - Ms. Mexico.

While everybody would say that Ms. Mexico won because of her beauty and gorgeous smile (so gorgeous that it makes me melt) but I would disagree.

It would be better to say that Ms. Mexico went there to sell her way to the hearts of the judges and the entire Ms. Universe crowd.

What did Ms. Mexico do? She followed a basic sales process to close the deal with the judges of Ms. Universe 2010.

First, Ms. Mexico went through rigorous training before she could get to the international competition in the Ms. Universe 2010 pageant.

The Most Successful People Also Failed Tremendously

Stand up from your failure, Source : Flickr

The last and probably the most important benefit you get from learning how to sell is, it allows you to fail more.
Although for most people, failing is a negative thing but I believe there is a great benefit from failing. And from my personal experience as a sales mentor, failing has been the main reason I have been successful.

Weird, right? But let me cite a few people who failed tremendously but became one of the most successful and influential people of their times.

Grow Your Income By Learning To Sell

source : http://www.flickr.com/photos/materialboy/

Probably this is one of the most exciting benefits in learning how to sell - it can grow your income.

As a young student at an expensive University in the Philippines, I had to be more creative in my studies wherein I had to earn money and study at the same time. Luckily, I was blessed by the Lord with a great talent of being friendly and being talkative.

During that time, I started to sell mangoes to earn money for my allowance. It was very difficult at the start, and since I did not have any sales mentor at the time, I made many mistakes. After a month, I started to become better at selling and have already started to learn a basic sales theory, "sales is not sales unless paid and collected".

Learn To Sell And Lower Your Invisible-Self-Defenses

 source : http://www.flickr.com/photos/materialboy/

"We can all sell if we choose to, but for most people it is one of the most difficult
things to do because they afraid of loosing their self." - Robert Allen 

Based on our last sales mentor lesson, the first benefit from learning to sell is that it lowers our invisible-self-defenses.

I think most of us will agree that as people, we all have our own invisible walls. No matter how sociable we are, there will always be certain areas in our lives that we prefer to leave it a secret.

The Top 5 Benefits You'll Learn From Selling

source : http://www.flickr.com/photos/adriagarcia/

I remember asking my father before a question that changed the course of my life - "Dad, what profession will legally allow me to go out and talk to many people?". My father answered, "Well, when you're a salesperson you are always out on the field and you talk to all sorts of people. I guess that profession would be in a sales or marketing industry."

After that day, I resigned from my job as a process engineer and sought to find a sales job that would provide me the best sales training. (Surprise? Yep I wasn't always a sales mentor or salesperson.) Like most sales professionals, I too wasn't always a sales person. I just loved to talk and never wanted to stay in one place.   

A Starter's guide to selling - Obtain, Verify, and Transmit!

Based on our previous lesson (if you're new on my sales mentor lessons click here), we already know how important it is for sales people to have enough account knowledge to close a sale. Learning a little bit of the prospect's background will definitely take you a step closer to closing the sale.

And now you ask, how am I supposed to gather account knowledge (customer information)?

Well its easy actually - read a book on basic selling.

Just kidding... It is my commitment to you as your online sales mentor to help you in your selling endeavors.
Here are the basic steps on gathering account knowledge:

1. Ask

Many sales people tend to focus on selling right away, saying that only action can result to a sale. But without any information about your prospect, you are like a soldier going to war without any kind of firearm.

The 3 Important Types of Account Knowledge - It Grows Your Buyers List

As promised, we will now start on the new set of sales mentor lessons to add to your selling skills arsenal. Today, the most important sales technique that everybody knows but is usually taken for granted is - knowing your prospect.

Obviously, the more you know your prospect, the easier it is for you to do the selling since you know his needs, wants, desires, and specially his personal preference. Secondly, once you know enough of the customers' attitude, you can make "custom" sales approach towards selling to a specific prospect.

In formal sales training this approach is called "getting-the-account-knowledge". From the word account knowledge, it means that it tackles on the number of information you as salesperson knows about your existing and future account.

There are many simple ways where we can actually gain  a customer's account knowledge gradually. I stressed the word "gradually" since in selling, time is of the importance. In any sales situation there is always two parties involved, your side (the salesperson) and the prospect's side. So the faster you develop a very good relationship with your customer, the faster you gain account knowledge and trust. Simply put, "gradual" means as you build trust, you gain more account knowledge.

Believe In What You Sell!

This is the start of a new series of sales mentor lessons. Since we already got through the needed mindset and basic definitions, we will now discuss on the actual selling process.

How to start selling.

In a formal sales program, often, the sales training begins directly with the discussion on what is sales flow, persuasive selling, closing techniques, but for me this is all useless unless you start with this mindset - "Believe in what you sell".

Being a sales mentor and a salesperson myself, I've seen many salespeople directly jump start without really understanding their own product and more importantly, believing in their own product.

Believe me, being a "loyal customer" alone of what you sell improves 50% of your average closing. When you believe and also use what you sell, there's no objection strong enough for you.

A Sales Mentor Lesson on INTEGRITY

Based on our last lesson, we talked about Opening an online sales store, and what is needed to succeed in that kind of sales based business.

And that is Integrity....

Integrity to deliver the promises you are making about your product.
Integrity to actually deliver the product on the committed time and date.
Integrity to walk the talk.

A Sales Person's Life Is Always Closing!

Just a while ago I was at a Jollibee outlet. As usual I had to line up to the counter in order to get what I want to eat.

The young girl (probably in her teens) greeted me with a wonderful smile saying, "hello sir, welcome to Jollibee, can I take your order?". I got a bit startled cause I was currently texting my wife that I am already waiting for her at the store.

Do You Inspire Customer Service Tales?

Everyone loves to tell a good story. Stories teach, they inspire laughter and the bring about change. As consumers, we love to tell stories about the people we buy from -- good, bad or ugly.

If I stopped 10 of your clients/customers today and asked them to tell me a story about your company's customer service -- what story would they tell?

Kill the Competition - Move to Being Dominant

Kill the competition is the only way to think about your business and especially your competition. Most people do not desire competition in business but then do little or nothing to eliminate it. You wouldn't tolerate fleas on your dog or termites in your house, you would eliminate them.

The Basic Reasons A Prospect Won't or Don't Buy

In all my years as a salesperson, I have finally heard of all the reasons why a prospect won't buy and it would be safe to say that it can be summarized in five (5) basic reasons, namely:
- No Need
- No Money
- No Hurry
- No Desire
- And No Trust