Selling is Just an Idea Away - As well as Business

It all starts with an idea.

In any business venture, it all starts from an Idea. Whether conceptually correct or not, I don't care. Business comes from ideas.

Everyone has an idea. Making it into a business, now that's a different story.

But I like to focus on the concept of having an idea. Why? Because again we all have ideas. And "sell" to as many people as we like.

Yeah, we "sell" of sorts of ideas. From our favorite movies, actors, cards, banks, restaurants, hobbies, and even sport icons. We tell people about everything we think of often.

Sales Mentor Online is Still Here - It is here to Stay for GOOD!

It is quite inspiring that after a few years sales mentor online is still here. Well, frankly it will be here to stay.

I have been busy lately, and have new businesses to attend to but I as much I as I can I will try my very best to share to everyone the very best sales practices that I have learn. Especially the ones that really work.

It has been so different coming from the consumer industry, towards selling that investments and insurance product. The kind of selling and marketing are very varied. Of course the fundamentals in closing are kind of similar, but the approach is very different.

Selling has always been a very big part of my life. Not only professionally but as well as personally.

The journey continues for me, as a sales mentor and as well as serial entrepreneur. Really teaching people not only in sales but in life in general.

This officially declares that the sales mentor FREE coaching is still open. For consultation and any inquiries. Of course it remains paid. But if you just want to avail the free lessons, it still posted in this website. As well as you can request for my Ebooks and other business lessons.

Happy selling everyone,

Sales Mentor Online

Sales Mentor - Closing the Sale using Visual Aids

For today's sales mentor lesson we will now talk of the effectiveness in having a good presentation material to ensure a salesperson closes the sale.

To tackle this topic we need a little background in Psychology. Don't worry I'm not going to talk about parts of your brain or any Psychology concepts to make you understand this topic.

All you need to know as a salesperson is this; when you target audio 15% of the person's attention is with you; if you use audio with proper diction and voice stress you are able to target a preson's attention by 45%; and lastly if you use audio with stress and include visual aids in your presentation 95% of the person's attention is with you.

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?

Sales Mentor Is Back and Re-vamp to A New Sales Training Series

It’s been a while since sales mentor online has given you tips in your selling endeavor, and I must admit, life has certainly been blessing your sales mentor with many business opportunities.

I am now a fulltime entrepreneur and no longer depend on a job to make a living. Also that I have already given up my sales and distribution business in Bacolod City, Philippines. Though that sales business was also providing for me, it could not produce the passive income which I was looking for.

After my resignation as sales manager of the biggest local company in the Philippines, I am now FREE of a boss. I had already got over the feeling of being so needy of a job, and finally move to a better life of purpose and more selling success.

But here’s the thing, if you’re an avid reader of my sales mentor blog, I can no longer update my post as much I wanted to. Due to certain demands in my business and the many websites that I now maintain (as an Internet Marketer), my time is limited and dedicated to many businesses.

Once You Know How To Sell You Already Have More Options

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

The next benefit you can get from learning to sell is related to our number two benefit.
Imagine your career as a one big river. It flows steadily and at a very consistent rate. It provides home for all the fishes in it. It waters the trees and plants around it. And provides food for many people. In essence, it carries with security.

But one day, a drought came to your big river. You assume it was just temporary so you stick to your big river. After a while you were proven wrong. The flow of water gets lesser and lesser each day. The fishes start to die. The plants and trees starts to die. And eventually food for the people also begin to disappear and soon everything will perish.

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".

Train Your Sales People Like Soldiers Going To Iraq

I remember my first day as a salesperson. I was hired by one of the biggest Ice Cream companies in the Philippines as an Account Specialist (AS). I remember being excited for my first ever sales job and anxious at the same time. 

Before we did our selling, we first had a 5-day classroom training, with my very first sales mentor Mr. Rusky. He was a bright person with superb communication skills.

We started with the background of the product lines that we were going to sell. The company's policies and history. The organizational structure and where we were at the structure.

3 Sales Tips To Develop A Long Term Customer-Relationship

I was about to start eating my delicious Pork-Sate meal last night with a nice cold orange juice for my drink to complete my dinner when suddenly someone called out my name.

It was Ms. Rizza, one of my closest customers when I was still selling Ice Cream for Magnolia (San Miguel Foods Premium Ice Cream Brand). We haven't really seen each other for quite sometime and yet she was still very fond of me.

I invited her to join me and my wife for a sumptuous meal in one of my favorite restaurants in Cebu. Our "little chat" took almost an hour, and I noticed that my wife is slowly feeling out of place. (There's a sales mentor lesson here, I promise).

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.

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

Are Salespeople Still Needed?

This question was asked to me recently in an interview, "with the dominance of the internet is the salesperson even needed anymore?" It might surprise you to hear my answer. Understand I have worked as a 'sales expert' for over twenty years, rewritten sales processes for entire industries, licensed customized sales processes for organizations, and written three books on selling.

Sales Training Tips

While it is agreed that training can improve the production results of a company there is no shortage of companies and executives that question the return on investment (ROI). Before you calculate the cost of training you should calculate the cost of mishandling opportunities that result from not training your people. Sales training has failed many companies because it was incorrectly implemented, not measurable, outdate and not relevant and did not actual assist in solving problems and actually improving the sales effectiveness of the organization.

For any training to be effective there are certain criteria that must be adhered to:

1) Must include management and not just the sales team. Not including management suggest that the training is not significant enough for the organization to embrace completely. The content should be so compelling that management can use it to run meetings, solve problems and even used to coach sales people during the day.

2) Expectation of the results should be significant and measurable. Sales training is not something you do because you need to train but something you do in order to win the game and make more sales! Training needs to be approached as valuable and vital ingredient to increased production and THE WAY to increased sales and revenue.

3) Sales training must be delivered in very short segments and interactive. What is short? Two to five minutes and even shorter. Most training fails today just because the segments are too long and loses the attention of the trainee. Our Sales Training Virtual Technology uses interactive engagement and testing forcing interaction and validating duplication with one question for every one minute of training content.

4) Training must be measurable and rewarded. Just like you track someone's production results sales training should be tracked and rewarded. It is proven that consistent training done at regular intervals over extended periods of time will create increased levels of sales production. Training that is not easily measurable, like any process or best practice will fail. We use buit in monitoring system that track everything a user of the program does while on the program, including how long, what they looked at, and whether they passed or failed the testing component.

5) Sales training should be focused on those that have been with the organization not the new people. Most organizations put all their attention and training dollars on the new hires and forget to continue to train the most stable in the organization. Effective sales training programs should focus 80% of the training content, time and energy on the proven sales people in the organization.

6) Sales training should be made part of the culture and delivered continually throughout the day. All staff meetings should include training, with sales people following that up with a minimum of two segments each day on their own, and then supported with sales coaching throughout the day to solve problems. We added this last component via our virtual technology whereby sales people can interctively consult me in real time and I am actually able to coach them through and transaction and improve their chances of closing a transaction. This combination of training throughout the day is similar to how you would correctly hydrate the body with fluids with an IV drip.

For sales training to be effective it must be made the first thing and then a continued activity each day in order to maximize every opportunity and guarantee a ROI. If you think it is expensive to train sales teams try the alternative. Missing sales in this environment is suicidal. Train them daily, demand they train throughout the day and provide soutions during the day and you will increase sales in any economy.

By: Grant Cardone (@ HuffingtonPost) 

Let me summarize what Mr. Grant is talking about and with a few of my added suggestions for Philippine based companies. 

First. Make Sales Training a "all-company" activity. 

Filipinos are generally hardworking but unlike other countries most of us ended our education after formal school. We tend to take trainings for granted and even make lesser effort on applying the discussions done during the trainings. Hence, this will be management's job to involve everyone in the loop. 

Second. Make training a regular habit.

Set fixed dates for the entire sales training schedules for the year. Management should include this on the one year business plan. 

I remember joining a company wherein the salespeople would get surprised when management suddenly announces a training activity. Instead of getting excited, the sales force will tend to complain that training will only take away their supposed to be productive selling days. 

Third. Immediate measurement of results. 

We all know that procrastination is one of the main reasons for failure. Again, this too has to be included in management's one year business plan. This measurement will also help us gauge the effectiveness and timeliness of our trainings. More importantly, if the kind of training done is cost-efficient for the company. 

Lastly. Choose wisely who will conduct your trainings.    

In my experience this will be the main "argument" of management. Who should conduct the sales training? Should we get our top sales managers to do the training? Or Should we hire well-known third party who has a reputation and track record to show. In my opinion, I follow these three (3) premises in choosing who will conduct the training. 

1. Topic Competency - the one to conduct must have more than sufficient actual results done on the topic

2. Additional Services - often, when getting an external sales training company will give more value and results to the training since they provide extras like worksheets, up-to-date market reviews, measurement tools, and etcetera. 

3. Cost Efficiency - no matter where we look, we have to remember that everything done in business has to have a return-on-investment (ROI). So please include the cost of the sales training in conducting such an activity. 

Before we end this topic I want you to remember this line: "We as salespeople owe it to ourselves to continuously learn to sell". 

That being said, no matter what kind of sales training we do, as long as we do not learn from our past mistakes our sales success and productivity will never improve. 

That's it for today, join me again for my next coming post. 

Feel free to contact me at salesmentoronlinephilippines@gmail.com or to get my post updates click the Followers Area on the side. 

Dedicated to your selling success,

Sales Mentor TM

Sales Meetings That Motivate

The purpose of a sales meeting is to motivate your people and get them prepared to focus on selling. All too often sales meetings become boring lectures, repetitive messages that really have nothing to do with selling your products, and then becomes a source of de-motivation rather than motivation and increased sales. Sales meetings that are unplanned are punishment for those that have to attend.

Sales meetings should be delivered every day and provide the team with information that gives them new hope and new solutions that will help them in increasing business. Most companies agree with daily sales meetings but then don't have them because they lack fresh and compelling content and soon find the meetings to be a waste of time. For sales meetings to be effective you must invest time and energy in making them interesting over and over again. The purposes of the meeting is not for the sake of a sales meeting but to: (1) Bring the team together and get cohesiveness as a selling team. (2) To motivate and provide the sales and management with hope of what is possible. (3) Prepare individual sales people with new techniques and solutions that will actually increase sales.

These meetings must be kept fresh, motivating, engage the audience and be upbeat. It's important that you don't waste your salespeoples' time, but also avoid overloading them with information that is just information. The meeting should be short, inspiring, provoking, positive and focused on SOLUTIONS! The key to almost any successful meeting is to make it interesting, useful, positive and short. Short means under twenty minutes.

Before you rally the troops for another sales meeting, consider some of the following ways to get the most out of your sales meetings:

a) Get the meeting off to a jump start and surprise your team with visual content that sets the stage and grabs their full attention. Use high impact video to make points, something that can really wake them up and get your team thinking. Here is an example of a wake up video called, You Can't Handle the Truth Sales Meeting. Don't just talk to people get their senses engaged, get them focused, and wakes them up! The major goal of the sales meeting is to offset the massive amounts of negative information your team has received in the last 24 hours from mass media.

b) Once you have their full attention then next focus on 'saving' business that was worked over the last days or weeks. The goal here is to get them thinking how we as a team can piece a transaction together and get the day started on a fast track.

c) Focus on the 'wins not the losses! Take a few minutes at every meeting to congratulate salespeople for any and all completed goals, closed deals, and successes. Praise reinforces positive behavior and encourages everyone to do well. Keep the discussion relevant and don't allow people to present problems unless they also have potential solutions.

Sales meetings should be daily, short, engaging, entertaining and interesting and focused on solutions and the positive not the negative. Your people are being trained whether you train them or not. The question is will you provide them with sales training daily or will you let the media train them. An effective sales meeting will motivate, entertain, engage and get your people focused on how to conquer sales. An effective sales meeting done on a daily basis will prove a great investment of time and energy when done correctly.

By: Grant Cardone (HuffingtonPost)

Features and Benefits

Basic Selling Lesson #2

Features and Benefits – What’s the big difference?

I remember my Sales Manager told me this before, “convert our product features into customer benefits and ultimately increase the number of productive calls you make in a day”.

Now I would like to rephrase what my Sales Manager said, “a product’s Feature can only describe or tell what the product is all about, but only custom-fit Benefits can convince the prospect to buy”. Of course, the features can certainly create a buyer’s interest but until a salesperson can convert that interest into custom-fit benefits, the buyer is still considered a prospect because he has not made up his mind into buying the product.

To make it simple, let’s define it this way – “Features only tell and custom-fit Benefits sell”.

Here are some examples

Features:

- has vitamins A & B

- automatic timer

- auto lock system

Translating this into benefits:

- Mr. Prospect our product is filled with vitamins A & B which will greatly make your kids stronger and healthier, therefore saving you cost for buying additional benefits (like vitamins or medicines).

- Mr. Prospect with the automatic timer settings in our air conditioner, you have the freedom to turn off the system by itself and then save electricity

- Mr. Prospect with our new auto lock system, you do not have to worry of leaving your car unlocked since you can choose a time delay for the automatic locking

Actually the great sales trainer Dick Gardner said it best, “features cost us money and benefits takes home the money”. While both are crucial for the sales process, the conversion of the features into benefits should be the main focus of a salesperson’s persuasion in the prospect’s mind.

Let me end this lesson by telling you a story.

Back when I was an Account Specialist for one of the biggest ice cream brands in the Philippines, I thought of getting a sideline to increase my monthly net earnings. During that early stage in my career, I already knew that being dependent in one income stream will not give me the kind of life I dreamed of.

On the weekends I joined an insurance company that sell investments, mutual funds, term-life insurance, health care, and death plans. I went there for three consecutive weekends to undergo training for different plan presentations. They taught us how to make a prospect’s list, how to get an appointment and etcetera. After that I was on my own to sell. Since I had a regular list of customers, thanks to my day job, I scheduled for an appointment with one of my closest customers who has an ice-cream shop (in the Philippines we call it a “suki customer”).

In my sales call, my presentation was superb. I was following what my sales insurance mentor taught me. I pushed for the higher benefit plans. I mentioned good examples and situations. I felt I had him in the palm of my hands but suddenly when I tried to close, he would not buy.

I got confused. He told me so many reasons why it was not good to buy, and one big reason he told me was “your products are good but I don’t think it can do anything for me”. When I heard those words, I immediately realized that I was not acting as a co-buyer to the customer.

It dawned on me that I was just presenting to him and mentioned only other people’s stories but I never really converted it to his personal Benefits. I knew then that I have to give him what he needs. Then I remembered this phrase “Features tell, Benefits sell”. So with that in mind, I immediately went back to the first stage of negotiation. I went through all the presentation again and this time I mentioned the features and custom-fit benefits that he would gain from it.

I ended up selling my first insurance sale, and gaining one important lesson that I will never forget.

Again it is this simple, “Features tell, Benefits Sell”.

Well that’s it for today. Join me again for my next coming post.

Dedicated to your selling success,

Sales Mentor TM

How to turn SOCIAL NETWORKING into sales!

Social networking tools like Face Book, Linked In and Twitter are not just social networking tools but should be used as ways to create relationships and create real sales. This is a whole new world that is exploding with sales opportunities and not just a way to find old college buddies. Social networking is for more than just making connections but for making sales! 

Go into this with the idea that you are going to use social networking to increase your contacts, get them thinking and talking about you and then covert those contacts into contracts! Unfortunately or fortunately depending on who you are, most people are just using this tool to entertain and waste time. 

Getting started is as simple as entering your email address into any of these sites, what you do with after that is what counts. Focus on what image you want to create and how to get people to see your site and the creative ideas of how to stay connected with those people. 

Getting to the right person at the right time with the right presentation is what creates the sale. And that is what these sites can and should do for you. With the economy much tighter it is critical that salespeople increase the number of opportunities they personally create and not wait for something to happen. Social networking tools are transforming the salesperson's sales efforts.

First, understand this is not a place to waste time and meander but to connect with those that can propel your business. When I use social networking I am looking to connect with those that can either promote my business or directly see and buy my products. If my old college mates can help me great then go after them but that should not be your primary purpose when using these tools.

Your Sales Mentor's Opinion:

Hi everyone, I got this post from Technorati. I think this is where the future is going. 

As salespeople we too should be looking to the future and be open to the changes even before it happens, so that we are always a step ahead. Although for now not many Filipinos take advantage of this social media sites (it is still a good site to keep in touch with friends by the way), but we too have to learn how to take advantage of this sites as one of our best selling areas in which we can use even for free. 

We can even open new accounts connected to, or related to the products/services we are selling, and inform a lot of possible prospects just by befriending them and adding getting our accounts added to their list of contacts.

The key here is on how to choose the prospects and to look for groups which you think will be interested in what you are selling. 

To continue reading the Article of Grant Cardone please click here.

    

Want to learn more about the internet and how to earn from it?

Meet my friend James Parmis and click his written name and subscribe to his blog. He will teach you the step by step process on how to earn online. 

Anyway that's it for our sales lesson update, hope you had fun reading my article.

Dedicated to your selling success,

Sale Mentor TM

Are you playing the competitor's game?

I'm not good at sitting idle.  So if I am stuck waiting for some reason, I get antsy.  To kill that time, I'll fire up my smart phone and play a game (or two) of Hearts.  In the game, by default I am player south.  (4 players sitting around a table, each designated by a direction.)

  

My arch nemesis is player north.  He is the shrewdest of the computerized players and if anyone is going to beat me, it's him.  (Stay with me, I promise there is a marketing message in here!)

I have played Hearts (usually with real people so don't feel too sorry for me!) for many years and I'm pretty good.  I have a sound strategy that has been time tested so I rarely need to vary from it.  But...the fact that north is good and is my most worthy opponent throws me off that track.

I find that I play differently when I am overly-conscious of trying to beat him in particular.  And in fact, the more I purposely change the way I play to thwart him....the more I lose. If I stay disciplined enough to play my own game my own way -- I rarely lose.

(Did you notice the marketing message I snuck in there?)

We all run the same risk in running our businesses and planning our marketing.  Way too many businesses invest too much time and energy worrying about what their competitor is doing.  Then, they change their own game plan to chase after the other guy -- emulating or trying to outdo.

I found this great site which discusses practical marketing strategies that will definitely help us improve our sales carriers and future business. 

This article is from Drew McLellan a top Dog McLellan Marketing Group. As a salesperson I have long understood that for us to improve we need to be completely open and aware of the new and current ideas that are available for us. Yet with this concept from Drew, we are reminded that we also need to "stick with our own guns" if we want to have our own cut of the total Marketshare. 

To continue reading Drew's article please click here.

I assure you Drew will give you great advice on your marketing endeavors.

Again see you next time. 

Dedicated to your selling success,

Sales Mentor TM