Ten Tips for Sales Success by Else Archer

Ten Tips for Sales Success

1. Focus — Those who succeed in today’s constantly beeping, notification-filled world will be those who learn to focus. We’ve all been there – one notification from Facebook sucks us into a black hole and before we know it 30 minutes is gone. Turn off all notifications on your phone and computer, except for those that are absolutely necessary. If possible, remove email from your phone and schedule blocks of time in your day to check and respond to incoming messages.
2. Schedule Your Income Producing Activities — Identify and prioritize your income producing activities (IPA’s). To determine your IPA’s, ask yourself the activities are that actually produce income for you. Typically in sales these include prospecting (by phone/ email/ LinkedIn/ dropping in), networking, going on sales meetings, etc. Block out time every day to solely focus on your IPA’s. More importantly, identify when your buyer is most likely to be available and plan around that. For instance, if you’re selling to business owners then they’re most likely to answer their phone at the beginning or end of the day (typically between 7 – 9am or 4 – 6pm). In this example, you would schedule your prospecting time for those two time slots on your calendar. If you don’t schedule it, it won’t happen.
3. Daily Learning — Take 30 minutes every day to educate yourself on your area of expertise. The vast people stop reading after they graduate from high school or college. However, our real learning truly begins after we enter the working world. Taking the time to continue to educate yourself will give you an immediate leg up over most of your competition, and you’ll also be able to add more value to your customers.
4. Visualization — There is incredible power in our subconscious minds. Take the time every morning to visualize how you want your day to go, taking special care to visualize each of your meetings. See yourself walking into your meeting and being warmly received, as you have exactly the solution they’ve desperately been looking for. See your prospect engaged and interested in what you have to offer. At the end of your meeting, see them agreeing to whatever the proposed next step is. In life, we typically get what we expect. If you visualize and anticipate how your meetings are going to go in advance, they’ll almost always end up going as you expected. Try it and see for yourself!
5. Personal Branding — Personal branding is easier and more important than ever in today’s selling environment. It’s critical that you know what clients and prospects are seeing when they search for your name online (trust me, they do). If you haven’t worked actively on building your personal brand, start by maximizing your LinkedIn profile and filling out every section available. Make sure that you have as many recommendations as possible tied to your current and past job descriptions. Once your LinkedIn is built out, create a Twitter account and a Facebook business page and start sharing content related to your industry. People choose to buy from those they perceive as experts, and the internet makes it possible for anyone to position themselves as an expert today. Keeping a blog where you post on a weekly basis is also a great idea to fill up the first page of Google and other search engines with valuable information tied to your name.
6. View Closing as a Service — Sales professionals are (generally) way too scared to close. My colleague at Southwestern Consulting, Rory Vaden, takes a great stance on this. He teaches that closing truly is a service, and that you’re doing a disservice to your client if you don’t help them make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a yes – a no is just as valuable because it has helped both them and you arrive at the decision of what works best for them, given their circumstances. The only answer you DON’T want at the end of your presentation is a “maybe”. Maybe leaves everyone in limbo, creates anxiety and pressure for the client, and ultimately will almost always lead to a “no”. It’s better for everyone to help your clients feel comfortable saying no to you, if that truly is the best choice for them, rather than to let them leave your conversation with a maybe.
7. LinkedIn Is Your Best Friend — LinkedIn literally provides us as sales professionals with more leads than we should know what to do with. Become proficient at using advanced search functions to look through both your connections and your connections’ connections to find ideal customers. Once you become proficient at using LinkedIn you may suffer from overwhelm because you’ll realize just how many potential customers are literally within your fingertips! To reduce your overwhelm, pick 10 prospects at a time to call on and work through before adding in more.
8. Delegate What You Don’t HAVE to Do — The most successful sales professionals and business owners today are multipliers – that is, they have learned how to literally multiply their time by delegating tasks that could be accomplished by someone worth less than their hourly rate. Every time we reply to emails, send follow up notes, post on social media, etc, we are either paying ourselves or someone else to do that task. For many sales professionals, that task could be delegated to an assistant for less than $10/hour, which is most likely less than your hourly rate. If you haven’t yet figured out your hourly rate, simply divide what you will make this year by 1,760, which is the number of hours most people work every year. Use that number as a benchmark when determining whether to handle a task yourself or outsource it. A great resource to learn more about multiplying your time is Procrastinate on Purpose, by Rory Vaden.
9. Create a Weekly Newsletter — Are you tired of calling prospects “just to follow up”? Sick of hearing from your clients that they’re going to try someone else, seemingly out of the blue? Creating a weekly newsletter with YOUR personal brand that you send to clients and prospects will help minimize both of those dreaded sales scenarios. When I was selling digital marketing I sent out a weekly newsletter with tips and tricks for my readers to use to enhance their online presence. Almost weekly I would get a response back from a prospect who had gone cold telling me they were interested in picking up our conversation again. Because I added value to them on a weekly basis and wasn’t a nag, I had prospects calling me saying they were finally ready to move forward, rather than me having the call them “just to follow up.”
10. The Best Sales People are both Teachers and Connectors — The best sales professionals I’ve ever seen have carried themselves as teachers and connectors. It is our job to teach our prospects and customers about our products and services, as well as share with them valuable information that can help their business or personal lives. Social media has created an incredible platform from which to do that – we can blog, create Youtube videos and tweet about things that will enhance the lives of everyone who is connected with us online.

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