Hiring “No-See’em” Salespeople
You’re probably wondering exactly what is a no-see’em? These are salespeople that your customers don’t see. Usually they don’t see them because their only contact is by telephone.
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Hire Sales Skills Over Industry Experience
This hiring tip may seem counter intuitive but it has a lot of merit. Many companies still choose industry experience over sales skills because of the potentially faster ramp-up time and potential business that an industry-seasoned candidate brings to the table. While this is a reasonable assumption, you may be passing up the opportunity to…
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Hasty Hiring Decisions Can Be Costly
An article in the Harvard Business Review pointed out that 43% of hiring decisions are made within the first 4.8 minutes of the interview. Talk about the importance of a candidate creating a good first impression! If this is the case, why bother interviewing people for more than 5 minutes? The answer is because hasty…
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Getting the Prospect to Return Your Call
Prospects today are busy, busy, busy and their voice mailboxes are constantly being filled with messages from people they don’t know, people who they don’t want to know, and people who give no reason to call them back. Don’t be one of those people. Avoiding Voice-mail Hell In the past, salespeople had to find a…
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Get the Crud Out of Your Sales Funnel
Most salespeople understand the concept of the sales funnel. It works just like an ordinary funnel that you might use to transfer liquid from one container to another. We all know that if you stop pouring the liquid into the top of the funnel, fluid stops coming out the bottom. We also know that if…
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Fishing for Referrals
Referrals are an excellent source of new business but most salespeople don’t deserve to get them! Yes, you heard me right. Why do I feel they don’t deserve them? Because they do nothing to earn them. Too many salespeople are like waiters. You know the ones. They show up at your table to take your…
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Fear Sells So Sell Fear
Any marketing person will tell you that sex sells. Well, I’m here to tell you that sex doesn’t sell; sex simply gets your attention. After your attention has been aroused, it’s one of the other two primary motivators, or dominant buying motives, that drives you to buy. Those two dominant buying motives are desire for…
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Everybody and Nobody…The Decision Maker
It isn’t unusual that by the time salespeople get as far along in the sales process to learn how decisions are made, who are the players who make those decision and what is the timing of the decision, that they are so excited to have made it this far that they quickly skim over it…
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Dress for Success
You only get one chance to make a good first impression and what you wear has a lot to do with the impression you create. In this day and age of excessive casualness, it’s easy to cross the line and lose a sale, all because of what you’re wearing. Here’s an example. The salesperson was…
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Don’t Talk Turkey With Turkeys
We’ve all had them — the prospect that isn’t going to buy from you no matter what. It might be because he doesn’t need or want whatever it is you’re selling or perhaps you’ve rubbed him the wrong way and he simply doesn’t want to buy from you. The only problem is, he won’t tell…
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Don’t Let HR Hire Salespeople
One of the hiring traps many companies fall into is letting HR hire salespeople. I apologize if this blog annoys HR practitioners but the simple truth is that most (not all) HR people are unqualified to hire salespeople. What they are extremely good at is managing the hiring process and understanding the legal aspects of…
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Don’t Be Your Own Worst Enemy
You’re probably sitting there thinking, “Why would I want to be my own worst enemy?” And the answer, of course, is that you certainly don’t want to be. But it happens, and it could happen to you. I’ve seen salespeople with the potential to be top performers fall short because they either didn’t know what…
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Dealing With the Long-Distance Buyer
No, I’m not referring to a prospect that buys long-distance telephone services. This is about the buyer who is out of reach, the one you can’t contact directly because he or she is too distant. Sometimes this distance is due to geography — the key decision maker is located in some other city or country.…
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Dealing With Information Seekers
You answer the telephone and hear the words, “My boss has asked me to get information and pricing on (whatever it is you sell)” and your heart sinks. It sinks because you know that dealing with information seekers is an even greater challenge than dealing with gatekeepers. You know that whatever price you quote will…
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Deal or No Deal: Minimize “Definite Maybes”
Unbeknownst to most salespeople is the idea that selling is all about getting prospects to make decisions, both small and large. Getting decisions that reach a conclusive “no” or “yes” and getting decisions that allow the prospects the freedom to decide “no,” without the fear of a salesperson’s full frontal counterattack. Therefore, selling isn’t as…
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