 Selling is tougher than ever. Customers are less accessible, more skeptical and take longer to make a decision to buy. Before they sign the order, they not only want the salesperson to dance a jig, but they want to make sure the price is right. All this adds up to added frustration, slimmer margins, longer hours and even lower commissions. So why should it be any different for your Martial Arts School?
This is why everyone in sales needs an extra edge, even a slight advantage over the competition.
When you're making sales calls, following up on the telephone, answering inquiries and attending seemingly endless meetings, there isn't much time to develop a strategy. To make it easier, here are 13 effective ways to give yourself a selling advantage:
1. Be far more accessible. Maximum accessibility is the new reality and it counts for more and more in business. It's not when you want to contact the customer that counts, it's when the customer wants to contact you that's critical. Along with your primary telephone and fax numbers, make sure your customers have your home, beeper and mobile telephone numbers, too. Emphasize that you are always available and that you welcome calls. This increases customer confidence.
2. Improve your sales cycle management. Improved productivity is the key to increasing your sales. This requires careful and continuous follow-up with an increasing number of prospects and customers. There's only one way to do it and that's with a computer-based sales tracking-management system.
3. Become a valuable asset to your customers. Just attempting to add value to the product or service you sell misses the point today. That's history. Now you must be an asset to your customers by demonstrating that you can enhance their business operations, their future, their well-being. Look for what you bring to your customers that tips the scales in your favor.
4. Keep adding something new. Customers must think of you as a source for what's new and different. "What's she going to come up with next?" is the question they should be asking. You want to be seen as the innovator, the one who is always thinking--not just another salesperson.
Do this and your customers and prospects will look forward to meeting with you and hearing what you have to say.
5. Don't waste your customers' time. In today's downsized businesses, saving time is the customer's highest priority and most valuable asset. Show customers that you understand their situation by being highly efficient. Figure out ways to reduce paperwork, unnecessary calls and extraneous communications. Make it clear that you refuse to rob them of their time.
6. Act decisively. Customers want to do business with people who are self-confident and professional. Waffling sends a message to customers that you are indecisive and unsure of yourself, perhaps even confused. Besides, indecisiveness signals vulnerability to the customer and this makes it difficult for you to hold your own.
7. Customize your proposals. Don't underestimate the value of your proposal. Take it seriously. Create propoals for individual customers by getting rid of boilerplate paragraphs and preprinted
sections. Then, to get more attention and to creae a better impression, add color and graphics.
8. Look for new niches. The customer landscape is changing. People want to deal with experts. Look for one or more niches (sometimes the smallest niches are the best because you can own the group) where you can become knowledgeable and the demonstrated expert.
9. Get over just thinking big sales. The big sale is great, of course. But don't ignore other sales. For example, there are an estimated 25 million home-based businesses with one to five employees. Can you figure out how to sell to them? If you can, you'll do a lot of business over the next decade.
10. Communicate warmly. Business letters are generally cold, stiff and dead. They lack the vigor, feeling and excitement that are so important in selling. Write to your customers the same way you would talk to them. Better yet, pretend you are telling a story--let it unfold and then close on an upbeat note.
11. Focus on the right benefits. Even sales pros get hurt by neglecting this one. Rattling off a list of benefits can be as inappropriate and ineffective as trying to sell features. Any benefit must match a customer's need. If the buyer doesn't have a need for 200 copies a minute, purchasing your fancy copy machine doesn't make sense.
12. Educate your customers. Schmoozing is out when it comes to building relationships. Cyberspace is changing the way we look at those we do business with. What counts is not how you look but how you think. The quality of your ideas must be outstanding. So take advantage of the opportunity to focus on educating your customers.
13. Transform yourself into a free agent. Selling is best when it is practiced as a risk-taking business, not when it's played cool and close to the vest. Make a decision to act as if you are the company you work for. Don't settle to be just some company's "representative." Work hard at letting the customer feel that you and your company are one. Make it a powerful combination.
Salespeople who operate using the right strategies have a distinct advantage over their peers who continue working with yesterday's approaches. These 13 ideas can help you get lucky when it comes to making more sales.
This resource is copyright (c) by, and compliments of John R. Graham, President of Graham Communications, a marketing services and sales consulting firm. Graham is also the author of "Magnet Marketing" published by Wiley. You can reach him at (617) 328-0069, by fax at (617) 471-1504 or by mail to 40 Oval Road #2, Quincy, MA 02170-3813.
|
Instructors and Teaching 
(0 vote)
