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Connecting…enough?

I have been bumping up against the word ‘enough’ for a while now so I figured that there was a message for me to pay attention to!
Whether it’s gratitude for having enough or acknowledgment for being enough, I thought it might be time to take a look at where else 'enough' matters.

This year I modified the objective of Step 2 of “Sell it or Schedule it” - the step of Connecting and Building Rapport. I adjusted the objective of this step to be "To help the customer to be comfortable enough fo…

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How to Summarize?

“Let’s recap where we are now….”
“Let’s look at what has been decided and what remains…”
“Let’s summarize where we are now and make sure we are focused on your priorities.”

Notice that these are all ‘stop action’ statements by the salesperson…directing what the next action will be and the benefit of that action.

Summarizing will let the customer/client take a breath and not add new information to the conversation.
It will allow the salesperson to pause and take a breath, get to neutral…

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When to Summarize?

With this new skill of summarizing, it is helpful to know when to use it. As you read this, put yourself in your most recent ineffective sales interaction…and by ineffective, I mean that you did not produce a sale or an appointment. Without defense or blame, let’s explore if any of these things happened and if a different outcome might have been achieved if you had summarized.

Did you or the customer get distracted, confused, or overwhelmed? It’s easy to do when there are a lot of details …

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What does slow mean?

When salespeople tell me that ‘it’s slow’…I have to take a breath and get to neutral so that I don’t react. 😀 Why is that?

Because most salespeople who complain about traffic aren’t using the actual data as their complaint. They might be using one day of traffic against the same day a week earlier or another anecdotal comparison that is not based in fact. And even if it IS factual, now what?

My standard response to “It’s slow…” is something like, “I get that you have some concerns about the tr…

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It’s not my job….Resist being resistant

In the showroom world, it’s understandable that sales associates will rely on incoming traffic for their business. After all, if they wanted to do outreach, they would be outside salespeople, right?!
Maybe.

Whether inside or outside, the role of a salesperson is to generate sales for the showroom and for themselves. The more flexible and innovative the salesperson is with HOW that achievement is executed, the more consistently their goal will be achieved. This is because they are not tethered t…

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Cold call, warm call, hot call…what is it? Go with the easy ones first

Outreach occurs on an ominous note because we collapse outreach with cold calls…which many salespeople fear and despise…and consequently, aren’t very good at…so the cycle never gets broken and the perspective continues.
If you see the relevance and value of outreach but don’t have much experience with it, the fear and resistance are understandable. So, let’s start with the easy stuff…hot and warm calls.

Hot calls are those customers who are actively looking, and you happened to connect wit…

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Who you gonna call?

Do you have your customers and prospects in a CRM or accessible and organized format?
Are your contacts stored somewhere that you can get to easily?

If you aren’t using a CRM program, you can get by with putting your contacts in Outlook or in an Excel or Google spreadsheet. You probably have systems in your computer (or the company does) that you can use to get started, so ask before you take on building something that might already be in existence.

For trade showrooms, begin to organize your…

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Why wait?

As traffic begins to slow in both retail and trade showrooms and we look to satisfy our commitment to making goal NO MATTER WHAT…we find that relying solely on the door is not a good strategy for achievement.

Relying on the door is a waiting game. And it puts all the eggs in one basket… and it’s not a sturdy basket. It may seem easier to just wait and see what happens, right? But what if the traffic is insufficient to make your goal at your current performance levels? Then what? Can you affo…

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Process for Selling Intangibles

Selling intangible outcomes like appointments is different from selling tangible outcomes, like sofas or chairs. Selling an intangible requires a process of introducing the concept when you first realize that it will be the intended outcome of the sales interaction. This is because it is CLEAR that the customer cannot buy today – based on the answers to your questions that were intended to determine that (not your assumptions).

At that point, introduce the concept: “Since we can only accompl…

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Organized for Appointments

The Greek poet Archilochus said: “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training”. The same is true for our level of structure and organization.

If we are really intending to manage our actions in time and achieve our targeted outcomes by successfully making and executing appointments, we need to be structured to do that.

And that means to be organized by having appointments IN YOUR CALENDAR as one-hour placeholders, using the repeat function on yo…

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