Information Country

1. Give Away An Electronic Information Product

The product could be a simple report posted on your Web
site or autoresponder to a downloadable e-book. The
information product should relate to your target audience. Just
place your advertisement somewhere on the product. Allow
other people to give away the information product to attract
even more customers.

2. Offer Free Consulting Via E-mail

Allow potential customers to ask you specific questions
relating to the subject of your business. Giving away free advice
can show your prospects your expertise and give you instant
credibility. Another benefit is when you e-mail them back the
free advice or information include your signature file to get free
advertising.

3. Hold A Free Chat Room Seminar

People go to seminars to learn about a particular subject.
With chat rooms you don’t need to fear public speaking or
spend money to rent out a seminar room. You can use your
own chat room or hold the seminar in someone elses.
Holding a chat room seminar is an incredible way to get free
publicity. Just send a press release to the media announcing
your free seminar.

4. Start A Free-To-Join Club

Having people join your club is a creative way to attract
new customers. People want to belong to something, why
not your online club. The club should be related to your
product or service. You could give away a free e-mail
newsletter for club members only . Have a members only
message board, e-mail discussion group or chat room. Post
your advertisements on all the club information.

5. Provide Your Product Or Service For Almost Free

Tell potential customers you’ll accept barter deals for your
products or services. You may not be getting money but they
will become your customers. If they are satisfied they might
pay money the next time they make a purchase. Barter for
things to improve your business or your own personal life.

About the author:

Rojo Sunsen is a specialized bounty hunter who prefers to work quietly/confidentially for the benefit of her clients.

Our world of selling is closed off from other areas of business that continue to
adopt and embrace new, efficient ideas. I was reminded of this recently while re-
reading Seth Godin’s “Permission Marketing.” Here’s a book that was intended for
business owners and marketing executives, yet it provides a much-needed dose of
common sense that would be of great benefit to sales organizations, especially
sales managers, who continue to cling to very old, and, in their minds, very right,
ideas. Unfortunately, our brave new world has made these old ideas very wrong.

Seth Godin talks about Interruption Marketing versus Permission Marketing.
Interruption Marketing is traditional advertising that interrupts your day in an
attempt to get your attention and sell you something. In other words, it is the
marketing equivalent of Cold Calling. Permission Marketing is systematically getting
prospects to give you permission to present to them. In other words, it is
marketing’s equivalent of what I teach salespeople to do. In the book, Seth uses the
metaphor of someone trying to get married to describe the flaw in Interruption
Marketing, or Cold Calling. The bachelor goes into a singles bar and asks every
woman in the place to marry him. When they all say no, he blames his clothes, buys
a new suit, and tries again at another bar, only to fail again and again, just like a
cold caller.

Are you getting the point he tries to make in that story? Think about it. A
salesperson spends weeks cold calling with dismal results. The salesperson goes to
the sales manager for advice on what to do differently to start getting results. A
conversation ensues about what the salesperson is doing. A lot of old ideas begin
to surface. Ideas such as “Initial Benefit Statement,” “Elevator Speech,” and other
concepts that once upon a time were the right answers, but have since become very
wrong answers. Working on these things is the equivalent of the man in the story
blaming his failure on the suit, changing into a new suit, then going to a different
singles bar to do it all over again.

With the business world in its present state, I really don’t see how salespeople can
afford to keep fooling away their time on old ideas that were once right but are now
fatally wrong. It is this very feature of capitalism that is causing salespeople,
managers and organizations to fail in record numbers. Capitalism is essentially
“creative destruction.” In other words, capitalism is a perpetual cycle of destroying
old, less-efficient businesses and ideas and replacing them with new, more efficient
ones. People and companies are clinging to old, obsolete ideas and are being
dragged down to failure by them. Yet they still won’t let go. I think the reason they
can’t let go is simply because it wasn’t all that long ago that they really did have the
right answers. It reminds me of a story I once heard about Albert Einstein when he
was a professor. One of his student assistants who was preparing for an incoming
class said, “Professor Einstein, what test are we giving them?” To which Einstein
replied, “The same test we gave them last week.” Bewildered, the student assistant
replied, “But Professor Einstein, we already gave that test.” Einstein simply said,
“Yes, but the answers are different this week.”

The bottom line is that the answers are different. The rules have changed. Time is
running out for those who do not adapt to the new rules. As Napoleon Hill put it so
well, “Whenever a nation, a business institution, or an individual ceases to change
and settles into a rut of routine habits, some mysterious power enters and smashes
the setup, breaks up the old habits, and lays the foundation for new and better
habits.”

If you’re not achieving the sales success you desire, perhaps it is time for you to lay
the foundation for new and better habits.

Frank Rumbauskas is the author of Cold Calling Is A Waste Of Time: Sales Success In
The Information Age. He is the founder of FJR Advisors, LLC, which publishes
training materials that educate salespeople on how to generate business without
cold calling. For more information, please visit http://www.nevercoldcall.com

I was thinking of you…

It sounds like a greeting card, doesn’t it?

And why shouldn’t it?

Is there any prohibition against starting a sales conversation with these or similar words?

Hallmark has been doing very nicely, thank you, forever capturing the sound of sincerity with their slogans, and salespeople can learn a lot from these and similar phrase masters.

As I’ve said elsewhere, there are literally hundreds of ways to greet prospects and customers, while breaking the ice. Of course, you can have formal approaches that announce special sales, and the like.

And they’re fine, but what do you do between sales? What is your reason for calling, then?

Imagine the following opener:

“Hello, Derek? This is Gary Goodman with Customersatisfaction.com. How’s it going? Good. I was looking at the paper and reading about some interesting remodeling projects, and you popped into mind, and I thought it would be a good time to catch up with you. How’s business?”

The most important purpose served by an opener is to give YOU a feeling that the call is justified. Mostly, customers are happy to hear from us; we need to get over our call reluctance, and any concerns that we might foster about sounding foolish.

Here’s my basic criterion for having a decent opener:

Can you write it out, in everyday, conversational language, and have it sound good?

Look back at my example, above. I call it the “Thinking of You” approach.

I’m comfortable saying these exact words, and as long as that’s the case, I’m sure they’ll be well received by customers, because they take their cue from me.

If we sound insecure, they’ll be, too. If we’re unselfconscious, they’ll follow that lead, as well.
Experiment with various openers, and put them to use.

Remember, the “hallmark” of a good salesperson is one who stays close to his customers, and by doing this; he creates and harvests good will.

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of http://www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

Every day in sales and business is critical. That lead you
receive today, could very well be in the hands of your
competition tomorrow.

That is why I can’t stress enough the importance of taking full
advantage of your leads once you receive them.

Leads are not meant to sit around pinned onto bulletin boards,
or placed in a tickler file. They are meant to be acted on.

The thought process of the customer is to shop around for a
product or service, so they have put the word on the street that
they are on the market for a particular product.

If someone within your professional circle gives you a qualified
lead, it is highly reasonable that the customer on this lead has
made several people aware of their interests in a product or
service. Which would mean that their name and phone number is
being passed around in more than one professional circle.

The timing on a lead is so important, the moment you receive the
lead, pick up the phone and make contact with that person.

By not acting on a lead, you have two things working against
you. One, you are allowing for your competition to get the jump
on you. And two, you are giving your potential customer an
opportunity to seek out somebody else to provide them with the
product or service they are looking for.

I once worked with a guy when I was in the banking industry. He
belonged to a few networking groups, and when he received a lead
at one of his weekly meetings, he would come back to the office,
pin the lead onto his calendar and let it sit there for three to
five days.

When he finally got around to calling the name on the lead, he
always received the same response. The customers would inform
him that they were no longer interested, because they were
working with someone else.

He would than hang up the phone and complain that he had the
worst luck when it came to leads.

I think the message here is clear. This is an example of what
not to do with your leads.

By letting a hot lead sit around and cool off, you are
guaranteed to lose that customer.

Keep in mind, when someone gives you a lead, that someone is
most likely giving your potential customer feed back. So that
potential customer will have your name, and know when the lead
was given to you.

I don’t think your customer would appreciate a phone call three
to five days after you have received their information. Even if
they are still on the market for your product, you will not be
off to a good start.

Leads were meant to be acted on. So the next time you receive
one, don’t hesitate, stop what you are doing, and contact that
person. Good luck.

This article may be reproduced by anyone at any time, as long as
the authors name and reference links are kept in tact and
active.

High Probability Closing is not an event. It’s an integral part of the entire sales process. We define “closing” as Mutual Commitment. Therefore, we request the prospect’s commitment at every step of the sales process, and we make corresponding commitments. We close throughout the entire sales process - typically between 25 and 45 times.

Closing starts when we set the appointment and then ask, “If we can meet all of your conditions of satisfaction for (this product or service), what will you do?” If the prospect doesn’t reply with “I’ll buy it,” or words to that effect, we immediately cancel the appointment, for now. However, we will continue to call the prospect every three to four weeks until he/she is ready to make a conditional commitment.

Most salespeople set out to contact a large number of people who have an apparent need for their products and service.Their objective is to convince every one of them to grant them an appointment.

If we don’t get a commitment at any step of the sales process, we determine whether the commitment that isn’t accepted is a deal breaker. If so, we terminate the sales process (perhaps temporarily) and we leave. Why? Staying and pitching to a prospect who does not make commitments almost guarantees the following:

1. The probability that the prospect will buy on that visit is highly unlikely.

2. You’re wasting your time and the prospect’s, thereby creating resistance to yourself and diminished respect. That leaves them with a negative perception of you.

3. If and when the prospect does decide to buy in the future, it’s most likely that he/she will buy from a competitor.

Think about how you would react if you were the prospect. This salesperson has given you all the information you need to make a decision when you were not ready to buy. Though mildly annoyed, you listened to their entire sales pitch. Now, when you are ready to buy, isn’t it likely that you will check what his/her competition has to offer? If the competitor’s salesperson appears equally competent and seems to have as good a deal, who are you most likely to buy from? Will you buy from the salesperson who is there now, or will you have him/her leave and call back the one who you wouldn’t buy from before?

However, if the prospect is ready to buy and we do arrive at mutual commitment throughout the initial sales process, we hardly ever encounter any “think it over” objections at the end. The prospect has just made dozens of commitments and affirmations of their intention to buy every feature, benefit and detriment of your product or service. At that point the prospect is anxious to consummate the sales process and get the benefits of your products and/or services. They have literally convinced themselves of the practicality of those decisions. The human mind operates like a self-validating computer. It does not doubt its own data.

People who utilize this process attain very high closing averages - per number of prospecting offers and per number of prospect visits.

©Jacques Werth, High Probability® Selling - All rights reserved.

Jacques Werth, author of “High Probability Selling,” is an internationally respected Sales Trainer and Sales Consultant. HPS graduates are excelling as Top Producers in over 70 industries. Visit http://www.highprobsell.com to read more articles, preview the book, and learn more about High Probability Selling.