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Sales Management Information
The Product or the Sale
This is a quandary not unlike the chicken or the egg question, ?Which comes first??. Do you focus on creating a superior product and continue to develop superior products or do you shift focus from the product to the sale prior to fully developing the line, or schedule of services?
Online Sales: Secret To Increase Your Sales By Bundling Your Products
Microsoft has used this online sales secret to become a
giant, and the greatest software company in the world.
How to Win Over the Man in the Chair Salesmanship, Repetition, and Direct Mail
In a classic business-to-business print ad from the late 50?s for McGraw-Hill Magazines an imposing looking executive sits in his chair. He has both feet planted firmly on the ground, a scowl on his face. His hands are folded together in front of him and his elbows rest on the chair; he leans ever so slightly forward. To his right run these eight lines of copy:
Hire A Six, To Consistently Produce Sales Success
For many years as a sales manager, I would only hire the stereotypical sales representative. You know the type?on a human relations continuum or scale of zero to ten, with the ten representing a candidate who is totally gregarious and outgoing and the zero, someone who is introverted with few people skills, I?d always recruit the ten. As an advisor to businesses and professional service firms on how to build an effective sales team, I would also council my clients to hire ?tens.? Big mistake!
Seven Deadly Sales Mistakes That Cost Business Owners Big Money - And What To Do About Them
1. LOOKING for a ?quick fix? to close more sales ? sales aren?t closed, they?re opened.
Hiring--A Vital Key In Sales Management Success
Recently, I was asked to spend some time on the telephone, coaching a client?s administrative assistant on how to check out an employment candidate?s references. After each in-person or telephone conference, I complete a brief written report going over the information discussed. The information that I gave this worker was so vital to the company?s overall sales management success that I felt impelled to share the report in my periodic client e-mailings, feeling that it might be of value to others that I serve. The information is so vital to the management process, I decided to reproduce it here as well.
Offer Package Deals To Increase Profits And Sales
An effective way to increase your profits and sales is to bundle many products or services together into one package. This gives people more reasons to buy your products and services. People also have come to believe package deals are a better value. You want all the products or services to be closely related. For example: if you're selling a computer you could add in software, hardware, computer furniture, etc.
Overcoming Sales Objections for Small Business Networks
Do you need help overcoming sales objections? Do you sell computer networks, or other IT-related products and services to small businesses? This article provides tips and hints so you can be overcoming the most common sales objections heard when selling networks to small business prospects, customers, and clients.
Shorten Sales Cycles in Complex Sales Environments
Help buyers discover the answers they need to understand and align all of their decision variables.
4 Tips for the Summer Slowdown - How To Pick Up Sales
You may have heard about the "summer slowdown". You may be experiencing it right now, or you may not be affected. Regardless it's important to pay attention, and do something this time of year.
The ACCOUNTABILITY Challenge for Today?s Business Management
In today?s 24/7 driven business word, accountability is becoming a more critical issue for every business owner, manager, executive and salesperson. The challenge is to realize that accountability is just not a single issue, but an issue with many supporting elements. To maintain and thrive as an accountable individual first requires overcoming the fear to embrace these elements and then a plan of Action to ensure that YOU are an accountable individual.
Increasing Sales by Using Coupons - Will it Help Your Business?
Increasing Sales by using Coupons. Will it help your business? Well, the Promotional Marketing Association?s (PMA) ?Coupon Council? shows that 3.8 Billion coupons were redeemed in 2003. Consumers saved over 3 billion dollars. 79% of American?s used coupons last year. There are many Coupon Franchises out there with quite a track record. Here are a few of them: Val-Pac; http://www.valpak.com/info/franchise/franchise_faqs_content.jsp.
Train a Winning Sales Team: Rounding Third and Heading for Home
Although I never met the man, I imagine Lou Boudreau would have made one heck of a field sales trainer. In 1942 the 24-year old Cleveland Indians shortstop was promoted to player/manager of his team, and for the next eight years Boudreau did what we, as trainers, are called upon to do every day: demonstrate success, inspire success and cultivate success. Think of it as the triple play of sales training.
What Is A Proposal? And Why Do You Need One?
Do you know anyone who regularly wins bids? Or can boast a balanced relationship between doing the hard work of producing proposals and regularly winning the business?
How We Build a 90% Failure Rate into the Sales Process
I recently began doing training in the banking industry. Across the board, successful bankers close between 2% and 6% of the prospects they call on, starting from their first prospecting call.
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RELATED ARTICLES
Keeping Your Sales Team Motivated
Sales managers frequently approach me for advice on how to keep salespeople
motivated, especially when sales reps get into a rut - and seem to keep slipping
deeper into it. Telling managers what not to do usually solves the problem. Most
managers do things to de-motivate salespeople without even knowing it.
How to Keep Projects From Spinning Out Of Control
Are you involved in projects that seem to go nowhere in a hurry?
Raise Your Fees Overnight!
Do you want to make more money?
Sales Plan? Whats a Sales Plan?
In the past, if you said the word "plan" to me, I would bolt and run. I'm the "creative type," a former ballet dancer and choreographer-I'm terrible with details. When I was dancing professionally, all the details were taken care of; all I had to do was show up and dance. Even when I was choreographing, as long as I met my deadline for when the dance needed to be complete, I could go with the moment, go with the impulse and see where the dance led.
How to Sell Strategically
If you want to maximize your sales performance, take a strategic approach to selling. After all, wouldn't you agree that "the 80/20 rule" applies to customers, where approximately 20 percent of customers produce approximately 80 percent of sales?
Transforming Your Sales Force by Creating Specific Expectations
I just finished a phone call with a potential client who had called to discuss a problem. His 18 person sales force was paid on straight commission. All had been with the company for 8 - 15 years and were earning healthy incomes. His problem was that he couldn't get them to do what he wanted them to do. Here's the example he shared.
Leadership - How To Turn The Vision Into A Reality
Be clear about where you are now. Audit your strengths and areas for development
Rotten to the Core: The Story of How the Best and Brightest can be Ruined
The objective of an incentive is to incite action within an organization using a device or mechanism that that allows the rewarding or recognition of behaviors. This can be accomplished by offering preferential treatment, money, privileges, promotions, verbal praise, or complements. With that states, I suggest the answers to the questions above are:
14 Top Lead Generation Tactics
According to former Harvard Business School professor David Maister, typical marketing practices are not only inapplicable for professional service firms, but they may be dangerously wrong.
Sales Marketing: 12 Sneaky Tricks To Help You Outsell Your Competition
Business can be like war sometimes.
Not Enough Fresh Sales Leads? Marketing is the New Sales
Your sales are down and leads are rare. The phone's not ringing. Let's blame marketing!
Snowflakes Improve Holiday Sales
Snowflakes are beautiful!
How to Sharpen Your Sales Message with Do-it-Yourself Focus Groups - Small Business Power Tools
You've probably heard of focus groups. It's a tool that the big guys use to quickly test a new product or service or to get fast feedback from potential customers. Focus groups do not provide real, actionable information but are great for what I call "clue hunting." For example, I once sat through a series of focus groups on a new camera-related product. After three focus groups, we were able to pretty well conclude there wouldn't be much of a market for this particular product, and the idea was dropped. The three focus groups probably cost this advertiser around $5000 vs. the hundreds of thousands of dollars that would have been wasted had they put the product into manufacturing.
6 Common Mistakes in the Sales Hiring Process
Is lack of sales results, more sales training costs, months of
unearned salary and damage to your company's image or
reputation your company's method of NOT finding good
salespeople? For most companies it is!
Is Sales Process & CRM Stopping Sales?
Standard metrics and KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) are created usually between The Sales Director, The Financial Director and The Managing Director. These KPI's tell the sales teams what they should be doing. For example, 'Your pipeline should be at least three times of your annual sales target'; 'Your conversion ratio of opportunities to closed orders should be 60%', and so on. Nothing like a bit of statistical analysis from the bean counters to motivate the sales team is there? Remember that old saying?'You can prove anything with statistics'. Here, we see it applied for real, albeit on an unconscious level.
How Many Salespeople Should I Hire?
One of the most asked questions I get is how many sales people does it take to get the revenue numbers needed. Personally, I believe in large sales forces because in highly competitive situations the largest army wins. That doesn't mean, however, that you can go out and hire 100 sales people if all you can possibly sell this year is a million dollars if everything goes right. So how do you decide how large a staff you need?
Speed-up Your Sales Cycle
This week's article is my response to a question by David Cohen of Bridge-Soft.
8 Procedures to Take Control of Sales and Marketing
The Cash to Cash Cycle
Part Three of Series
The Hidden Competition: Avoiding the 2 Most Common Competitors
There are really only two types of competitor:
Raise Concern About Sales Competition, Not About Yourself
As you are reading this sales article, read very carefully. Because I wouldn't want you to think of a pig right now. No, do not think of a fat, brown, smelly pig right this moment. What are you doing? Do you have a picture of a smelly, fat, brown pig in your head right now? I thought I just told you not to do that. What are you doing then?
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