I have 19 years sales / BD / channel and Team management experiance in technology selling. In my current company which handles cloud ERP for SMB segment i am struggling with creating leads, opportunities and closure. I am having challenges in identifying and brining in positive results to my efforts and actions. Can you please share some pointers in what needs to be done to improve and make effective my efforts and actions. Thanks in advance.
How to Sell…
This is a big question. Lead Generation, Establishment of Relationship, Fact Finding, Overcoming Objections, Closing the deal… all are involved.
Every sales process is essentially the following six steps:
- Find somebody with Money (“That guy looks good”)
- Approach and contact (“Hey, do you have a minute?”)
- Present and ask for the sale (“After 17 years experience with customers such as X, Y; I know our solution can be of help to you Mr Customer”)
- Handle objections (Turn No into Yes)
- First acknowledge the objection (“I understand that you are happy with the current product”)
- Second ask a question (“What are the existing levels of waste?”)
- Close (“Excellent, the product will leave our warehouse tomorrow first thing. Cash or credit card?”)
- Ask for Testimonial
- Before and after, story with numbers (“Before I met Conor I was unable to string 5 words together, now I regularly give powerful persuasive speeches and kids ask me for autographs”)
Blog Posts on Sales & Business Development
There are several good posts on the blog about sales processes:
- Sales is 18-3-1
- How to Sell a Pen
- How to Improve your Sales Process (4 Steps to improve) Video
- Sales training 101: Fish where the fish are
Great Books on Sales
There are 3 books that I would recommend strongly for anyone involved in Sales:
- SPIN Selling, Neil Rackham –
- Selling to VITO, Anthony Parinello
- The 22 Immutable of Marketing, Al Ries & Jack Trout
