Walking Sticks
Trekking up a trail or a mountain is surely an remarkable feeling. For people who like to hike, making contact with nature and smelling the clean air could have a soothing centering effect which they can’t wait to get again. You’ll find tools for the trade that virtually any hiker must have: watering can, food, walking sticks, flares and a first aid kit. Walking sticks are not only a part of a hiker’s gear but the craftsmanship of a good walking stick can be something of beauty. Now a days, craftsmen create their walking sticks out of the finest woods. For the most serious hikers, craftsmen will add a compass to the walking stick. So, the walking stick is definitely one of the vital essential equipment for hikers.

Dollhouse Kits
Dollhouse kits are abundant and several will noticeably be better than others. In order to be certain you are getting the top in dollhouse kits, think about using an established resource such as Dollhouse City. When you employ such a place you can be certain that the package you purchase will match both your individual manner and your budget. Whatever your own flare is, you can bring it out with the correct kind of dollhouse kits to choose from provided you exploit the appropriate resource. If not, you may discover that you are spending too much for the dollhouse kits you are looking at which will be in the end merely one declaration; low-grade.

Next you need to construct a internet site; however it will take a bit more than just that. Search engine optimization is an absolute must. Products like SEO Elite can make this simple. This software automatically analyzes competing internet sites and helps you by stating what you must do to achieve good rankings in the search engine listings.

With programs like SEO Elite, data supplied by the computer software indicates where you should look for appropriate links, the best keywords, and details on where and how to upload articles. In a nutshell, Seo Elite information is much like to the advice you may receive from a practised SEO specialist. Once you settle on your target market sector, set up your product promotion, and your internet site is ready to go, then you are ready to dramatically boost your search results. You will pick up a steady paycheck and wonder why you did not consider this earlier!

People don’t buy product features. They buy solutions to their own needs.

Customers don’t care about your product features or even about the benefits those features offer to the world at large. Customers care about one thing only: How can you help me solve problems or seize opportunities that matter to me?

What you need is a simple, structured method for product presentations that lets you stop rambling about features that may be irrelevant to this customer and start presenting solutions to specific needs insteadsolutions that are crisp, clear, brief, and to the point.

There is such a method. It’s called TFBR. Here is how it works.

T – Tie-Back: Tie the conversation back to a need you identified with your earlier questions:

“You told me earlier that you want to match the products that you stock with the unique needs of each region.”

F – Feature: Describe a product feature that meets that need:

“Our regional purchases history reporting will show you exactly what the most popular products are in each region.”

B – Benefit: Explain how that feature will serve this customer’s specific need:

“What this means to you is that you will improve service to your customers while minimizing the inventory needed at each location.”

R – Reaction: Ask for the customer’s own view of how the benefit would serve the need. This confirms that you correctly understand the need. Also, importantly, it turns the product presentation into a dialogue with the customer instead of a monologue by you:

“How will this information help you improve your business?”

Cast each product feature or capability you present in the TFBR format. And present only features that represent solutions to needs you have already uncovered and agreed upon.

The TFBR method will shorten your product presentations dramatically and make them far more powerful. Why put your customers to sleep when you can instead engage them in a problem-solving dialogue that makes them very happy they agreed to meet with you?

In The Field:

The TFBR method isn’t just for salespeople who meet clients face to face. The marketing professionals who support your company’s sales efforts can use the TFBR format to help salespeople zero in on ways to present products as solutions that address key customer needs. Marketing people should think in terms of the TFBR process when communicating product information to the sales force and to customers.

Connie Fuller, manager of human resource development at Ball Seed Company, put it this way: “When marketing presents information consistent with the Action Selling sales training concepts, it is immediately more useful to our reps. It also supports our training efforts and creates a wonderful synergy.”

Duane Sparks is chairman and founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based sales training company that has trained and certified more than 200,000 salespeople in the system and skills of Action Selling. He has personally facilitated more than 300 Action Selling training sessions.

In a 30-year career as a salesperson and sales manager, Duane has sold products ranging from office equipment to insurance. He was the top salesperson at every company he ever worked for. He developed Action Selling Sales Training while owner of one of the largest computer marketers in the United States. Even in the roaring computer business of the 1980’s, his company grew six times faster than the industry norm, differentiating itself not by the products offered but by the way it sold them. Duane founded The Sales Board in 1990 to teach the skills of Action Selling to others.

Contact The Sales Board for more sales information or sales training that’s been documented and research-proven to help you sell more! 1-800-232-3485

For example, some telesales staff may be introverts, who find it much harder than their extrovert colleagues to pick up the phone and make a call. I have worked with sales teams who were not reaching their targets for sales visits. Their managers were at their wits’ end – why did the sales team not just make a call and ask for an appointment? To the managers it was glaringly obvious. The teams, however, tended towards introversion and were uncomfortable with the idea of forcing themselves on the client, as they saw it, and kept putting off the calls.

When we discussed the problem in terms of them helping and supporting the client by explaining their services and how they could solve the client’s problems, they were able to operate from their natural energy and started to make the calls. An almost 100% success rate in securing appointments encouraged them to continue!

This is an example of how telesales coaching brings the training to life. The coach spends one-to-one time with each member of the team as they talk to real customers. Unhelpful habits and phraseology is identified and better alternatives practised which immediately result in better rapport and deeper understanding of customer needs.

With the support of the coach, they are able to experiment with new behaviour they would never have risked or even considered while working alone, and start to experience better results than ever before. Their new success leads to increased confidence, a markedly more positive attitude and sustained improvement in performance.

In a recent programme, there was an immediate increase of 300% in appointments made! Figures for subsequent sales are not yet available, but at the very least are likely to be several times the cost of the training, in itself an excellent return, not even taking into account the probable rise in job satisfaction and reduced staff turnover.

Andy Britnell specialises in sales and customer service training for both the private and public sectors. Go to http://www.andybritnell.co.uk/ and you can sign up for my FREE short monthly newsletter and FREE e-mail coaching.

I coach corporate and SME clients who wish to achieve better results – see http://www.executive-coaching-for-business-growth.com/

2. You could upsell to your customers. When they’re at your order page, tell them about a few extra related products you have for sale. They could just add it to their original order.

3. Tell your customers if they refer four customers to your web site, they will receive a full rebate of their purchase price. This will turn one sale into three sales.

4. When you sell a product, give your customers the option of joining an affiliate program so they can make commissions selling your product. This will multiply the sale you just made.

5. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to your products. You could include an ad on or with the product for other products you sell. You could make sales for the reproduction rights and sales on the back end product.

6. You could cross promote your product with other businesses’ products in a package deal. You can include an ad or flyer for other products you sell and have other businesses selling for you.

7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include a coupon for other related products you sell in the package. This will attract them to buy more products from you.

8. Send your customers a catalog of add-on products for the original product they purchased. This could be upgrades, special services, attachments, etc. If they enjoy your product they will buy the extra add-ons.

9. Sell gift certificates for your products. You’ll make sales from the purchase of the gift certificate, when the recipient cashes it in. They could also buy other items from your web site.

10. Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ad printed on them. It could be bumper stickers, ball caps, t-shirts etc. This will allow other people to see your ad and order.

1. The Experience of Repeated Failure

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.

Let’s assume that you contact 50 people a day and average 2 appointments. In your business, that may be a very good result. Nevertheless, you have the experience of repeated failure because you tried to convince all of them and you failed to meet your objective of 48 out of 50 calls.

The Cure – Change Your Objective. Your new objective is to make appointments only with High Probability Prospects – and to disqualify everyone else. Make fifty calls and be clear that you’ll only make an appointment if the prospect wants what you’re selling. If the prospect doesn’t want what you’re selling, terminate the call quickly and courteously. You now have the experience of succeeding in your objective 50 times out of 50 calls.

2. Fear of Rejection.

Most salespeople have a prospecting “pitch” which is designed to interest, entice, excite, convince and persuade people to give them appointments. They have a string of questions to get the prospect involved and interested in meeting them. Every question that they ask increases the prospect’s sales resistance. Thus, negative reactions to their methods grow very quickly.

Most prospects react to any prospecting pitch defensively. Their sales resistance is aroused as soon as they hear your warm greeting and your friendly,enthusiastic, professional pitch. The more skillful you are in keeping them talking and listening, the more they become wary and annoyed. Eventually, many of them become non-communicative, or too busy to talk, or abrupt, or sarcastic, or otherwise negative. All of these reactions cause most salespeople to feel rejected.

Almost all sales managers and trainers tell you that you’re not being rejected, that the prospects are merely declining the offer of your products or services. Why then do almost all salespeople feel rejected? Are you too sensitive, too thin-skinned?

Think about it. Who do you trust? Is it the sales manager who wants you to keep on going until you become insensitive to the rejection? Or do you trust your own perceptions, your feelings of rejection? Are all other salespeople who feel the rejection also wrong? No, you feel rejected, personally rejected, because you are being rejected. That rejection is caused by the normal defensive reactions that everyone has against being persuaded to do something they don’t already want to do. If you want to eliminate rejection you must change the way you prospect.

THE CURE – See 1, above.

THE RESULTS – No more fear of cold calling and no more wasted time with low probability prospects.

©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.

When story telling in order to help a client or potential customer see a point or understand a way of thinking related to what you are selling you need to know a few things first. One thing is make sure your story is not boring, as no one likes a boring story, gosh don’t you just hate that? I sure do.

Next, make sure your story has something to do with the topic at hand and do not go off on a wild tangent with it. Your story must not only be relevant but something that the prospect can relate with on a closer level to their own business or life.

And please do not blow smoke up their butts, make sure the story is true for gosh sakes, there is enough salesmen out there slinging enough BS, we certainly do not need any more. BS is what gives the sales profession a bad name.

As 27-year veteran of business, nothing us to piss me off more than a salesperson trying to blow smoke up my butt with some cocky-a-maney story or some utter hokum and malarkey. The story should not be a pre-trial close or some bizarre combination of a silly sales pitch. You are merely breaking the ice and finding common ground. Consider all this in 2006.

Lance Winslow