Tom Hopkins

With the right selling skills in your arsenal, you’ll have more happiness and satisfaction in all areas of your life, not just in your selling career (although your selling will certainly benefit, too).To start down the road to sales success, you need to know how to make a good first impression, ensure that your prospective clients need what you have, give fantastic presentations, address client concerns, and close sales.

When you first considered a career in sales, you probably had some vague notions of success in mind — mostly related to your income. Now it’s time to turn those notions into specific, vivid pictures of your soon‐to‐be reality. The pictures will inspire you when you feel like packing it all in and running away to a deserted isle somewhere in the South Pacific to lie on the beach watching your toenails grow.

When you meet prospective clients during the selling cycle — or anyone, for that matter — for the first time, your goal is for them to like and trust you. You can accomplish that goal and be on your way to making a sale by completing the following steps, in this order: Smile, deep and wide. Make eye contact.

An important step in the selling cycle is listening to and responding to your prospect’s concerns and objections. Here are the steps to take when a person objects to something about the product or service you’re selling: Hear the prospect out. Don’t be too quick to address every phrase your prospect utters. Give him time; encourage him to tell you the whole story behind his concern.

Most sales are lost because salespeople didn’t clearly ask for the business or asked at the wrong time. If your product or service has proven to be truly a good decision for your client, it’s your obligation to ask them to own it! Develop your closing instinct with the help of the following guidelines: When you feel the client warming up to the sale by asking more questions, leaning forward, or touching the actual product, take his temperature by saying something like this: “Mr.

People don’t buy logically. They buy emotionally and then defend their decisions with logic. Your sales presentation must not only capture and hold the attention of potential clients but should also involve as many of their senses as possible. The following tips can help you make an effective sales presentation: Never give your prospect something to read until it’s time to read it.

When you first meet with prospective clients, you need to qualify them — in other words, you need to see whether the product or service you sell meets their needs. To help you remember what to ask during this stage of the selling cycle, use this creatively spelled acronym — NEADS: N: What does your prospect have now?

Time is as precious as money, so it pays to explore ways to get more sales productivity out of the time you have to invest in your sales career. Everyone knows you can make twice the income by working twice the number of hours and putting forth twice the amount of effort. The secret to true success lies in making the time you currently invest in your business twice as productive.

When you attain a certain level of professionalism, you’ll be selling more. This increase in sales is a culmination of a lot of things: You’re figuring out how to find the best people to sell to, you’re qualifying those people quickly and smoothly, you’re recognizing buying signs, and, most importantly, you’re enjoying it all.