My 3 three secrets to sales success !

Selling can be a life long career. After many years of sales experience, one eventually learns what works and what doesn't. Whether you sell to businesses or government, door to door, online, or out of your basement, the same guidelines need to be followed. Of course when you start out on any selling venture you need a plan and as importantly you need to work your plan.
You do not want to start out just going here and there, trying this or trying that.

You need to be organized and constantly try to improve your methods. There are thousands of selling tips out there, and of course most of them are valuable and do work. But tips aren't enough, you really need to understand what is the underlying cause of sales success. What will help you stand out from my competition - and you will have plenty of competition.

Sales is a lifelong process and keeping your plan on track is very important.

Ok, Ok , so what are the three secrets to sales success. They are in order of importance!!!

1. Talk to a lot of people!

2. Talk to a lot of people!

3. Follow up with all those people!

Sales is a numbers game. It is so important to cultivate lists. There are an incredible number of software programs out there to help keep you organized, track your sales progress, and offer you analysis tools to help you understand what your efforts produce.

Your sales style will be different than every other person out there, and that's good. If we all had the same selling style, it would be a pretty dull world. Whatever your style, it must include a way or a method that allows you to contact many potential buyers.

My early sales career consisted of calling on a regular base of about 200 customers. I would mostly call on Warehouse Managers and enter through the back door of an industrial company. Some customers were better than others, and the 80/20 ruled applied. That is, 80% of my sales came from 20% of my customers.

I had a regular schedule that had me seeing on average 10 customers per day over about 20 sales days per month. I did extremely well with the customers I had, but I would lose a customer here and there for one reason or another. Thus the need to talk to a lot of people. I constantly needed to cultivate new customers. I need a health base of customers.

Knowing who my customers were, and everything about them was very important. I recorded everything I could in my contact software. I knew exactly what to expect for the week, and where I was going next. I had a plan and I worked my plan.

Very often a customer would say, " Yes, I might need that, but give me a call next week". That was the key! I would follow up. When I got back to my car I would record in my contact software what had happened on my sales call and set an alarm for one day next week that would remind me to call my customer back. Usually to secure another sale.

What will that mean for you?

Well, how about more Sales!

Well, how about more customers!
Talk to a lot of potential customers and you will reap sales rewards.

Next post: How to make a quality sales call.