5 Sales Tips to Improve Sales
How many times have you lost a project or opportunity to a higher priced competitor? How many times has someone come and stuck their head in to talk to your very established relationship and turned your end user or partner to them to purchase their product or solution?
In the world of Sales it happens more then one might think; this is why we are led into a path of not sharing information among ourselves, and this is why we are very cautious when we are speaking with people about our current opportunities!
I intend to provide below; 5 things you can do immediately to improve your sales bottom line over the year of 2011. Take action and get started!
Sales Improvement Tip #1
NEVER lead with your “best price,” NEVER!
I cannot express enough how many times even your best price will be the one someone wants you to lower. I’ve seen this happen a lot! Make sure whatever you are working with on your quote, or discussion on the phone, etc….that you are discussing a cost that you KNOW YOU DON’T INTEND TO FINALIZE ON. That’s right. If you want to sell your 50K product, start your quote at 150K! Perception is everything from the eyes of a buyer!
Sales Improvement Tip #2
Practice your best Business Ethics! Don’t go around and steal customers.
Give them information instead and let them make their own decisions! When you are selling to a partner, remember, they found that deal. Don’t go call their end user and take it directly! Don’t go around dropping your prices just to win a deal! If a customer or partner want to buy from you, they will contact you and inquire. You’ll find that integrity in sales will get you a lot further and carry more weight then those that practice stealing business and probing for customers that are looking for the lowest cheapest and quickest buy they can get! Strength in a relationship will win you sales!
Sales Improvement Tip #3
Send partners sales leads and help them build their business too!
Yes, I’m telling you to spend some amount of time, and give away a deal to a partner or value added reseller so that they can get an eyeful of what you can offer them! Remember that people in the sales business want to work with other sales people they have a good relationship with. Its okay to give extra discounts when they bring you something worthwhile and it’s okay to send them something worthwhile sometimes too! You don’t have to give away your bank, but use it as a tool to help them see what you can do for them in your product market!
Sales Improvement Tip #4
Work as a team and remain individually competitive at your best!
Working as a team to improve the company profit line is crucial in any sales environment. While working as a team, you really are only as good as the best person on that team anyway! Besides, when we spend time always trying to capture the biggest deal, or the best named customer, our co workers will think we don’t care about their successes or strategies. We should though! Think about strength in numbers. Sit down as a team every three or four weeks for one or two hours and discuss your strategies, customer conversations, events, and other things that happen during your processes and find additional ways and opportunities to reach more valuable customers and spread more word about your solutions! You’ll find that you’ll start to develop some new approaches and ways to capture business so you all can get that next big name!
Sales Improvement Tip #5
Spend some time researching and making some amount of outbound calls to new customers in your market sectors!
There’s a difference between pure cold calling people that have nothing to do with you and don’t use your product, rather then calling people you know may have an interest in your products or solutions because they are already using competitors or other similar items. Spend time doing your research. Google companies, look at their websites, do some amount of pre-qualification to understand if picking up the phone and calling those people could help you introduce your company, or help them by offering a product or solution they have an interest in! You might be surprised what kind of opportunities this can generate for your revenues model!
The Sales Corner is a leading resource for 100% Free Sales and Marketing and Business information to help you grow online and off! I'm Matt Geier -- I created The Sales Corner. 
