SALES INSIGHTS
Explore. Educate. Expand.
Don’t let travel restrictions or canceled events impact your numbers.
Get weekly insights on how to sell through. Sign up today!
Looking For Something?
Topics & Categories
Get the Secrets to Effective Prospecting this year at ALSD
One of the main points we make in our training and coaching is that throughout your sales process, from prospecting to close and beyond, you have to be able to get out of your head and see things from your prospect or client’s perspective.
…
Get the Secrets to Effective Prospecting this year at ALSDRead More »
7 Cold Calling No-No’s You Need to Stop Doing Immediately
This post on cold calling was originally published on Dec 19, 2016 and updated with current material on June 19, 2019.
I was reading a blog post put out by another sales trainer titled “7 Ways to Make Cold Calling Easier”. It got me wondering, where do these tips come from? Were these ideas formulated by this trainer or were his insights rehashed from basic advice you can find anywhere? Was his advice based on empirical data, or was it based on opinions from his experiences in sales? And at that moment, I had an epiphany. This wasn’t the first time I came across a basic ‘tips to cold calling’ post. And it wasn’t the first time I was turned off by an article like this.
…
7 Cold Calling No-No’s You Need to Stop Doing ImmediatelyRead More »
3 Quick and Easy Steps to Achieving Sales Success
Sales Wisdom I’ve Discovered in my Career
Throughout my time in sales, I’ve researched numerous complex theories, process descriptions, tactics, and strategies. In addition to these, I have also come across a number of quips from sales gurus who try to encapsulate sales success in a simple phrase that can be easily understood, even by a 5th grader.
For example, Zig Ziglar was famous for saying, “Either you’re green and growing or you’re ripe and rotten.”
…
3 Quick and Easy Steps to Achieving Sales SuccessRead More »
How to Overcome the Mistakes of the Old Sales Closes
Previously, we reviewed a few of the classic sales closes and how they don’t work in our current sales environment. There are two other classic closes that we should review to understand how they fit into our new global sales environment.
…
How to Overcome the Mistakes of the Old Sales ClosesRead More »
The Best Way to Close the Sale – Just Do It!
To close the sale, you don’t need special skills. Now, back in the day, companies trained specifically on the sales close. In fact, some companies had sales manuals dedicated to special closing tactics. There were even sales training programs that focused on special closing techniques.
…
Secrets of the Sales Close You Need to Know
In the last post, I recounted a study from Mutual of Omaha that examined and challenged this myth about the sales close.
If you recall, out of 1,000 really good leads who were poised to say “yes” to the deal, only about 7% closed because the salespeople didn’t ask for the sale.
…
Why ‘Maybe’ Is The Worst Sales Response You Can Get
This post on sales responses was originally published on Oct 21, 2016 and updated on May 15, 2019.
When we get our prospects to clarify their objections, we want to get them to specifically identify the problem or challenges they are finding with our solution.
Remember, our overall goal is to get the prospect to say something. You’ve got to get them to say either yes, no, or maybe.
And for the record, maybes suck. …
Why ‘Maybe’ Is The Worst Sales Response You Can GetRead More »
Overlooked Secrets to Resolving Sales Objections
In the last post, we reviewed three steps to resolving sales objections and in doing so, we brought the sales process closer to achieving a commitment. Those 3 steps were:
- Remind them of their need.
- Remind them that your offering addresses their need.
- Create a colorful description of them experiencing the benefits provided by your offering.
Now, here’s the kicker when resolving sales objections: The more specific the objection you’re facing, the better chance you have of resolving it!
…
3 Steps to Resolving Objections and Winning the High Ground
Here’s a tip I’ve learned in my travels through the sales landscape – words matter! The words you use help frame the situation. And how you frame the situation will either expand or limit your options in resolving objections and mastering negotiations.
Consider the negotiation process. There’s plenty of phraseology out there that highlights “battling” an objection. Now, if I’m trying to do business with you, I don’t know if we are necessarily going to do battle. I think the wiser choice is to first find out where we both agree. …
3 Steps to Resolving Objections and Winning the High GroundRead More »
How to Build Better Responses to Sales Objections
Here’s an sample sales call dealing with sales objections pulled from our field experience.
My team and I were working with an NHL team that was selling a complex sponsorship package to a small to mid-sized furniture chain around Columbus, Ohio. In this particular situation, the sales rep was selling this package to a furniture store with four locations. …
How to Build Better Responses to Sales ObjectionsRead More »
How to Resolve The Top 4 Financial Sales Objections
Here’s a quick story about the first step in resolving 4 common sales objections, assessing the objection.
Have you ever heard the story of how McIlhenny’s Tabasco sauce got started?
Before the Civil War, the McIlhenny family lived on an island along the coast of Louisiana called Avery Island. If you look at the bottle, you’ll see a picture of Avery Island, right there off the coast. The island was just a great place to live – it had sugar cane, fresh water, and cattle. The McIlhenny family loved it there.
When the Civil War broke out, some troops were stationed on the island, and they ended up killing the cattle, burning the sugar cane, polluting the water, and further devastating the island. …
How to Resolve The Top 4 Financial Sales ObjectionsRead More »
9 More Sales Prospecting Methods to Boost Your Brand and Your Sales
In a previous post, we discussed 10 quick sales prospecting ideas to boost your sales. All those ideas dealt with using social media and online properties to make yourself known to potential prospects who are searching online for what you do.
We know that most of your potential customers do their research online. And by the time they begin calling on salespeople, they’ve already decided on what they want to do. …
9 More Sales Prospecting Methods to Boost Your Brand and Your SalesRead More »
Did You Verify Your Prospect’s Buying Signals?
Here’s something I noticed about good salespeople. During their presentation, in particular when they are delivering their prescription to address the challenge, a good salesperson will have the awareness to recognize buying signals, warning signs, and objections. It’s these signals that will lead us into the next phase of the sales process, the dialogue. …
10 Quick Sales Prospecting Ideas to Boost Your Sales
Contrary to popular belief, sales prospecting is not dead, and cold calling is not the boogeyman everyone has made it out to be.
Don’t get me wrong. I think picking up the phone and calling people you don’t know so you can sell them something that they don’t want is a colossal waste of time. And it generates a lot of bad blood to boot. But that doesn’t mean you should simply forego picking up the phone and communicating with people. …
10 Quick Sales Prospecting Ideas to Boost Your SalesRead More »
Unleash the Potential of Your Sales Team
Help your salespeople lead masterful sales conversations, build their pipelines, resolve rebuttals, increase win rates, negotiate the best agreements, and drive growth for strategic accounts with Tyson Group sales training and performance systems.