The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

This is one of those videos, that makes you think.

Years it took to reach a market audience of 50 million:

• Radio - 38 years
• TV - 13 years
• Internet - 4 years
• iPod - 3 years
• Facebook - 2 years

It is estimated that a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century (I’ve used this info in my book “Trigger events” in 2007!)

There are 31 Billion searches on Google every month. In 2006, this number was 2.7 Billion. To whom were these questions addressed B.G.? (Before Google)

So what does it all mean?

The 21st Century changes the rules of engagement. Business world is changing daily, and if you are not at least trying to keep up with the changes, you are becoming the dinosaur of sales. Read more about selling in 21st Century.

“Wanting connections, we found connections — always, everywhere, and between everything. The world exploded in a whirling network of kinships, where everything pointed to everything else, everything explained everything else …” - Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco, 1988 (My favourite author!)

Tags: dinosaur of sales, information overflow, market audience, selling in 21st century, Trigger Events

On March 25 I am holding a webinar titled: Find Buyers Who Are Ready to Buy…Now!

Learn to Identify the Trigger Events That Motivate Prospects to Buy

“I have lot of business in my pipeline, but very few deals are closing.” Adding prospects to a sales pipeline is easy … but if they aren’t ready to buy, you’ll waste precious time that could be better spent pursuing accounts that are ready to sign. Although the economy is in strife, people are still buying. The key is to identify which prospects are ready to buy now.

In this webinar, you will learn how to:

• Use trigger events to select the right prospects to pursue
• Identify prospect needs before you ever contact them
• Recognize the difference between internal and external trigger events
• Leverage trigger events to increase your sales effectiveness

By learning where to find and how to use trigger events, calls you will make in the future will never ever be cold!

Suggested Attendees: All sales people, sales managers, and small business owners

Register here: http://triggereventswebinar.eventbrite.com/

As an added bonus, you’ll receive my e-Book, “Trigger Events,” a $13.95 value.

More about the e-book Trigger Events - click here.

Tags: buying now, Cold Calling, customer needs, Lead Generation, motivated prospects, prospect vs. suspect, Prospecting, qualifying customers, sales book, sales pipeline, sales webinar, Trigger Events

The secret of being successful is the ability to transmit your energy, enthusiasm, and emotions about your product or service to the mind of the customer. If you fail to do that, you will not sell.

Sex desire is the most powerful of all human desires.

If you can learn to transfer all the energy that you have for the pleasure of sex and transmit that into your sales efforts, the rewards will be unlike you have ever witnessed before!

This book will show you how to get a thrill out of selling; how to love what you do; and give you more than 200 reasons why selling is even better than sex, and what you can do about it in order to improve your career and your life.

It’s about passion…it’s about creating a pathway for your own success and doing it with enthusiasm!

Get your own copy today - www.sellingisbetter.com

Tags: energy, enthusiasm, sales book, sales humor, sales video, selling book, Selling IS Better Than Sex, transmutation

Today I am sharing with you my Daily Sales Tip #15 titled:  “Sell more by following up with your prospects.”

Subscribe to my daily sales tips and you will receive a free e-book every 30 days, plus extra discounts on my books, CD’s, webinars and seminars. If you would like to stop receiving my tips, you can unsubscribe at any time. Subscribe today by filling the form on the right-hand side. Thanks!

Tags: daily sales tips, follow up, sales video

You are there to assist people in finding the right solution to their problem. Your expert advice is given in an informed and informative way. You need to listen well to what the client’s needs and desires are before you can even attempt to sell her a solution. And it must be the best solution for her particular problem. Therefore, the art of closing sales is not the process of persuading people to make decisions, but the art of making decisions with which people agree.

The beauty of closing the deal in sales is that this actually does resolve problems. Sadly, when we refer to “closing the deal” in sex, this usually just creates more problems. If the final agreement did not end simultaneously, there’s a massive issue. If your pitch was anything less than perfect and sustained, then there’s a problem!

Every time you manage to close a sales deal, you feel great about having discovered the best solution and having resolved the client’s problem. You have that guaranteed satisfaction after every close.

Part of your sales job is to continually reassure your customer that she is making the right decision by purchasing. If you leave her hanging long enough, there will be time for doubt to creep in. Don’t allow that to happen. You are her support during the dealings and discussions and you need to remind her of that by being her ongoing source of reassurance. A failure to close the deal comes from an inadequate performance in other areas. If you let your game slip at any point in the sales process, you have potentially endangered the success of the deal.

When closing the deal, fulfilling your client’s needs (and helping them get a useful product) actually fulfils your needs as well. If the deal is heading for closure then both parties will walk away fulfilled and satisfied -simultaneously, every time! It doesn’t get better than that!

Helping your customers can actually be a very fulfilling prospect of its own. It’s an important role that you play in the client’s life as she depends on you for your level of expertise on the subject. The beauty of sales is that once you find a suitable presentation you can use that same pitch each time, simply adapted to the current client’s needs. And with such a successful pitch, you can easily close more than one customer in one day - and not feel guilty. You can close a different customer every day and not feel concerned about a tarnished reputation. Again, with sales, it all boils down to “the more the merrier”.

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If you are interested to learn more about the art of closing, get my new book “Selling Is Better Than Sex” - www.SellingIsBetter.com

Tags: art of making decisions, client’s needs, closing techniques, finding a right solution, helping customers, the art of closing

You’re a sales genius. They love you; they trust you; and some of them keep on coming back for more. However, you can very suddenly go from Hero to Zero if you don’t keep your sales figures up to scratch. As a sales genius, you’ll be working hard to have deals lined up for weeks in advance so that you’re not enslaved by what has been referred to as “the Curse of a Sales Job”.

Working month to month, just treading water in the hopes of staying afloat, does not make you a super-sales-hero. You need to plan ahead – take the long-term view and line up those deals to ensure you maintain your status. This is what makes you great – and able to achieve your fullest potential. Again, this is hard work and dedication – but it is fuelled by your passion for selling and your dream to achieve all that you can.

You must realize that customers are available for everyone, at any time and at any age. Not so when it comes to sex, right? No – even with a reputation as a serial womanizer, you can go for weeks or even months at a time without having a beautiful woman to accompany you to social gatherings. That’s the quickest way to dissolve your reputation! But the beauty of sales is that there will always be someone who needs something that you’ve got – you just need to find them and approach the sale in an appropriate way, depending on their needs.

And, with selling, buying leads is also a legitimate way to generate sales – it’s not against the law, either. So when you find that you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of customers and your pipeline is running dry, you can absolutely purchase a list of leads. However, when your sex life is becoming somewhat dull, or non-existent, paying for a “lead” is not exactly the way you want to go (nor is it legal – in most countries, anyway).

Cruising the internet in search of customers is perfectly acceptable too. You won’t find yourself in any moral or ethical dilemma when paying for leads. And you won’t get fired for typing “selling techniques” into a search engine at work. But wait and see what happens when you’re caught surfing the net for tips on “how to please…”

With all the technology that we have available to us today, the act of “cold-calling” is just about becoming a thing of the past. You can access so much information about a client before you even get to the first meeting. As a result, you will be better prepared than if you had just picked up the phone and dialed a random number in the hopes of charming yourself into another sale. With as much “pre-knowledge” of the customer as possible, you’re equipped to ask all of the right questions, and you’re able to listen to the client’s needs with a greater understanding.

If you’ve carried out your research thoroughly, half of the work is done. It can no longer be termed a “cold call” when you’re already warming up to the client and the operations of his business. Rather, you have the upper hand as you begin the call, knowing more about your client than he does about you. This means that you’re better prepared to approach him in an effective manner and better prepared to address the type of business that he has and the problems he might be encountering.

And besides, you don’t have to dial a “900” number to sell over the phone. If you want customers from faraway places, it’s not that difficult and not that expensive either. You just pick up the phone, send an e-mail, and use any modern technology that you have on hand. But try finding your dream woman from some faraway exotic place – you’ll pay a fortune in travelling costs and accommodation, and that’s before you’ve even taken her out to dinner.

Yet again we can prove that selling is better than sex – and far less risky too. Finding new customers won’t get you into trouble either. You can have as many customers as you want, and as many as you can handle!

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The secret of being successful in selling is the ability to transmit your energy and your enthusiasm about your product or service. If you fail to do that, you will not sell. If you want to learn how to transfer your energy into sales enthusiasm to improve your career and life, get my book “Selling Is Better Than Sex” today!

This book will provide you with more than 200 reasons why selling is even better than sex, and what you can do about it in order to improve your career and your life. This is not just another sales book – this is a revelation!

www.SellingIsBetter.com

Tags: buying leads, Cold Calling, Finding new customers, sales genius, sales pipeline, selling is better, super sales hero, the Curse of a Sales Job, Trigger Events

In sales you’ll always know where you stand. No longer do you have to torment yourself with the question of your performance. At the end of the day, your sales figures will be the yardstick that indicates how well you’ve done in selling. You’ll always know how your performance was for that day, for each and every customer. The proof is in the purchase of the product that you’re selling.

No-one can fake a purchase or lie to you about how great your pitch was. Customers aren’t concerned with stroking your ego just to pacify you so that they can make a quick escape. If you’re great at what you do, they buy your product. It’s as simple as that. And if you’ve really impressed them, they’ll keep coming back for more. And they’ll tell their family and friends about you and refer them to you for your excellent service.

That’s essentially what they talk about – how great you are at performing in the sales arena. They don’t care what kind of physical shape you’re in either. They don’t sit around and chat about your physique or snigger about your six-pack that’s been left abandoned for years. In fact, most of the best sales guys are usually out of shape. You don’t have to concern yourself with sweating it out at the gym.

As a successful sales guru, you’ve got the customers coming in already, in droves. Because you don’t have to be concerned about your fitness in order to be a brilliant salesperson, you don’t have to feel embarrassed by selling with the lights on! In fact, if you turned the lights off, most of your clients might start feeling a little concerned about their own safety and well being. Leave the lights on; forget about the gym; in sales you can be a success regardless of what shape you’re in.

As well, what makes all of this a lot easier is that a new sales job comes with an instruction manual – complete with graphs and pictures and everything that you might need to come to grips with the basics. Imagine how easy some things in life would be if everything came with a manual? Sure, some of us are blessed with a natural charm and an outgoing and vivacious personality (among other things), but there are still things to learn.

There aren’t too many of us that can be really successful without further enhancing our education. It’s not like a few tips from your Dad are all that you need to make a good go of it. No – we start with the manual and we progress from there to more extensive, specialized courses in skill and technique. And then it still takes practice to perfect the technique. At least, with selling, you don’t earn yourself a reputation for being promiscuous when you expose your sales pitch to a wide variety of customers.

Let’s face the facts here – as a salesperson you don’t have to pussy-foot around your clients and question them in subtle, tactful ways to find out if you were any good. If you were good, they bought your product. Your massive sales figures at the end of each day will show the world what a sensation you are, a market leader in your field. You have the magic touch – you know it and you can prove it!

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If you want to learn how to transfer the sex energy into sales enthusiasm to improve your career and life, and learn about other 200 reasons why selling is even better than sex, get my book “Selling Is Better Than Sex” today! www.SellingIsBetter.com

Tags: sales enthusiasm, sales job, sales manual, sales performance, selling is better

The world’s oldest profession involves selling. One might even argue about which came first – the selling or the sex? In fact, selling and sex are so closely related that succeeding at either one of them can be euphoric, addictive, and good fun.
Some people might like to argue that selling is not better than sex. They believe it’s the other way round. In this post (and other following this one) I will give you many different reasons why selling IS better than sex.

For a start, it’s okay to make a sale in public.
In fact, the more people that witness the sale you’re making and the product you’re providing, the better! Also, when they see first-hand the customer’s satisfaction at having had an excellent sales experience, it inspires them to think about making their own purchase. This leads to word-of-mouth referrals where you earn a reputation for being the best at what you do. You become known as the expert in your line of work. But sex in public? Well, that may just get you into a lot of trouble. And let’s face it – a reputation for being promiscuous is perhaps not the way you want to go.

This brings us to the next point: that it is perfectly legal to sell professionally. The Ten Commandments don’t say anything about not selling. Yes, one of the commandments is “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, but Moses did not climb Mount Sinai to receive the instruction “Thou shalt not sell”. On the contrary, selling, bartering and trading were an essential source of income for many families, even in Moses’ time.
Nor is selling listed as one of the seven cardinal sins and the Pope makes no mention about the hazards of selling prior to marriage.

With a humorous twist, my posts will take you through the essentials of successful selling, illustrating that business can be fun and should be fun. Love what you do and do what you love. It’s about passion…it’s about creating the pathway for your own success and doing it with enthusiasm and zeal. Anyone who wakes up in the morning with passion in their heart will bound out of bed ready and eager to face the challenges of the day.

A positive attitude reaps rewards. It was Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, who said:

“If you think you can do a thing or you think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”

A positive attitude is the fuel that will drive your ability to achieve the tasks you undertake. Adopting an expectation of excellence and achievement is the first step to being successful at what you do.

You have the freedom to SELL! You can sell as much as you like, to whomever you like, for whatever the acceptable rate is, without exploiting yourself or bringing shame to your family name! Yes, selling IS definitely better than sex. And we’ll examine the reasons why more closely right here on this blog.

If you want to learn how to transfer the sex energy into sales enthusiasm to improve your career and life, and learn about other 200 reasons why selling is even better than sex, get my book “Selling Is Better Than Sex” today! www.SellingIsBetter.com

Tags: freedom to sell, it is legal to sell professionally, referrals, sales book, Selling IS Better Than Sex, word-of-mouth, world’s oldest profession

Finally - my new book Selling Is Better Than Sex is out! Here is the part of the press release:

New Book by Alen Majer Claims that Selling Is Better Than Sex

Toronto, ON – January 15, 2010 – Alen Majer, internationally sought-after speaker and sales consultant, tells in his new book released today how to get thrill out of selling, and why selling is better than sex. The book, targeting sales people and business owners, shows how to transfer the sex energy into sales enthusiasm to improve your career and life, and gives more than 200 reasons why selling is even better than sex.

The book was released by The Science and Art of Selling and is available through www.SellingIsBetter.com

Read the full press release here.

If you want to order this book today, Amazon has a special 22% off!

Thank you all for your support!

If you are interested to have me as a guest on your blog, feel free to contact me via email or over the phone.

Tags: sales book, Selling IS Better Than Sex

Today I am honored to have a guest blogger on my blog, his name is Dave Kahle and he is one of the top sales trainers in the world. Here is his article.

Sales Master Best Practices:

Has a systematic set of criteria for classifying customers and prospects into ABC categories

“You’ve got to show it in order to sell it.”

Today’s selling environment is jammed with an unbelievable array of “things to do.” Left without any mechanism to take control, salespeople can easily default to a way of going about their jobs that is characterized by being extremely busy at all the wrong things. We spend all day reacting to the pressures and demands on us. At the end of the day, we have been busy, but we’ve accomplished little of value.

The best salespeople understand that daily temptation to give into the urgent in place of the important. They understand the need to prioritize. And, when it comes to sales, the most important aspect of your job to prioritize is your list of customers and prospects.

The best salespeople spend the most time with the highest potential customers and prospects. In order to consistently do so, they need a system for classifying customers and prospects into categories based on potential – ABC. The “A” customers are the highest potential 20 percent of their account base. The “C” customers are the lowest potential 30 – 50 percent, and the “Bs” are everyone who is left in the middle.

Note that the discriminating characteristic is “potential.” So many salespeople categorize their accounts based on the quantity of their purchases. Thus, the A accounts are those who bought the most last year. But that view is historic – who bought the most last year. In our rapidly changing economy, that historic basis for investing your sales time is misleading. The issue is not who bought the most last year. It is far more effective to determine who could buy the most this year.
The best salespeople understand this, and develop a systematic way of determining the potential in each account. Having a defendable basis for their decisions, they are then free to invest their time where it will get the best results – one of the hallmarks of the high–achieving salesperson.

About the author:
Dave Kahle is one of the world’s premier sales training educators.  Since 1988, Dave has worked with over 400 companies, helping them to increase their sales and develop their sales people. Learn more at his website at http://www.davekahle.com

Tags: customer's list, dave kahle, need to prioritize, systematic way of selling