The customer doesn’t want to see the value in your product; he wants to get the value from your solution to his business problem. He must perceive unique value from you. If he cannot differentiate you from the competition, there is no reason to buy from you.

Action Step

Selling is the one area where you can afford to stand out from the crowd. You need to present a unique service, go the extra mile that nobody else is prepared to go, in order to set yourself apart from the rest of the competition. Remember, you’re not simply selling a product. You are selling an entire solution. If you can become an authority in your field of sales you will be able to address your customer’s business issues abundantly – adding more value to the solution than simply offering him a brilliant product.

Answer These Questions:

• What makes you different from your competition?
• Do you have a level of expertise that exceeds that of your competitors? If not, are you prepared to rise to the occasion and improve your strategy and further your training?

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Sales Tip: give more value to your clients is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

The minute a person realizes that you have something to sell they instinctively throw up the mental barrier. Put yourself in their place and start right – working with the potential buyer to find out how their business will benefit from your proposition.

Action Step

When you approach someone with their best intentions at heart, they will automatically be more interested in hearing what you have to say than if you simply try to sell them something. You can steamroll right through your prospect’s mental barrier by changing your approach.

Ask your prospect the right kind of questions. Gather as much information as you can from them in order to best understand what their business issues are and what their goals are. With this information in hand you are equipped to demonstrate a working solution. You’re not selling them something for the sake of selling! You are providing the answer to their problem. You’re helping them to grow their business, weed out the issues that have been holding them back, and you’re releasing them into a new arena of growth that, up until they met you, they never realized was possible. Show them that! Don’t just sell them a product. Demonstrate the solution.

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Subscribe to my daily sales tips and you will receive a free ebook 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!

Sales Tip: Don’t just sell; show benefits is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

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.

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.

In this post I will give you 10 reasons why I believe selling is even better than sex:

1. You are never too young or too old to sell. And just because you may be over 65, you don’t have to rely on those little blue pills to help you make a sale.
2. 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.
3. When it comes to selling on an airplane or just chatting to a prospective client in the seat next to you, you’ll realize that it’s so much easier than trying to sneak into the bathroom for a quickie in order to join the “mile-high club”.
4. You don’t have to fear retribution for showing the proof to back up your claims of success and achievement. On the contrary, your prospective clients will want to see that. And the more sales history you have, the better! Your prospects may be very keen to see who you have listed as your previously satisfied clients.
5. If your customers decide to take photos or film you while you’re making your pitch, you don’t have to worry about those pictures or videos showing up on the internet when you become famous.
6. You don’t have to check for a wedding band or make sure that the person you’re chatting with is, in fact, a real woman or man.
7. It’s possible to close with a customer in two minutes or less and it’s actually something to be proud of.
8. You can be absolutely certain that nine months after a sales meeting, the customer’s lawyers won’t contact you asking for half of your pre-tax income for the next eighteen years.
9. You can invite your previous, current and potential customers to come together in a same room – it is called a “Customer Appreciation Day”.
10. If you’re practicing your presentation at night in the comfort of your own home, you don’t have to be concerned about keeping your neighbors awake.

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!

Buy the book from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble or Chapters-Indigo, or you can order a signed copy directly from me – www.SellingIsBetter.com

10 Reasons Why Selling IS Better Than Sex is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the massive amount of sales information online? Have you ever felt lost in the search for sales tips, sales tools or specific sales techniques? I would like to introduce you to Sales Magicians!

SalesMagicians is a social bookmarking and networking site, a place for sales people to discover and share sales content from anywhere on the web. It allows you to submit, share and vote for the best sales information links on the Internet.

Everything on Sales Magicians is submitted by their community (yes that would be you). On SalesMagicians you can discover websites that provide answers, tools, tips and different techniques to address your sales challenges. You can meet other sales professionals that share your interests. Also, by submitting links you help others by sharing your knowledge. If your submission rocks and receives enough “Magic Ups”, it is promoted to the front page for all of our visitors to see.

Most importantly, SalesMagicians will save you an incredible amount of time. And, if you like a particular story, don’t forget to vote that “Magic Up”.

How should SalesMagicians be used?

SalesMagicians is a place for people to discover and share sales content across the web, from the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog.

Every article submitted to SalesMagicians has a count of how many “Magic Ups” the story has received. You need to be signed-in to vote a “Magic Up”. For every registered user that clicks “Magic Up” the count goes up one. If a story reaches the tipping point, then it gets promoted to the homepage.

Be active. Find an interesting sales article online and submit it.

Share your opinions by commenting on stories. The system only works when users actively participate on a large scale, so make sure to do your part either by voting that “Magic Up” or by burying content that you feel doesn’t sparkle!

Bury. If you find stories with bad links, off-topic content, or duplicate entries, click “Bury.” That’s how we get the spam out of the system and let the good stuff rise to the top.

Comment. Use the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons to rate the comments that other people leave on SalesMagicians.

Is there a charge to join?

No. Joining SalesMagicians it’s absolutely free. Visit www.SalesMagicians.com today, register and vote for your favorite articles!

Intro to Sales Magicians is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

A great salesperson is one who can create a vision for the customer.

As a salesperson, are you also able to envisage yourself as an artist? You might feel as though you have no flair for art or creativity – but, really, selling is a form of art and you ARE the artist!
So what does this mean for you, as the artiste extraordinaire? It means that you have to put on your creative thinking hat and make some magic for your customer. You need to paint him a picture of the ideal solution that he needs for his business.

How do you do this? Even artists need to prepare their canvas. So you will need to discover all that you can about your customer, his business and its requirements. Investigate as much as possible. Speak to your client and ask the right questions to ensure that you have a good, solid grounding of knowledge that will equip you to provide your customer with the best possible solution. Once you’re aware of your customer’s needs you will be able to create a vision for the future of his business. You can excite him with the possibilities and opportunities that your product offers his business. Paint him a picture – a beautiful, colorful and vibrant picture – that will capture his imagination and speak directly to his heart.

As the artist, the opportunity to present an awesome vision lies directly in your hands. Every sale is like a blank canvas. How you prepare your canvas will determine what the final picture will look like and how well it will be received. Therein lies the success or failure! Pick up your paintbrush – there are many visions to be created!

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Subscribe to my daily sales tips and you will receive a free ebook 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!

Sales Tip: Create the Vision is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Many salespeople have yet to learn that it is far more important to start selling right than it is to begin calling on prospects right away. The salesperson who is prepared for his first meeting or call with the buyer has taken out the best policy of insurance on his own success at selling.

Action Step

Find out all that you can about your customers before you make that call. Demonstrating an understanding of their business will give them confidence in your ability to sell them the right solution. Get your sales insurance policy in order and ensure that you are well-prepared before calling on your customers.

Answer These Questions:

• Are you quick to pick up the phone and start chatting to your customers without knowing anything about them? Sometimes just “winging it” isn’t enough to demonstrate your ability to provide the best solution to your clients’ needs.
• Do you conduct any process of discovery about your customers before making the call? Do you try to find out what it is they do, and what they might need, before you call?

Sales Tip: Start Selling Right is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Nothing happens until someone sells something. Every company, big or small, depends upon the ability of those who are hired to sell their products or services. Stop talking to your customers and start selling.

Action Step:
Ensure that you have discovered what it is that your customers need – and then start selling them the solution.

Answer These Questions:

• Are you spending too much time building a relationship with your clients and not enough time actually selling to them?
• While building rapport with your customers have you actually managed to ascertain what it is that they need from you?
• Can you define any obstacles that may be preventing you from making sales?

Nothing happens until someone sells something is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Video: Daily Sales Tip #28 is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

Today I am honored to have a guest blogger on my blog, his name is Neil Jain and he empowers people to make confident financial decisions. Here is his article:

In keeping with Alen’s current theme about Trigger Events, I can confirm that in my business identifying trigger events has been a key aspect of the sales process.

Importance of Trigger Events

In my business, we offer financial education workshops and, if you think about it, it’s hard to get excited about being more responsible with money unless there is some sort of life event that’s requiring you to make decisions regarding your finances.

For example, we find that our clients are interested in taking our workshops when they’re about to start a new job, or they need to know how to complete their tax return or they want to take control of their investments.

Deliberate Approach

What I would recommend to salespeople is to make a list of the top five trigger events suitable for your (potential) client base, quantify the frequency of each event and identify where it would be suitable to connect with the client when this event is occurring.

For instance, one of our clients’ trigger events is starting a new business. New business owners need to make a number of decisions about money including how to take advantage of business expenses. Using the approach described above, first, I would determine how many new businesses are started in my target market each year (and when) so that I can quantify the potential pipeline. Next, I would conduct research to determine what percentage of this market has a need and would be interested in my product or service. Finally, I would research where I can find these new business owners, so that I can meet them.

Do they go to entrepreneurial networking events? Or, perhaps they attend local information seminars on starting a new venture? What online forums do they frequent?

Your trigger event list should be a working document, constantly refined based on what you learn from your clients and determining how best to reach them when they need your product or service.

Partnerships

One final tip: partnering with non-competing organizations that already service your prospective customers during a trigger event stage can be a potential shortcut to connecting with clients. The organization may already have an established distribution mechanism making it easy to connect with potential clients. Just remember to offer to reciprocate if appropriate!

Participate:

Do you use trigger events to determine when to approach your customers? Any tips that you can share?

Neil Jain is President and Lead Facilitator of Money Life Skills.

Money Life Skills aims to empower people to make confident financial decisions. We offer unbiased private, customized and affordable workshops to individuals, couples and families on how to save, spend and invest money. For more information, visit www.moneylifeskills.com.

Trigger Events are Key to the Sales Process by Neil Jain is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

A Blog (short for web log) provides commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news. A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs, either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or PR purposes are called corporate blogs. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.

Several blog search engines are used to search blog contents (also known as the blogosphere), such as blogdigger, Feedster, and Technorati. Technorati provides current information on both popular searches and tags used to categorize blog postings.

Corporate blogs, by their very nature, are biased, though they can also offer a more honest and direct view than traditional communication channels. Nevertheless, they remain public relations tools.

The business blog can provide additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. Business blogs can interact with a target market on a more personal level while building link credibility that can ultimately be tied back to the corporate site.

Blogging among CEOs is becoming more popular, and more than 5% of the Fortune 500 companies blog externally. Market research done in the first half of 2006 indicated that 34% of large companies had established weblogs. Another 35% planned to do so by the end of 2006, thus bringing the total to nearly 70%.

Some points:

McDonald’s LincolnFry – a fake blog was discovered, and it generated lots of negative word of mouth and little participation. As in all fields of information there will be the worthless with the good, but that does not detract for the enormous use Blogs can provide for us in sales careers.

American Express’ billboard – a fake Blog poster told readers to check out a great Amex billboard that was found to be an Ogilvy employee; this violation of trust resulted in massive negative word of mouth which spread around the world.

So what to do?

To keep from getting lost in the internet blogs and to narrow the field down as to what will help your sales, use the different blog search engines like you would use normal search engines: simply key in the term and you will get the result.

Another way to strain the needed information from the blog forest is to note all the reviews of blogs that appear in daily newspapers, magazines and the publications like: trade publications, industry news, and the business sections of websites and print media.

To learn how to use other online resources in your search for Trigger Events, get my book today!

How to use blogs in your search for Trigger Events? is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer