1. I’m not interested.  Create interest by telling a short anecdote of how someone else benefited her home/work/play by using your product.
2. I don’t  have enough money.  Quickly recount how using this product saves money in the long run by  improving the client’s health, saving  his time, or increasing his influence.  State dollar examples of savings gained.
3. I don’t need it.  Be alert to the needs of the customer.  Don’t try to push more on the customer than she needs.  Does she need more space, more time, better methods, or just the basics?
4.  It’s too much hassle to set it up (such as a new phone, exercise equipment). Offer to set it up for him, according to your company’s regulations.  
5. My old one is good enough.  Make sure your client has product knowledge. Teach her the new features as you promote the latest device or service.  Discount it. 
6. Another company has a better offer.  Don’t say “no” to the customer.  Provide an in-store coupon, a sample, a gas card, service, delivery, or warranty.  Give people what they want.
7. I can’t decide.  How to handle objections involves eliminating excess information.  Narrow down the decision to two or three options and focus on the best selling point of each.  Offer your personal preference, if the client asks.
8. I’ll think about it.  Don’t let the client leave without providing specific facts and figures with which he can compare.  Tell him what day and time you will personally be available to discuss it again.
9. It’s not exactly what I want. If you are going to make a sale, you must know how to handle objections like this one. If it is not in stock, order the closest approximation to your client’s need. 
10. It’s just not for me. Show proof that having your product gives your customer greater advantage, potential, and possibilities than not having it.  Be honest, but do what it takes in devising how to handle objections.  Let your client know that you will make it happen for her.

10 Ways to Handle Objections Effectively is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

I’m always amazed when I ask someone who their customers are and they say “everyone.” You can’t log on with that one. “Everyone” equals “no one.”

I make and sell envelopes. Everyone uses envelopes. So is everyone my potential customer? No way. The margins in the envelope business are paper thin, so my profitability depends on volume, huge volume. That eliminates 99.9 percent of the world’s envelope users.

Geography does it for another 99.9 percent. Delivery costs are a huge factor in bidding an envelope job. Almost any envelope company within 25 miles of a customer can offer a similar product at a better price than another outfit a couple of hundred miles away.

That’s why there are few national envelope companies. We all carve out our little territories and protect them like put bulls. Who are my customers? They are relatively few, but they are very, very precious to me. Everyone has his or her own special needs, requirements, and quirks. Knowing what those are and how to respond to them is not just a concern. It’s a career.

It’s the same for every salesperson. Your success does not depend on your product, no matter how universal or indispensable you think it is. It depends on how well you know your customers. It means meeting their needs before they even know they have them.

The same advice applies even when you’re not calling on customers, but are buried somewhere in the bowels of the corporate bureaucracy.

Years ago many computer companies grew by filling the niches IBM wasn’t serving. IBM couldn’t be bothered with niche markets. They were too big; the niches were too small. Their strategy was to wait until those markets developed sufficiently to become profitable. Then they would roll in and co-opt the customers with their own products.

It turned out that the little companies serving the little niches were on to something. Increasingly, end users wanted their own work stations, not the big mainframes IBM made. By the time IBM woke up, it was too late. The customers they had hoped they could co-opt had already found the products that met their needs.

A sadder and wiser IBM is now back in the game, but not before they got a new president, this time a marketing guy from R.J. Reynolds, and a new attitude about serving their customers.

The cautionary tale has not been lost on me. I’m aware that waiting around for a customer to meet my requirements is a lot riskier than me meeting their requirements, even when they are a little too small or a little too distant to be predictable. No, not everyone is my customer. We don’t need every customer, just the right customers.

Mackay’s Moral: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” –Dirty Harry

If you have enjoyed my writing so far, I encourage you to visit MackayMBA.com to download the first chapter from my upcoming book the Mackay MBA of Selling in the real World for FREE!  I am confident that it’s my best work yet.

The Wisdom Of Dirty Harry By Harvey Mackay is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

Call on a thousand average people to whom your proposition is salable. You’ll find the same objections on the lips of the majority of them. And these objections, boiled down and standardized, resolve themselves into a very small number.

For instance, in the paint business the standard objections are:

(a) “Too much money tied up in present stock to consider changing.”
(b) “Nobody is asking for your products.”

And really these two objections represent the big buffing points of the paint salesperson today, found in the mouths of the great majority of their prospective buyers.

Now considering the fact that the majority of a salesperson’s calls have the same objections, it is only reasonable to suppose that the same rebuttals or answers should overcome them.

When I say objections, I mean what I say – bona fide objections, not merely excuses for not buying. That kind of objections is a reflection on the salesperson by not yet selling the customer. A real objection can be defined as a valid, existing reason for not taking the products or proposition. When it’s overcome the sale is made.

The effective rebuttal or answer to an objection is one that gets past; it settles it forever. Every salesperson should study and classify the objections met throughout his or her career. Then when these objections are well established in mind, the salesperson should start formulating rebuttals. They can be (the rebuttals) taken from colleagues, common sense, experience, and experiments.

Whenever an answer overcomes one of these standard objections and makes the sale, put that answer down as a standard rebuttal to that particular objection. There’s nothing better than your own success journal. And the first thing you know, your skills toolbox includes a standard, effective rebuttal that will clear the path of every common objection you meet.

It is positively a shame to see salespeople stumble and stammer and “hem and haw” in answering an objection they have been up against forty times before. It is inexcusable.

Further reading:

• If you live by price – you will die by price
• How to win the deal without discounting
• Three Classes of Price Objections
• Six Common Objections and How to Handle Them

What are Sales Objections? is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

Are you suited up, trained and ready to get out there and win?

Success in this world is fundamentally a matter of selling, of using its principles whether in business, society, or politics, and applying them properly and effectively.

During my workshops and seminars I am regularly being asked for my opinion on what is needed to be successful in sales. Here is a short list of things that every salesperson needs to do regularly, day-by-day, week-by-week, to ensure the continuous success in sales.

1. Never ever stop learning
2. Stay positive
3. Take time off
4. Stay in control of your emotions
5. Work with decision makers exclusively
6. Set your selling quota
7. Stay committed
8. Put the rubber on the road, not on the carpet
9. Stick to the system
10. Watch your language, appearance, and behavior
11. Get organized
12. Set small goals
13. Prepare a “to do” list each day
14. Cultivate contacts
15. Contact three past buyers a day
16. Contact three prospects a day
17. Become the number one communicator in your office
18. Increase your personal association with top performers
19. Know the nuts and bolts of the business
20. Improve your attitude to yourself, your company, and its products
21. Ask yourself, “Is this what you want?”

Let me ask you again – are you suited up, trained and ready to get out there and win?

21 Ideas for a Successful Career in Sales is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

The sense of taste is important in case of groceries, drinks, and other things the sale of which depends materially upon the taste. In other cases it can’t have much to do with the salesperson’s business, if anything.

Taste is a very much misunderstood sense. The tongue not only tastes, but it also feels, and many of the impressions that we consider taste are not taste at all, but feeling. Our senses of sight and smell are also often confused with our sense of taste.

The tastes are often classified as follows: sweet, salt, sour, and bitter. The cultivation of the sense of taste is of great importance commercially only to a few people, professional tasters of tea, tobacco, liquor, drugs, and groceries. To all other people it has no special commercial value, but is of great importance in the matter of digestion. The person who has accustomed his taste to strong seasonings or strong liquors, has, to that  extent, disqualified himself from using this beneficent sense as a protection and guide in eating and drinking.

Two exercises only are suggested, the second of which is of greatest importance.

Exercises for the Taste

Exercise One: Quality

Experiment with flavors, seasoning, and spices taken from your kitchen, until you are able to identify them.

Exercise Two: Practical Daily Exercise

Select some food of which you are fond and chew it slowly and thoughtfully, analyzing it until you are able to determine approximately what per cent of it is sweet, salt, sour, or bitter. Try eating slowly so that the food will become thoroughly chewed and mixed with saliva before being swallowed, and giving thought to the delightful taste of food while this process is going on. You will be surprised to find how pleasurable it is to eat simply a bit of bread and butter if you eat it in this thoughtful, careful way, thoroughly determined to get the utmost possible enjoyment from the taste. You  will require from one-third to one-half the quantity of food you formerly required and will be surprised to find how pleasant the process of eating really is.

Eating is one of the most important things we do, and taste is one of the most significant factors in proper eating. This exercise will tend greatly to develop your love for dishes that you are already like, and, more than that, it will enable you to learn to eat many things which you are not eating today.

Simply take a mouthful of the food you do not like, if it is known to be a healthful food, and chew it slowly and thoughtfully, analyzing it. You will discover that one of the chief reasons for our disliking certain foods is that we have never given them a trial sufficient to discover what qualities to expect in them. We therefore refuge to eat them, or we swallow them with loathing, which is sure to be bad for the digestion.

Smell

It should be unnecessary to state that the salesperson should be very careful of the way his clothing smells, but there are many salespeople who are careless in this regard. People are much more particular about this than we usually think they are. For a person’s clothing or his breath to reek of some obnoxious odor, is very damaging to his personal influence. Some salespeople have breath so offensive as to cause the loss of considerable business. Customers simply refuse to talk to them.

In the case of certain products, such as perfumery, the sense of smell is the chief factor in the sale.

Smell, like taste, has very little commercial value, except to those who use it professionally, as in the smelling of flowers, drugs, and groceries. Experts in smelling, like experts in tasting, frequently draw very high salaries, but for the ordinary person the major value of this sense consists in the added pleasure in life that its exercise gives. Smell is not so important as the other senses, but it is the sense that most powerfully appeals to the memory.

Exercises in Smell

Exercise One: Quality

Select a number of different flowers and vegetables that are convenient. Give yourself three seconds to smell of each one of, say twenty, different varieties. Then with the eyes blindfolded see if you can designate the flower or vegetable by the odor.

Exercise Two

Select a given flower or perfume, place it in a room devoid of other odors and measure the distance at which you can perceive the presence of the flower; or have some one else select one of several flowers with the odors of which you are familiar, and see at what distance you can determine which it is.

As in previous exercises, repeat daily for five days and notice your improvement on the sixth day.

About the Exercises for All Five Senses

It is strongly recommended that you devote from twenty to thirty minutes per day for one week to all previous exercises (read my previous posts about the five senses) in the cultivation of the five senses. You may not be able to see clearly before making these experiments what effect they will have upon the general awareness of your sense perceptions. After you perform them all, however, you will be in a position to judge of the value that they will be to you.

Read my previous posts:

- Using the Five Senses in Selling

- The Sense of Sight in Selling

- The Sense of Sight in Selling – part 2

- Hearing in Selling

- Touch in Selling

Taste and Smell in Selling is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

Do you add value to your customer’s business? Or are you simply another salesperson to be reluctantly contacted when there’s a need for a new product?

You can stand out from the crowd and flatten your competition by adding extra value to your customer’s business. If you can gain a great understanding of how the customer’s business operates and what his desires are for growth and progress, your number will be the first that he dials when he needs to upgrade or buy something new. By adding value and building a relationship of trust, you can rest assured that your customer will want your advice and will appreciate the expert knowledge that you have to share with him.

Set yourself apart from the rest. Become an asset to your customer’s business and you’ll see the difference it makes to your bottom line.

Do you add value to your customer’s business? is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

So you are probably asking yourself – how is it that they can make six or seven figures and you are struggling month by month to make ends meet and reach your quotas?

The first and probably the most accurate answer is that they see themselves as professionals.

How can you grow if you don’t adopt new ideas or learn about new things in business and in sales? How can you expect to advance to better, higher paid positions if you stop investing in your knowledge?

In my 20+ years in different roles in sales, I have met many sales people who never bought a book about the sales in their life. They never attended a seminar about sales, which was not part of their company at the time. However, they were always complaining about how companies are not investing enough in their sales force, yet expect them to be perfect and up to date. That is the reason why they don’t want to invest in seminars on their own.

They believe that if their company does not see the value in it, why would they pay for it by themselves? Also they feel they know everything about the sales, so there is no need for spending money on books and seminars, or finding time for reading magazines or specialized websites. Many of those people who don’t learn continuously wonder why they don’t advance in their career or are skipped over again for a promotion.

I am giving you perfect examples of how the amateurs are thinking while blaming everyone around them for being unsuccessful in sales. You are the one who is making the decision. Every morning, when you look in the mirror, are you seeing the reflection of an amateur or professional?

Sales professional is someone who invests in his knowledge, who reads magazines and web portals dedicated to sales people and attends seminars and conferences. A sales person who follows the trends understands how essential it is to improve him personally.Professionals are ones they know how necessary this is to start selling more. And of course – they are the ones who are earning more.

Be different from the 95% of salespeople out there who are not investing in their knowledge, and you will start seeing the change. It will start first inside of you where you will be hungrier for the new knowledge. You will have a better conversation and better approach to your prospects and people around you will see that difference.

Your self-respect that you’ve gained with that new knowledge will make the world your oyster. Don’t wait for your employer to send you to a seminar. Be proactive, for yourself and your career. It will benefit you in the long term – with your career and most importantly you will see the difference in your wallet!

You are asking your clients to make a change, but if you are unwilling to change yourself, how can you ask your prospects to?

Your sales process will also depend on your efforts invested in research and understanding your customer base, your energy and enthusiasm about your product. If you cannot transfer enthusiasm to your prospects, you are in deep problems. When you talking about something people can feel if you are insincere, or you really know what you are talking about.

It is not what are you saying but how are you saying it.

What does it mean to be sales professional? I am not saying that you have to live, eat and breathe sales 24/7 every day for the rest of your life, but to start seeing your sales position as something more, something bigger than 9-5 job.

Whether you love your sales job or not, you have a choice to do it well or not, to be fully involved or back away, and if you have this attitude of choosing to do your work well, you will enjoy your job itself!

You can be very productive once you consciously choose to be in sales, and if you change your approach from “get things done” to actually enjoy what you do, you can get the job well done and be rewarded for your efforts.

Fulfillment in your life comes with doing a great job, whatever you do. And your occupation, in this case sales profession, is just as important to your personal health as the right food for your body.

Invest in your knowledge; put the seeds in the small steps and watering your skills and constant caring about your sales knowledge. And when the time of harvesting comes, you will have the fruits of your efforts in front of you.

To differentiate from majority of people who don’t like what they do, you have to actually enjoy what you do.

Start your day by doing your job the best you can, and try to do it for a week. Then come back next week and do it all over again. The best you can, not waiting for rewards, not asking for rewards. Don’t wait for results to come, just do the job the best you could. When first results came back, when you get positive feedback from your customers, when you close a new deal – ask yourself: What has changed?

You will start loving your job because success will come, first in small steps, but more and more day by day it will grow. Your customers will start seeing you as a knowledgeable person, your colleagues will see you with different eyes, and you will realize that all of that is important, but most important are feelings inside of you that start building – good feelings about yourself.

You will feel worthy, valuable to your customers, colleagues, and you will build that feeling inside of you that you are valuable part of your environment.

And you will start feeling that you are helping others – your colleagues to be better, your customers to find the best solution, and by helping them you are actually helping yourself to become a more valuable member of the community.

Does it make sense?

Natural order of things is in doing your best at what you do best, and the rewards will follow inevitable.

Remember this – you can’t fail how hard you try it.

Sales Amateur vs. Sales Professional is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

1. PHYSICAL IMPRESSION – that which people gain through their eyes
2. MENTAL IMPRESSION – that which your strong personality makes on the minds of others without any effort
   on your part
3. CONSCIOUS IMPRESSION – that which you make by deliberately exercising certain acquired powers to influence in your favor customers with whom you come in contact

Today I will talk about sincerity as a part of point number 2 – mental impression, one which your strong personality makes on the other person’s mind without any conscious effort on your part.

Mental impression is developed by your mind qualities:

• Fearlessness
• Self-confidence
• Ambition
• Willpower
• Concentration
• Sincerity

So, what is Sincerity?

Birds of the same feather flock together. The person who goes through the world with a flippant, thoughtless attitude finds that others with the same attitude. You can’t talk insincerely and convey an impression of sincerity. And that is just about the whole philosophy of sincerity.

What is it anyway? Just honesty, and earnestly, and a deep-rooted, unshakable belief, all rolled into one. And when you’ve got it in you, the prospective buyer can’t help but feel it. If you expect to be believed, you have to believe yourself, be sincere.

Sincerity isn’t a tone of voice, a firm handshake or a look in the eyes. It goes beyond that: from top to bottom you’ve got to feel it yourself in order to get it across to others.

And sincerity, first of all, has got to last. In the regard, shortcuts from the straight road in selling and in business generally are always longer than the traveled path. An unfair deal – an insincere attitude – are sure to be discovered in the end; the wrong end.

You simply can’t avoid responsibility for your actions and your words when you are contacting your prospects for the first time, or when you are presenting your (tailored) solution to your customers. Not as a question of ethics or morals, but as a result of the plain, ordinary, everyday variety of that uncommon trait called common sense.

Making your way the sincere way will pay.

To impress people with your sincerity, be sincere in selling.

(Much more about other mind qualities you can find in my e-book “Crucial Points to Succeed in Sales”.)

Sincerity in Selling is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer