Confidant cold calling is all about preparation and attitude. If you know your product, your customer and your approach, cold calling is a breeze. The first thing you need to do is to define your product. What exactly are you selling? Why would a Canadian want to purchase your product or service? What makes your product or service better than your competitors? You need to know why a Canadian would benefit from purchasing your product or service.

The next step in the cold calling process is to identify your potential customer. Conduct research to find out who exactly makes the purchase decision in that company. Be sure you reach the correct person. Canadians do expect you to be accurate and respect their positions.You can use the internet to investigate the company (Trigger Events!) or call the company itself and ask who in their company makes those purchase decisions. If possible, contact that person via email or by sending them an introductory letter and sales brochure telling them you would like to speak with them about your product. Increase the postage on your material to Canadians and in the letter or email, tell them when you will be calling them. Allow a few extra days when sending material out of the country (from US for example), then call them a couple of days after you believe they have received the initial contact information.

Have a prepared script ready when you make the initial cold call taking into account the benefits of your product to Canadians. Remember that Canadians are extremely polite and expect you to be. We buy differently. We want to be heard. So, when calling be sure to ask if it is a convenient time for them to talk to you. If it isn’t, immediately ask to re-schedule at a better time. Canadians value honest, forthright communications. Be extremely straight-forward and helpful. Remember that the initial call is not necessarily to make a sale but to begin building a relationship with the client. We need relationship, rapport, and empathy. With that attitude, sales will follow.

Oh, and by the way, we don`t live in igloos.

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If you want to learn how to sell to Canadians, subscribe to my Cold Calling For Canadians newsletter:

More info: http://www.coldcallingforcanadians.com/

How To Cold Call Canadians is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

Don’t be afraid to ask questions that will help you understand your customer’s situation. Don’t be afraid of what objections your prospect might bring up. You will actually make your sale much easier with the good fact-finding. You want to uncover your prospects needs and wants even if they don’t realize he or she has them at this point.

Also you will probably hear some negatives from your prospects, and by uncovering those objections you will be able to tailor your presentation to deal with those potential negatives in the most effective way.

A good fact-finding shows that you are concerned about the customer’s needs and you are not like every other sales person who is simply trying to sell the product to him.

 To quote myself from the book Trigger Events, “All needs are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”

Remember: Fact-finding IS selling.

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Get the book Trigger Events today and start selling to new customers tomorrow!

Fact-Finding Is Your Mission is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xcuv3uzWgU

Video: Daily Sales Tip #21 is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

The main description of your position inside the company is to create the value, not just to show your price list. Teaching and educating customers is no longer enough, giving them information about your products or services is no longer necessary. They can get them by themselves, without ever talking to you or your company, and know more about your product and positioning on the market then you.

If they know so much about you, how can you try to sell them the same product without knowing their business situation or their needs?

Remember that customers are sophisticated; they either have or believe they can get product information more reliably on their own. Information is readily available through many different sources, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Internet is full of different forums, blogs, and review or research websites where they can get information about your product easily.

Customers don’t just want a specific product; most of the times they want to solve their pain point or business issues. A customer in today’s competitive sales environment does not expect to educate the sales professional about their business.  Therefore, you must already possess a solid understanding of the customer’s industry, competitors, and business direction.

Developing such a comprehensive view of the customer is a task that requires extensive researching and education to get an overall picture of the customer’s business industry. The modern sales person needs to focus on understanding the customer’s business initiatives, strategic plans, IT environment, and key customer preferences.

If you are still seeing yourself as someone who is there to educate customers, you are living in the past. The time of product-centric sales is gone. Welcome to customer-centric approach in sales.

You need to move away from the focus on presenting your products. Instead a customer-centric approach shows that you recognize and understand your customers’ needs, which is necessary if you want to survive in a 21st Century sales environment.

Your customers are tired of salespeople who come in and are unable to address real business needs, but talk about their company and the hottest feature, or unique one that nobody else has. There are many dimensions that you are selling, and price is only one of them.

If you live by price – you will die by price is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

Plus, you’ll learn how to:

• Enjoy the foreplay (sales people call it the “Preparation Phase”)
• Get lucky more often by focusing your activities (in your search for new customers)
• Handle the situation like a pro if you get the cold shoulder (No Means No – or does it?)
• Master the art of “You Show me Yours and I’ll Show You Mine” (Presentation and Negotiation)
• Seal it with a kiss (The Art of Closing)
• Deal with the morning-after (Post-Selling Activities)
• Ask for help if you aren’t sure about what you’re doing (Yes, you can!)
• Hook up  (Build Rapport and Credibility – Develop the Relationship)
• Have happy endings

This e-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!

Order your e-book copy of the book now for only 12.95!

Note: This is an e-book (electronic book), not a soft-cover book. To get your soft-cover version of the book, click here.

E-book Selling Is Better Than Sex – Available Now! is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

The only thing you can accomplish is to lose a precious time chasing prospects who are not interested for your product, or they are not a fit for your products or services at all.

Many unsuccessful sales people spend their time with customers who are not even close to sales process and to buying, but poorly trained sales person still contact them regularly simply because they are in pipeline and they need to fill their day somehow. Talking to that kind of prospects is just a waste of your and their time.

When you are selling you need to differentiate and trigger events will make this possible. You will have tools to create the opportunity for you, and not just in the visible market where customers are actively looking for provider or supplier, but also in the invisible market – you put them in the market, you are making customers realize that they are on the market now. Without trigger events you can’t force customers to meet with you because you will be just one of many sales guys knocking on their door.

Here are two examples of trigger events:

• Your research shows some trigger events like hiring new 15-20 sales reps or changes in upper management levels: this clearly sends out messages that the company is in need of new office furniture or new computers with software, or maybe a new benefits plan for employees.
• Thousands of corporate turnarounds occur every year. You may have read about a few of them in your local newspaper, but that’s not enough. There are companies in a turnaround phase that affect sales in your area all the time. I suggest keeping abreast of the New York Times or other newspapers like that in your region. Their business page carries a number of turnaround events throughout the company along with web sites by the large accounting firms and graduate business colleges such as Wharton. Turnaround time means change time: new people, new products, new services, and new sales potential for you.

Customers will be positively shocked with your due diligence and fact-finding mission you accomplished with them. When you contact your prospects and on the first conversation you leave them with impression you know their situation very well — you care to help, and you can add value to them, trust me when I say you are much closer to signing a deal than anybody else.

After discovering trigger events, the next steps are to develop the customer’s perception of your unique value. What can you do for them? How your solution can actually create value to them?

Trigger events will give you the clue about the timing too.

More about Trigger Events here:

Selling in 21st Century

Hit or miss doesn’t work in selling

Get the book “Trigger Events”

Differentiate Prospects from Suspects is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

(Earlier this week my latest book Selling IS Better Than Sex became available on Kindle too - get your copy today!)

Did you know that 40% of sales forces will miss their quotas this year; four out of ten salespersons will lose their jobs this year; and over 25% of sales people do not sell enough to cover their cost?

If you are a novice sales rep, seasoned sales veteran or non-sales-savvy entrepreneur, looking for customers… YOU NEED TO READ “TRIGGER EVENTS”

Consider that salespeople require answers to these fundamental questions:

* How am I going to find my next customer?
* How can I differentiate prospects from suspects?
* Can I avoid the uncertainty and inefficiency of cold calling?
* How can I determine my customer’s needs and wants without assuming?
* How can I know if my customer is ready to buy?
* How can I get to presentation and closing faster?

You are not alone here. The issue of getting new customers is a problem in every industry. The problem is that many salespeople are trying to find answers to these questions through methods that were effective in the past but are not suited for today’s buyers – who are skeptical of businesses, resist being sold to and know how to use technology to gain advantages over salespeople.

The book “Trigger Events – How to Find Your Next Customer” is a perfect example of how a major shift can result from using something that’s right there in front of us – in this case, events that create buyer needs.  Get your Kindle copy today!

This book introduces a revolutionary sales paradigm that is fully grounded in today’s realities. It not only answers these fundamental questions (by the way, you can eliminate cold calling altogether) it provides a salesperson with a set of tools that creates the ability to appear in front of a customer with precise knowledge of the customers needs at exactly the time (or even before) the needs are realized by the customer.

All needs are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

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If you prefer printed version, get the soft-cover book Trigger Events today and start selling to new customers tomorrow! Price is only $17.95 and shipping costs are included in the price (North America only)!

Trigger Events also available on Kindle! is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

My latest book Selling IS Better Than Sex is now available on Kindle - get your copy today for only $8.99!

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. In Selling is Better than Sex, I will take you through the essentials of successful selling with a humorous twist; illustrating that business can be fun and should be fun. It will help you realize that selling is more than just a 9 to 5 job. Love what you do and do what you love. It’s about passion…it’s about creating a pathway for your own success and doing it with enthusiasm and zeal.

You’ll learn how to:

* Enjoy the foreplay (sales people call it the “Preparation Phase”)
* Get lucky more often by focusing your activities (in your search for new customers)
* Handle the situation like a pro if you get the cold shoulder (No Means No – or does it?)
* Master the art of “You Show me Yours and I’ll Show You Mine” (Presentation and Negotiation)
* Seal it with a kiss (The Art of Closing)
* Deal with the morning-after (Post-Selling Activities)
* Ask for help if you aren’t sure about what you’re doing (Yes, you can!)
* Hook up  (Build Rapport and Credibility – Develop the Relationship)
* Have happy endings

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! Get your Kindle version today – only $8.99!

—————–

If you rather like to have a physical copy of the book,  order your copy today for only $19.95 and shipping cost is included in the price!

Selling IS Better Than Sex Available on Kindle! is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

Consequently, through unorganized, hit-or-miss methods, his cost of selling is high simply because his methods are not as efficient as they should be.

This does not mean you shouldn’t use your instincts and training well. But it does mean that your sales assumptions must be based in a finding of facts, not guesses.

Using the dart game in the sales profession can lead to failure. You have limited time on your sales call to a prospective buyer and your darts must hit their mark. It’s even more crucial when you use the phone for your sales prospecting activities: many telephone sales calls miss their mark as being off-the-shelf calls that aren’t developed with a specific buyer in mind. Dartboard selling is a quick way to go broke.

Top notch salespeople advise that 75% of a successful sale is due to the pre-flight work. You must make sure you know what direction you want to go in, and you have to ask precise questions that will lead you to confirm needs you recognized through trigger events. You must know what direction to fly before your takeoff.

Most sales people out there are making a huge mistake meeting (or talking over the phone) with their clients unprepared. They think it is enough to schedule the meeting and they will work their magic and close the deal. They will try to break the ice with the customer by talking about the stuff in his office. Then the next misstep is to ask a few questions and not even wait for the answers, but to start with the same old sales pitch.

This kind of salesperson knows all the answers and few features and benefits later they will ask for the business. After hearing few “No’s” from customer they may give up and leave the office with the promise of a follow up a few days later. Unfortunately, the down side is that the customer will probably never return their calls.

Big number of sales people doesn’t take the time to have a conversation with their customers, because they assume that every other customer is like all the others. You will discover that your previous assumptions in sales were fatal many times. Keep those times in the past. It was necessary for you to learn a lesson every salesperson needs to learn, and now is the time to grow and develop your skills and knowledge. You will do so in developing your knowledge about trigger events. It is time to replace assumptions with research.

When you start learning how to recognize trigger events, rather than trying to assume or guess at them, will not only enhance your professional sales career and knowledge, but will increase your sales savvy to what the customer needs.

It is mind-boggling to receive a sales telephone call and the caller spits out a menu of mechanical words. The customer isn’t even, it seems, invited to be part of the conversation. It’s all about the need of the seller. Now when you contact your customers with information collected from recognized trigger events, you will have right questions to ask them, and all you need to do is listen to their answers and reshape your presentation accordingly.

Start with understanding customer’s actual situation and have their needs on your mind, but also find the way to put them on the market by making them realize their yet uncovered needs.

I hope you realize how often you barked up the wrong tree in your prospecting activities, talking to companies without the real need, following up and leaving numerous messages to someone who doesn’t see the value in your product. It is time to move on. Of course, at one time when we were starting sales, we all may have wasted our time that way, calling people from the long list of unqualified prospects we got from our manager, simply because they were in our territory or vertical market.

Now you will have a very powerful tool to change your approach to selling.

You have to understand the positioning of the company, what are they needs, does not matter if they are hidden or visible to public eye.

You need to do this ahead of the first contact as part of your trigger events research. You have to know the customer’s situation better than perhaps they know it, because at the time of presentation of your product, you will have their needs on your mind and prepare your sales presentation accordingly to information you hold.

Think value. Give to the customer what they ask for; give them what they need and more, drive the conversation to the customer’s wants and needs.
Impress them with the depth of your understanding of their position on the market and recent events that can trigger buying process, and they will sign on dotted line.

Very often you can hear how selling is a form of art, how sales people need to be creative and use their imagination, but I am not agreeing with that – sales is more science than anything. Yes you can use imagination and creativity, but after using tools available to you. With the proper tools and techniques you’ll replace guesswork with success.

Even if your company does not have automated system to generate new leads for you, when you learn more about trigger events, you will be able to find your next customer by your own. This will send the message to your manager that you care about your job and you really want to develop your career further, without waiting for someone.

Becoming best in team is an achievable goal and your self-confidence is growing as you establish a competitive advantage towards your colleges and towards your competition.

You don’t need to use old sales excuses anymore, like “territory is too small”, “need more training”, “inadequate sales tools”, “marketing provides no leads”, “we are over priced” etc.

Numbers of sales people who lose their jobs or miss their quota each year are not really important to you anymore, because you are more confident that you know what you doing in your sales role and all thanks to getting new customers from trigger events.

Now you are becoming a real Sales Professional. And it is a good feeling having control over your sales career, isn’t it?

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Get the book Trigger Events today and start selling to new customers tomorrow!

Hit or miss doesn’t work in selling is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8

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.

Did you know 4.0 is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer