Our Articles on Communication
- Part of routine sales training is to arm salespeople with “feature sets.” In other words, they contact a prospect and immediately launch into their product’s or service’s features. They then aim, as rapidly as possible, for the close. Unfortunately, very few actually arrive there.
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Happiness is Tied to Knowledge
In this internet age, there is an overwhelming amount of information floating around. Unfortunately, there is much more opinion than there is a fact. Given that we obtain much of our information today from opinion, it truly benefits everyone to really examine the information they get.
Part of your New Year’s resolution should be to accumulate real facts. How can we do that? -
The “pandemic excuse” means delivering sub-par service using the current pandemic as a reason.
Despite the obstacles to service or delivery that the pandemic might present, this would not create a scenario where bad service would be acceptable. In fact, there IS NO valid reason for bad service -
Do Your New Year’s Resolutions Remind You of “Groundhog Day”?
You might remember that amazing and hilarious Bill Murray 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” in which Murray’s character becomes trapped in a time loop, and wakes up every morning finding it’s the exact same day he lived yesterday, with all the exact same events. For anyone who’s ever seen that film, you will never hear the old Sonny and Cher song “I’ve Got You Babe” the same way ever again, as that is the song that’s on Murray’s clock radio every morning when he wakes up. -
Happiness is Tied to Production and Results
As our final topic this month, let’s take up production and results. As salespeople and as business people, in the end, this is what we are all about, isn’t it?
In our last blog on knowledge, we talked about finding the difference between an opinion and a fact. If we don’t notice that difference concerning a piece of information, an opinion could become a standard meaning, something that everyone takes for granted and uses as a foundation for important decisions. When this happens, what impact does it have on production? - Very early on in any sales cycle, you must establish trust. This is, in fact, the first job of a salesperson. In order to sell to a prospect, you must get them to tell you about their lives, hopes, dreams, and problems—which won’t happen unless they trust you enough to tell you what they’re really thinking.
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The Decline of Communication in the Digital Age
When speaking on the topic of communication, I am often asked this question: “Has modern technology improved communication skills?”
More recent generations grew up with this technology—are their communication skills better as a result? - One common method of contact, of course, is cold calling. And if there’s one thing salespeople fear and hate, it’s cold calling! But sometimes you have no choice but to pick up that phone and start calling potential customers. It’s a fact of life, and most of us have had to go through it at one time or another, just to get prospects...
- For prospects and customers, call centers can be a vastly annoying experience. But that’s simply because call centers have strayed a long way from their real purpose—which is to be a coaching center for anyone calling in.
- Every day, salespeople deal with resistance because the sales process is an emotional one. I would like to help mitigate and make less of that resistance and possibly even make the whole sales process enjoyable! Here are a few actions you can adopt, make your own and work into your sales selling habits to help you turn your prospect's resistance into a desire to purchase.
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Happiness is Tied to Communication
This is especially relevant because, in 2020, we were prevented from communicating in many ways. In-person meetings were prohibited. Dining out could not happen, which meant business lunches and dinners did not occur. Live presentations, which were the bread-and-butter of some businesses, could not be done.
Let’s go ahead and permanently restore communication. Here is how we are going to do it. -
How to Improve Your Communication Skills
Whether or not you enjoy talking to people, if you don’t have well-rounded communication skills, you will never achieve what you set out to. The ability to communicate well with almost anyone is universally agreed upon as a key element of both successful selling and success in general.
- You make money to the degree that you can attract attention to your product or service. You attract attention to the degree you communicate outward, in an ever-widening sphere. Communicate as far as you possibly can…and then keep going.
- Manners and communication work hand-in-hand, and in fact, it could be said that one won’t work very well without the other. Just try communicating with bad manners—what you’re trying to say will not get across very well, and if it reaches the other person at all, it’s likely to cause a bad reaction.
- The current definition of a call center agent is someone who answers the phone in a call center, perhaps armed with a list of answers to frequently asked questions, or a list of tech support symptoms and their solutions. They usually do not know the product or service very well and are doing their best to try and answer caller queries within their narrow frame of reference. They may or may not have any kind of goal to make the caller happy or satisfy them, and for that reason, they often don’t.
- One sure way for a call center agent to fail at coaching a caller to a win is to run off a script. A caller can almost always tell when an agent is reading from a script, as they come across totally phony. Right there, the caller is going to be disappointed and a bit frustrated with the service. You yourself have probably had this experience, and you probably remember how happy you were not with it.
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There are many myths about selling, and one of the most common is that a salesperson is born with the ability to sell: “you either have it or you don’t”. For many salespeople success is a hit or miss proposition; some weeks are good, others poor, and many don’t have a high degree of confidence or security in their job.
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Are salespeople interrupted by the new communication technology?
In the past, we usually communicated to each other face to face. The business was done at lunch meetings and we flew or drove to meet our clients in person. In this way, we felt we really knew each other and could maintain our business relationship.
Fast forward to today, and you can surely see the benefits of the advancement of our communications with the emergence of the internet and mobile technology and this will only continue to grow.
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Reviving Communication with Sales CPR
Sales CPR is a method evolved by SELLability through which you can bring sales back from near-death (we like to say that your sales are near death, not totally dead!)
Originally we conducted Sales CPR through live clinics. Corporations could bring us sales that they thought were dead, stuck or “uncloseable.” We would analyze the deal, diagnose the issues, and then provide a prescription for reviving it. If the prescription was followed, the deal came back to life almost every time. -
Re-Opening: You Have a New Business!
As the world opens back up, you are probably going to find yourself having to reach out to prospects and customers you have not spoken to in months.
In effect, you are starting over newly—and in many ways, it is like you have a new business. In doing so, you must not assume prospects and customers have the same view of your products and services they did before the quarantine -
Coming Back: Asking the Right Questions
Once your prospects and customers trust you enough to talk about what is really on their mind, you are then ready to ask them some pertinent questions to strengthen your position with them.
These are questions you probably already know the answer to, but you are not actually asking these questions so you can learn the answers.
It is far more valuable to get prospects and customers to answer them from their point of view so that they examine the answers for themselves... -
We have now asked pertinent questions to strengthen your position with your prospects and customers.
Now, let us ask some more questions.
This time let us ask some survey questions that will coax prospects and customers into examining factors of the current environment and understanding them better.
In this case, you are helping the prospect grasp their own point of view regarding the current scene... -
Coming Back: Your New Message to Your Prospects and Customers
Now you are armed with some very valuable information—and as any marketing professional will tell you, survey information is no good unless you use it.
In this case, you are going to look over the survey, take the majority of answers, and utilize them for some powerful new messaging to your customers and prospects -
The Guide Word That Helps you Establish Communication With any Prospect
There’s one skill that is common in every exceptional sales professional, the art of the conversion.
They know how to establish and develop it, all the while building agreement and gaining the prospect’s trust.
Ironically what the majority of weaker salespeople never seem to realize is that the sale is developed in these early stages through genuine interest and the desire to help, not later on with the help of some magical closing technique.
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The Power of Probing Questions
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Sales People Talk Too Much Part 1: Communication
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Sales People Talk Too Much Part 2: Manners
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Communication Technology and Effect on Sales
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Our Videos on Communication
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Handling Customer’s Purchase Indecision
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Help the Prospect Make a Decision
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Being Prepared for your Presentation
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Establishing Agreement
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Remembering Details of a Presentation
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The Decision Process
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How to Get Your Prospects to Tell You What They Really Think!
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How to Get Your Point Across Without Overwhelming the Prospect
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Arousing Curiosity
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How to Get a Voicemail Returned
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Importance of Manners
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Keeping the Customer’s Attention
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