Sales Skills

We all know the expression you only get one chance to make a first impression, well it holds true when it comes to presenting your product to your customer.

For starters, the last thing you want to do when a customer walks into your office is present the first product that pops into your head.

Before you present a product to your customer, you must first find out exactly what it is your customer wants and needs.

The first thing you want to do is introduce yourself to your customer. Offer them a seat and make them feel as comfortable as possible.

Get to know your customer, talk about non-business subjects, this will take some of the pressure off of the both of you and make it easier to talk to one another.

Once you believe that you and your customer have found a comfort level, begin to evaluate your customer s needs.

Start by asking questions to find out his reasons for coming in to see you. Find out what products he currently has and uses. And how much he pays for them. Find out all you can about the company he obtained his products from, and what he thought of the customer service he was provided with.

It is important to know these things for reasons of comparison.

Once you have evaluated your customer and have a pretty good idea of what his needs are, get ready to present the products you have, that you believe to be an ideal match to his needs.

But before you make your presentation, make sure that you are prepared. Have all the materials you need to make your presentation a solid one at your finger tips. Such materials would include, brochures and literature, not only to give to your customer, but to go over with your customer. Unfold the brochure in front of him as you discuss the product. Literature is also a good way to be prepared in case you are hit with a question you can t answer, this will be a good resource for reference.

The point that I am trying to make is Present to your customer a product you believe they will need. Your presentation should be based on the information that you have gathered from your customer during your sales session.

You could be the greatest presenter of products in the world, but if you are presenting products that customers don t need, you ll never sell a thing.

So be sure to evaluate your customers before you start presenting your products.

By Jay

Product knowledge is by far the most important key ingredient to posses when it comes to selling your product.

Before you sell your product, make sure you know it inside and out, you wouldn t want to be caught without an answer if your prospect had a specific question.

Think about it, if you were interested in buying a product from someone and they couldn t answer your simplest of questions about the product, how much faith would you have in it? Probably none.

Here are a few tips on how to get to know your product better:

1. Brochures and Literature

Obtain as much written information as you possibly can on your product. Read up on the features and benefits your product offers until you know them by heart. Keep reading until you can roll every detail off the tip of your tongue including any fee s associated with the product.

Also, keep your brochures handy, open them up in front of your customer and go over the details of your product step by step. Customers love visuals.

2. Roll Play

Role playing is a fun way to get to know your products. You will need two of your associates to help you out with this.

You play the salesman, have one of your co-workers play the customer, and have one of your co-worker s critiquing you.

Have your co-worker playing the customer ask as many questions about the product as he can possibly think of. When you are finished, go over the sales session with the person that critiqued you.

Also, take turns playing each character, playing the customer can give you a great perspective on their point of view. Think about it, how often are you the customer when it comes to buying your companies products? Never.

3. Use the Product

This is perhaps the best way to get to know a product. To actually own, have, and use the product, not only gives you the ability to know it inside and out, you will also be able to tell your customer that you have and use the product, and how wonderful you think it is. This will tell the customer how much you believe in the product and that you have confidence in it.

One of the worst mistakes a sales person can possibly make is to be unprepared.

Take a few minutes out of every day to get to know your products better. Make learning about them fun with the role playing, and concentrate most on the products you know least about.

Remember, the more you know about your product, the easier it will be to sell. Good luck.

By Jay

We hear all the time about all sorts of techniques for closing people in sales situations, and other approaches that are designed for us salespeople to gain more business with our customers and prospects, too. While some of these approaches can be useful, there's just no substitute for what s considered one the best sales techniques around. That being:

Building great rapport with your customers and prospects, and having them feel you're 100% committed to helping them attain their needs, wants, and desires .

But this is not how many salespeople are doing it in their own businesses right now, is it?

Frequently people will get into sales because they see it as a way to make big money. But they then fall into the routine of being forceful in their sales approaches, trying to move the customer in the direction that's best for the salesperson.

The unfortunate reality is these salespeople don't realize their customers can see what they're up to. Somehow these salespeople feel they're not telegraphing what they're doing in any way that can be detected by the customer or prospect they're working with.

With this in mind, just once I'd like to be in a clothing store and hear a salesperson say to the customer, "You know, that doesn't look very good on you at all."

Any salesperson that would tell me this would instantly raise their level of credibility!

Yet there are a great many salespeople out there trying to steer their prospects towards doing deals that may not be the best ones for the prospects, but they're the best ones for the salespeople instead. And once your prospect picks up on this behavior, your relationship with the person is sunk. Now you've become just someone who sells to them, but they know now that they can't trust your judgment and opinion. They have to determine whether or not the product or service will work for them completely independent of anything you now say to them.

The type of salesperson we all want to work with is someone we like who we feel has their number one priority being serving our best needs. When we both like someone and feel they're committed to serving our best interests, we naturally just feel ourselves wanting to work with them.

The same applies for you, too, in your own business.

As an example, do you think if you were the one looking to buy or lease product or service that you could sense if the rep you were working with had your best interests in mind above their own? If your answer to this is "Yes," don't you think the same applies with your own customers and prospects, too? Don't you think they can sense if you're serving their best interests or looking out for your own commission?

Sometimes, for whatever reason, we don't feel our customers and prospects share our same intuitive qualities in this arena. And it can cost us big time, too, if we haven't already become the kind of salesperson who always puts their needs before our own.

Make sure you're adept at developing great rapport with your customers and prospects, and make sure they always understand that serving their best interests is constantly your number one priority.

Once you've mastered this in your own business, people will sense that you're the best choice they could ever make when it's time for them to buy.

By Fox Realtor

Labels: best, sales, techniques