The Everything Guide To Being A Sales Rep

Winning Secrets to a Successful - and Profitable - Career!

Ruth Klein

• Publisher: Everything
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781440538223
• Topic: Développement personnel
• Subtopic: Carrières

Successful selling is much more than qualifying prospects and making calls. If you're planning on entering the exciting field of sales, The Everything Guide to Being a Sales Rep is your unique career handbook, with constant "keep positive reminders" and practical applications throughout.Written by a seasoned-and successful-sales professional, The Everything Guide to Being a Sales Rep teaches you the proven five-prong approach to selling:

• Identifying and following the roadmap to sales success
• Understanding the psychology and motivation of sales
• Clarifying goals, prospects, and customer relationships
• Making time to sell, market, and follow up on products and services
• Keeping a positive attitude.

With The Everything Guide to Being a Sales Rep, you'll learn how to use two of your most valuable assets-time and energy-to create an extraordinarily dynamic and profitable selling career.

Chapter 1

Selling Is Everywhere

It takes sales to move products and services. Period! That’s why successful sales reps are worth their weight in gold. You just need to go to companies that depend on them and ask one question: What is a sales rep worth to you who increases sales every quarter with a minimum of cost? Across the board, companies get excited just imagining such a person in their company.

Observing Sales in Daily Life

In the mornings you may enjoy a soy latte at your favorite coffeehouse while reading the Wall Street Journal. As you gaze outside the large window you may see a sign in the bank window across the street: “Visualize income—5% interest.” Next door is a large awning that reads: “Flowers here.” Down the street you may see a banner at the Chinese restaurant: “Now Open.” Within the coffeehouse walls a big poster reads: “Be Bold, Try a Latte.” All these signs really say a single thing: “Please buy what I am selling.”

Look around. Everywhere, someone is selling something. Even professionals such as accountants, attorneys, and financial experts, who may not claim to be in sales, are selling something. If you are representing a product, a service, an idea, or a vision, you are a salesperson. In other words, everyone is in sales.

Sales reps have a lot in common, and these common threads run through many different industries. That is what this book is about: uncovering the common denominators of top sales reps. Every successful undertaking has a formula within certain parameters, however tangible or intangible it may be.

In summary then, a sales rep is anyone who is representing a product, a service, an idea, or a vision and wants someone to “buy” it. This doesn’t have to always mean an exchange of money. You may be trying to get someone to “buy into” your idea, show their support, take some action. For example, management sells its internal culture and ways of doing business to its employees.

Here are some of the ways you are selling. When you try to get your kids up in the morning you’re trying to sell them on the idea of how important school is to their education and how much it matters for them to show up to class. Chances are good that you are sharing with the children the benefits of going to school and how education will help them reach their goals.

When you suggest an idea to your spouse and hope he or she “buys into” it, you’re selling an idea. You not only share your idea but you listen to what the other person wants and how your idea will match up so that they “buy” your idea.

Every time you open your e-mail, you see businesses and others trying to sell you something in the subject header. The subject header of an e-mail is one of the most important selling sentences in the entire sales promotion. Use your subject header to get your message across quickly and get customers interested enough to open the e-mail.

When you try to get your children to eat breakfast in the morning, you’re selling them on the idea of eating well so they have more energy for their minds and bodies to forge ahead on the day’s activities. If your kids play sports you may tell them that eating a good, healthy breakfast will give them more energy to excel in their sport.

When you’re in a meeting at work, you’re selling when you want an employee, a coworker, or the executive team to accept your idea. Selling between colleagues goes on all day long.

When you call a client to check up on the progress of the deal you’re in, you’re in the process of follow-up and customer service, two crucial aspects of selling. Each time you make a follow-up contact you have the opportunity to cement the deal.

Every time you write a report you are selling your ideas, credibility, and findings. You take the time to write a report in a way that is organized and has enough “punch” to sell the information represented in it.

When you use statistics to help support your point of view or product, you’re selling. One of the main reasons you take the time to find and present statistics is that you know that outside, third-person credibility speaks volumes to help sell your ideas, products, and services.

Everyone Is in Sales

Once you recognize that selling goes on everywhere every day, it is easier to accept that you too are selling. If you truly believe that you are in the selling business, the negative emotional blockages that many people associate with “selling” evaporate and change into a strong, positive belief system toward selling. This paradigm shift makes a huge impact on your bottom line, your ability to achieve your goals, and your energy levels. This positive attitude is covered in more detail in Chapter 5.

You’re dying to go on a trip with the guys or the girls. If you’re married, you may need to sell the idea to your partner. If you’re single, maybe you have to sell your friends on the idea of going on a trip and spending money at a time when they’re wanting to save more money—you’re selling.

If you drive along a commercial stretch of road, there probably is a lot of selling going on around you—the cleaners have a sign up promoting a special; the bank is advertising a new interest rate it is selling; the radio commercial is describing the benefits of a product; a parking lot has information about a service emblazoned on a back door or window or awning; the coffeehouse is selling a variety of drinks and foods; the newspaper in the clear plastic stand is selling its stories with attention-grabbing headlines on the front page and teasers for inside sections.

Blogs, or Weblogs, are Internet sites that the sales rep creates and shares with his or her prospects, clients, and anyone else who wants to read them. Blogs have become very instrumental in reaching new prospects and customers because anyone can access them at any time.

When you arrive at your office, suppose you go directly to your first meeting for the day. The person leading it may be selling you on the idea of increasing sales with a new product, a new service beginning next month, or an idea that management wants your support on. As you go through your workday, people inside and outside your office are probably selling you on ideas, even though it may be as mundane as where the two or three of you will eat lunch or where to dangle a line on your next fishing trip. It’s all selling!

Subliminal Selling

Subliminal selling involves using a third party to do the selling. It is a very creative and persuasive method of selling. People are always looking for creative and new ways to “show and tell” to get the message out about their product or service. Here are a few ways subliminal selling is used:

• Product endorsements by celebrities or experts (word-of-mouth selling)
• Product placement in movies
• Publicity-driven endorsements that use people in the public eye to “test” their products
• Editing of movie trailers for films to bring out the excitement, romance, or humor of the experience

Subliminal selling focuses on promoting a product or service without the customer realizing it consciously. It is a very powerful tool in getting others to purchase your product or service.

Your Office Is a Subliminal Selling Point

Holding an event at your place of business can be a great subliminal selling point. Companies benefit from events at their places of business in several ways. First, they provide clients and prospective clients a chance to establish the habit of going to your business. The prospects know where you are and how to get there. You want to make things easy and convenient for your customers in every possible way. Second, your office reflects your hobbies, family, your business philosophy, your organizing style. These are all selling points that say volumes about you. Imagine a financial consultant who works for a large financial firm hosting a cocktail party at his office building. His walls feature positive, motivational quotes framed prominently, and he finds out that a new client—who was only a prospect before attending his cocktail party—had decided to work with him because of the positive statements on his walls. This is a form of subliminal selling.

Subliminal selling can take many forms. If your services include meeting people the old-fashioned way, face-to-face, someone’s compliment of you may be the subliminal message another person needs to decide to start working with you. You may enter a small sandwich and coffee shop planning just to buy coffee. If there are posters on all the walls explaining how different vitamins help your body, and portions of articles from national magazines about health are placed on the wall asymmetrically, and nutritional information is stenciled on and used as wallpaper, the walls may end up selling you a fresh juice!

Even if you don’t have regular face-to-face contact with your customers, you can add a small but high-impact touch that helps sell yourself and your products: With every order you send out, include a little thank-you note.

How to Identify Profitable Selling

Of course you’re in business to make a profit. Even if you’re in the nonprofit world, you’re still in business to make a profit. Without a profit, you wouldn’t be able to help people or provide services and products to your audience. People in the nonprofit world often think, “We’re a not-for-profit business.” However, it is important to keep this question in mind: If you don’t make a profit, how do you help the cause you’re trying to serve?

In business, profit is the extra cash made after paying for the goods, operating expenses, and any other business expenses. A parent may say that the profit, or payoff, that they receive from their investment of raising their children is bringing good and loving adults into the world. The dictionary says a nonprofit organization is one not run for the primary purpose of making a business profit. Profit is not the ultimate goal, but it is still essential: a means toward other ends that are the organization’s goals. Perhaps profit in this case is helping more people.

Dale Carnegie said about profit, “The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.” This speaks clearly to the point that part of business is trial and error, and this is a healthy business practice. Don’t let one mistake discourage you.

Money is only one type of currency for which you exchange goods and services. Other kinds of currency include a feeling of acknowledgment, experience, increased credibility, and emotional satisfaction.

Ways to Determine Profit

How is profit calculated? The formula remains the same no matter what the currency: Profit is what remains after paying for products, services, time, knowledge, and expertise. It can be called the currency flow after expenses and time. There are several types of profit. Let’s look at a few to understand the motivation behind selling.

Money

Businesses need profit in the form of currency—money—to stay alive. No matter how talented or skilled you are, you must make enough money to pay all your expenses, including paying yourself. You may have excellent and well-made products, but you have to make enough money to pay the bills, pay your own salary, and have enough to invest back into the business to succeed. Making good products alone is not enough. Communicating to your customers the reasons they should buy your products and services is an essential part of any sales rep’s business arsenal.

The Reward of Helping Others

Nonprofit organizations’ profit may take the “feel good” form of emotional currency that they get from aiding others. But this good feeling can’t be their only form of profit. In other words, it still takes money to run the organization and meet their goals. Their main goal as a nonprofit may not be to make a monetary profit, but money makes it possible for them to do the wonderful things they do for their members and others in society.

The Satisfaction of Contributing

Selling an idea to your client or business is profitable in terms of emotional currency. All people in sales know how emotionally rewarding it is not only to see sales goals reached or exceeded (and thus knowing they are contributing to the health of the company), but to see their goods and services being used and helping people.

Quality or Brand

Some people buy because of the perceived quality of the product or service. Their main priority is to get good quality, and money does not play an important part in closing the deal. The currency of brand is very strong, especially among certain demographic groups. For example, a young person may buy only a certain brand of athletic shoe because he believes that when he’s wearing these particular shoes, he’ll do better in sports. A woman...

Table of contents

• Cover
• The Everything Guide to Being A Sales Rip
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Top Ten Things Every Sales Rep Should Know
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Selling Is Everywhere
• Chapter 2: Preparing Yourself in Sales
• Chapter 3: Setting Goals
• Chapter 4: Managing Your Schedule
• Chapter 5: The Positive Mind
• Chapter 6: Identifying Your Market
• Chapter 7: Networking for Prospects
• Chapter 8: What to Do When They Say No
• Chapter 9: Building the Relationship
• Chapter 10: Solving the Customer’s Challenge
• Chapter 11: Why People Love to Buy
• Chapter 12: Who Are You to Your Customer?
• Chapter 13: Marketing Is Your Sales Engine
• Chapter 14: Finding the Yes Factor
• Chapter 15: Maintaining the Relationship
• Chapter 16: Negotiations
• Chapter 17: The Telephone As Friend Or Foe
• Chapter 18: Organization As A Success Tool
• Chapter 19: Letting Others Know What You Sell
• Chapter 20: Closing the Sale
• Chapter 21: The Ethics of Selling
• Chapter 22: Using the Internet to Bring in More Sales
• Chapter 23: Tying It All Toget
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Appendix E
• Appendix F
• Index