6 Selling Tips To Make Your Business Boom

by Steve Jensen (Steve is the Managing Director - Impact Training Corporation.)

Selling is the lifeblood of business and a good sales team will make a MASSIVE difference to the bottom line. Selling is a learnt skill that can be improved with constant practice. Here are 6 selling tips we use to make many businesses boom.

Find The Right People:
Constantly be on the look-out for people who have the potential to make good sales people, even if a position is not currently available. Happy, friendly, approachable people should top your Most-Wanted list, because job skills can be taught but personality and attitude cannot. Other qualities include honesty, hard worker, enthusiasm, and an ability to show initiative and be self-motivated.

Your existing staff members are a good place to start looking for potential candidates. Include job advertisements in the pay packets of your employees or display in the staff room. The advantage of recruiting internally is that you don't have to worry about whether they will fit into your club culture and way of doing business.

Train Your Team
“It is more expensive not to train your people and have them stay. than to train your People and have them leave” Zig Ziglar

All staff, not just your sales team, should know about the eight-step selling cycle: prospecting, initial contact, qualification, the tour/explanation, price presentation, overcoming objections, closing the sale and referrals. When people understand the big picture of a business they feel pride in their knowledge and are more likely to become informed advocates for your club. Also have your sales staff tour and present to the instructors, and have the instructors train the sales people. When each experience's the other's jobs first hand they develop a healthy respect for each other and are more willing to work as a cohesive team.

After any type of workshop training or seminar the implementation and reinforcement process is the key to ensuring that a sales and management team learns and implement all the new selling skills. Continual reinforcement is the major catalyst to ensure success in the utilization of these sales techniques and strategies. To make any training effective, it must be an ongoing process and reinforced regularly by senior staff and management.

Establish Commonality:
Finding something in common in the first 2 minutes will increase the probability of a sale, because the prospect will open up to you and tell you the truth. Many sales people say they understand how to create commonality but when you take a good look at most sales professionals in action, this skill is done poorly and commonality is not established. Sales people who are able to master this magical skill and combine it with a sales process usually are more successful and are have the highest closing rates and make the most out of sales. An easy rule to follow, is to make commonality a priority, this will assist in creating massive rapport with the prospect. Once massive rapport is created the prospect will buy from you easily.

Always Qualify Strongly
Once rapport has been created a successful sales professional will qualify all prospects. The art of qualification is between 80% to 90% of the success in each sale. If you have massive rapport then the prospect will allow you to find their problem. This is crucial; as all sales people must know that the number one motivator of human behavior is to avoid pain then move towards pleasure. So once the prospect has told the sales person their pain and their product or service will be the solution then the sale will usually occur. A great question to use after the problem has been established is ‘How good will it be once (Solution) has been achieved? Listen to the response and then ask, “How would you feel in comparison if everything stayed the same?” listen again, then say “don’t worry by (using your product or service) you be well on the way to rectifying the problem” This can only be done if massive rapport has been established.

Give the Client What They Want
Remember to always give the client what they want. Many sales are lost because the sales person thought they knew best. Listen to what your prospect tells you then tailor each tour or explanation of your product or service to give them a personalized solution. Every purchase is an endeavor by the prospect to find a solution to their problem. If a person comes to a club and after rapport is established and they tell you they want to loose weight because they think they are too big for their liking, all you need to ensure is that they really want the result and then show them how your club will help them get the solution thus reducing their problem. Give the prospect what they want and they will buy. The tour of the club will make or break your sale if the prospect has been qualified.

Ask For The Business
A selling fact is that 68% of sales at not made because they are not asked for. Time and time again sales are lost because the sale person is uncomfortable about asking because they fear rejection. If everything else has been done well then closing the sale should be a natural progression in the conversation. One easy thing to do to increase closing rates is to test close regularly throughout your presentation. This is done by asking questions to test the buy temperature. The more small agreements you receive will assist the prospect in making a larger one later on. The more specific you make a test close the more effective it will be, for example many people use the test close “can you see yourself training here” this is not effective as it is not tailored nor specific. To improve this test close make it specific “ So Christine can you see yourself working with your trainer at the club to reduce weight around your tummy and thighs so your ready for your holiday in December? How good is that going to be?”

The plain fact is, closing is done by just asking a few questions once the solution has been presented. When closing the sale always give the prospect two options to buy, this will increase your success as many sales people just give prospects one choice. To make this easy for you use alternative choice questions like “so which program are you leaning more towards is it the (A program) or the (B program)” then ask for the sale. Never ask them to pay as this will take the prospect into a logical way of thinking and this helps create objections, so always ask the prospect to “Fix it that up”, “Take care of that” or “Look after that” and then again give them two options, “how would you like to take care of that cheque or savings?” The complete closing should be practiced daily and must be second nature for a sales person to perform.

The complete closing sequence would go like this:

“So John which program are you leaning more towards is it the A program or is it the B?” wait for the decision then say “ great all we need to do now is fix up a little but of paperwork to get you ready for your holiday in December, so John how do you want to take care of that, is it cheque or savings?” listen, when they say savings you would say “ so its saving is it?” they will say yes, then you would continue by saying “ “ok I’ll take care of that now and lets get you ready for your trip are you excited?”

Always conclude the conversation by returning to the pleasure they want, as this will have the prospect thinking emotionally thus increase the probability of the sale and reducing the possibility of getting an objection.

Selling is a skill that can be learnt and needs practice daily. To maximize any businesses income potential it is necessary to learn all the basics selling skills and perform them well. Become a continuous student in the art of sales and communication and watch your sales increase and selling will become a lot easier and heaps more fun.