Gentlemen, This Is A Football
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the fact that your busiest season is right around the corner. This is the time of year, while it is slower, to train and fine tune your skills, abilities and knowledge. It is also time to get back to the basics and work on the fundamentals of selling.
This past week the NFL (National Football League) began their training camps. The time of year where grown men who have possibly been playing professional football for years get back to the basics. Seasoned veterans and rookies to the professional game will come together and work on the fundamentals of the game. Further, the rookies are only rookies to the professional game. They may have been playing the sport since they were little boys or for any number of years. Yet, every summer whether they are professional, little league, high school or college players, they restart every year with the basics. They go back to the point where the coach says "Gentlemen this is a football."
This is the point where, every now and again, we as professional salespeople need to go back to training camp. "Salespeople this is a potential customer", now lets look at what we need to do to turn that potential customer into a paying customer. What do we need to do to turn the potential customer into a personal trade, repeat, or referral customer? What questions need to be asked? How do we close the sale and sell additional items? What subjects, or how is the most effective way to get into a meaningful non-business conversation? Do you need to review the methodologies for handling objections? How do we effectively turn-over sales that we can't close and how do we insure that the customer is comfortable with the turn-over?
I can't tell you how many times I've heard a salesperson say to me after a sales seminar, "I used to do most of the things you talked about, I need to get back to doing them". That is exactly the point!
FINAO -
Brad Huisken is President, IAS Training and has been in sales since 1971. Since that time he has been directly involved in all aspects of Sales and Sales Management. His experience and knowledge have enabled him to author the book I'm a Salesman! Not a Ph.D. In addition he has developed several sales and sales management seminars for his company, IAS Training, and authors a weekly newsletter, "Sales Insight."
