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A Personal Reminder From Charlie

By Charlie Cook | February 1, 2011

Did you grab Tom’s selling secrets?

A few days ago, I wrote you about one of the few salespeople in the world who I look up to. I wrote you about Tom Hopkins who became a millionaire salesperson at the ripe age of 27, and has helped hundreds of companies sell close to a billion dollars. Read More »

The New Rules of Telemarketing Sales

By Jeffrey Dobkin | January 31, 2011

Telemarketing, like spam, sucks – but it can be effective. But… My God, man… the article was correct. Telemarketing guys don’t get blasted enough – especially from people in my own direct marketing industry. And damn it, they deserve it.

Sure, they call themselves direct marketers. And I usually have a lot of compassion for most other direct marketers: we send stuff to you in the mail, you don’t like it, you throw it away. Or you use it to fuel that wood burning stove.

The Secret To Million Dollar Sales

By Charlie Cook | January 27, 2011

Have you ever wished you could increase your sales?

I’m not talking about just one or two more sales, but dozens and dozens?

What’s the secret? Read More »

Which Numbers Translate Into Big Profits

By Charlie Cook | January 25, 2011

Let’s be honest. Are you really determined to grow your business this year? Are you ready to move beyond stagnant sales or a few percentage points of growth?

Enough! There’s no reason to put up with minimal results or to be stuck waiting for something big to happen someday. Especially when the solution is a simple mental trick that anyone can master. Read More »

How Canceled Appointments Can Improve Your Sales

By Jeffrey Mayer | January 21, 2011

On Thursday morning Jill, a sales person, opened her e-mail and found the following messages in her in-box.

Jill, I am going to be out of town on business tomorrow and won’t be able to keep our scheduled appointment. I will e-mail you when I am ready to reschedule. Thanks very much. Stephanie Read More »

Which Two Numbers Can Increase Sales In 2011?

By Charlie Cook | January 11, 2011

Mary called from Baltimore with a question about her web site. She wanted to know what was wrong with it. She had worked hard to put up a site to promote her business but she wasn’t generating enough revenue with it.

Mary had made the mistake that almost every small business owner makes; she was focused on the wrong numbers and it was keeping her from reaching her business goals.

How Getting Over Your Fear Of Cold Calling Will Get You More Sales

By Jeffrey Mayer | January 6, 2011

There’s one area of sales that everybody hates to do…Cold calling – the dreaded task of picking up the phone and calling someone they’ve never spoken to before. Why? ?Because they’re afraid of being rejected.

So What!

10 Sales Killers To Avoid In 2011

By Tom Hopkins | December 31, 2010

Any sales veteran can tell you a story about the one that got away. Veterans who are successful today learned valuable lessons from those situations and, hopefully, never repeated them. As challenging as the business of selling might be for some, losing sales is unbelievably easy. Learn from the mistakes of others so you won’t have many of the sad stories to tell.

Sales Killer #1 – Lack of professional appearance. If you want people to listen to you and heed your advice regarding your product or service, you have to come across both in appearance and demeanor as a professional expert. This includes grooming and the level of confidence you exude. People will buy from you based more on your conviction and enthusiasm for your product than they will your product knowledge.

Sales Killer #2 – Talking too much. When you’re talking, you’re telling. When you ask questions to get clients talking about their needs, you’re selling. You’re finding out what they want to own. Only then can you guide them to the right product or service.

Sales Killer #3 – Your vocabulary. Words create pictures in our minds. Certain words that are inherent to selling turn people off. For example, I caution people in business to avoid using the word “contract” when handling the details of a large sale. We all know that contracts are legally binding documents and require legal efforts to get out of them. If appropriate, call your contract an “agreement,” “form,” or “paperwork.” The mental image is less threatening. Think about other words you use and replace any negative word-picture images with gentler, more positive ones.

Sales Killer #4 – Not investing time in building rapport. Establishing good rapport builds trust. No one will want to make a purchase from someone they don’t like and trust. Don’t just jump right into a presentation on your product. Get to know your client a bit.

Sales Killer #5 – Lack of a qualification system. A certain percentage of the people you talk with will not be good candidates for your product or service. Your challenge is to figure this out as early in your communication with them as possible. Come up with at least 3 or 4 questions the answers to which will tell you if they’re qualified to own your offering.

Anyone who’s ever sold anything – whether toothbrushes, printers, or stocks – can tell you a story about “the one that got away”. You know that story – the sale you were this close to closing – the one that would’ve made your year -only to have your potential client interrupted by an all too familiar distraction.

If you’ve ever sold, you also know if you had changed just one thing – your story might have ended up a lot differently.

The Easy Way To Get Client Testimonials and Increase Sales

By Jeffrey Dobkin | December 24, 2010

How convincingly easy it is to close large accounts when you take out that a big book of recent testimonials and show them how great you are. What? You don’t have a big book of recent testimonials?

If you had one, when people asked you about your services, you’d bring out the huge testimonial tome, and tell them to call any of the many who signed off on their statements of your firm being the best thing since sliced bread or indoor plumbing. When confronted with 100 testimonials, most people won’t call any.

In your normal course of conversation with clients it’s easy to get someone to mention something flattering about you. Someone said something nice about me once. I’ll never forget it. It was in June of 88. Wednesday. We were about three or four gin and tonics in and… OK, no matter about the rest of the story. Man, I was all over them for a written testimonial like a cheap suit. Here’s how you can do it, too.

Even if it’s a simple statement, “Hey, thanks a lot. Nice speaking with you.” Or, “Thanks, I appreciate it.” You can make a testimonial out of it.

“That was a nice thing to say!” you exclaim! Inferring that it was nice of him to say it was nice talking to you, or that he appreciated something you did. Of course, people probably have said much nicer things than these simplistic statements about you, haven’t they? Oh well, me neither.

“Would you mind if I use that as a testimonial?” you continue, big smile on your face and catching them completely off guard.

“OK,” they’ll say without thinking.

Now that they’ve committed, casually ask, “Come to think of it, can you say a few more nice words about my firm (or myself) that I can use – I’ll write them down? Got my pencil ready!” Then smile – it makes a difference. “Keep it clean, though.” you joke. It’s good to sound fresh, like you’ve never asked anyone to do this before, or this is the first time for that joke. Ha!

They’ll say a few words, you smile and nod (which will look good in person, or will look less good over the phone but will sound like you’re smiling) and write down the gist of what they said.

Continue promptly, “Thanks. Thanks so much. Here’s what I’ll do so it’ll be as easy for you. I’ve written down what you’ve said and I’ll send it to you. You can just initial it and send it back – I’ll enclose two copies one for your files, and an envelope to send the other copy back to me. Hey, thanks for doing this.” Insinuating it’s a done deal.

Now that you have a nice approximation of what they’ve said, feel free to admonish it ever so slightly. Use a deft touch… like a great editor whose work is so subtle the author will go back and read his words and never know it was touched by anyone else. Now that’s the mark of a really great editor. You, on the other hand, don’t need to be quite that good. Just go ahead and make your testimonial sound great.

Since it was oral, your client most likely won’t remember what he said exactly – so you can take some liberties here. This is especially true if you’re at a bar and have been for the past 6 hours, you know, like when I got my first testimonial. Or was it 8 hours. I forget. But that’s not important – what’s important is I got this huge tattoo that night and who exactly is Janette. If anyone knows, please call.

If you’re friendly with this client, you can mention how great his new testimonial would look on his own letterhead, but “it certainly isn’t necessary.” Never hurts to drop a hint. Then send the testimonial that he “sort-of said” to him in a printed form.

You can also feel free to send it over to him by fax. It’s fast. If you send the testimonial that he “sort-of said” in a letter. it will take a few days to get to your client and here’s the benefit to this: Over the course of the day or two it takes to draft this statement and send it to the client in a letter, there’s no way they’ll remember what they said, and certainly they won’t remember their exact wording. Plus – if you received this testimonial after a few drinks, you can probably feel free to take great liberties writing what you thought you remembered and what he thought you both said. Or something like that.

Writing a testimonial for a client, unlike soliciting a client’s written testimonial, where most clients prove way beyond a shadow of a doubt they don’t use spell check, you can spell every word correctly. Send them their statement in a letter and as long as it doesn’t look to far out of range I promise you they’ll sign off on it. You’ll have a great, well written and signed testimonial.

For best results, collect a whole set, and don’t be afraid to show it off to new prospects. Tell them you’d be so proud if you had their personal testimonial in there while pushing a pen and paper their way. That’s called “The assumed close.” And that’s another article.

With a half dozen or more great testimonials, you have instant credibility and closing the sale is that much easier. What? You don’t have at least a half dozen recent testimonials?

If you had them, when people asked you about your services, you’d point them to your testimonials, and tell them to call any of the many who signed off on their statements of your firm being the best thing since sliced bread or indoor plumbing. Read More »

How To Boost Sales In One Simple Step

By Ryan Healy | December 20, 2010

Improve Sales by Taking Away Their Freedom

More choice is better… right?

Wrong.

That’s the conclusion of Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice.

Common sense says increased variety and more freedom of choice will make people happier. But studies show it does the exact opposite. It actually makes them unhappy.

Why Is This?

It’s because if they make a decision, they will continually contemplate all the other choices they “sacrificed.” They will wonder if they would have been happier had they made a different decision.

This paradox of choice not only affects happiness; it affects the bottom line as well.

The rule is simple. The more choices you give a buyer, the less likely it will be that he will actually make a decision to buy.

Choices overwhelm people. Too many choices offered at once lead to inaction.

In other words, if you give a person too many ways to say yes, you will make it easier for the person to say no. Making a decision is hard work. It’s emotionally taxing. The more choices and variables involved, the harder it becomes to decide.

Make Choosing Easy!

Instead of offering a bunch of choices, offer one choice only. The choice is to either buy or not buy. The prospect must then decide yes or no. That’s it!

In almost every case, you want to make the decision to purchase as easy and simple as possible.

Buy or not buy; call or not call; request more information or don’t.

What Joe Sugarman Says…

One time Joe Sugarman wrote a newspaper ad selling a watch. His client wanted to sell three styles in three different colors for a total of nine different watches. Joe wanted to only sell one watch: the men’s watch in black.

Joe and his client agreed to an A/B split-test. The results were surprising…

When both versions ran, the ad that featured only one men’s watch out-pulled the other version that featured nine models by a surprising 3 to 1 ratio. In short, for every watch we sold from the ad that featured the nine styles, we sold three in the other ad that showed just the one black watch. (Advertising Secrets of the Written Word, p. 162)

Even prior to this split-test, Joe had told his client, “…offering a customer too many choices [is] a dangerous thing to do.” (p. 161)

This only serves to illustrate the point I’m making. If you want to improve your sales, take away your buyer’s freedom by giving him fewer choices. Not only will he be happier, you’ll make more sales, more money, and more profit.

– Ryan

P.S. For more copywriting tips than you can shake a pen at, skip on over to Copywriting Code.

More choice is better… right? Wrong. That’s the conclusion of Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice.

Common sense says increased variety and more freedom of choice will make people happier. But studies show it does the exact opposite. It actually makes them unhappy.

Why Is This? Read More »

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