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November 2015

Are you giving your customers confidence?

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Are you giving your customers confidence?Sales training: learn how to create confidence in your customers
That’s not strange question – if your customers don’t have confidence in you, what you are selling and your organisation, then your chances of getting a sale are tiny. Customers tend to buy when they like you, believe in you, trust you and HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOU. So if you’ve just been with a customer and failed to get the sale, you could do a lot worse than check the following and see if you are guilty of any of these:

1. Did I turn up on time for the meeting? If not, then you started off wrong and it’s hard to get back from that.

2. Was I prepared? Did you have all the things you needed (notebook, pen, samples, proposals, whatever) or did Read More

Is your Ego killing your business?

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Is Ego Killing your Business?Ego taking over - Tadpole Training
If you run a business, you do need to have a certain amount of self-belief – after all, you will come across plenty of people who don’t like what you do, or even think you’re crazy to try. However, if you take it too far and let your ego take over, you could genuinely be impacting on your company’s bottom line, which of course is going to make your job harder and more stressful. Even if your company survives, you may find that once you leave, you were such an enormous part of the business that the whole thing just falls apart.

Is this just bad luck, or is it because of self-obsession, ego, focus on maintaining control and of enjoying high status?

What is the ego?

There are many different definitions of the ego but you could think of it as the part of us that feels the need to be special. It’s that part of us that Read More

Are you talking yourself out of a sale?

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Are you talking yourself out of a sale?Don't talk yourself out of a sale
Michael ran a design business and believed passionately in what he did. He was versatile and so had a good base of potential clients. However, because he was foremost an artist, he struggled with the business transaction side of his work, much preferring to discuss the design and creative elements.

When a potential client was interested in engaging him, he would talk passionately and with knowledge about what was required, taking trouble to understand the requirements of the project. Although he never seemed to directly ask for the work, he often got jobs because he was so clearly a good fit and because people loved his enthusiasm and his obvious skill.

One day he did just this – he met a potential client, who liked him and his work and the project was his!

Michael should have concluded the deal, shaken hands and arranged the start of the job right then. Instead, because he couldn’t quite believe his luck, Michael continued to talk about design, previous clients, his working techniques and anything he could think of. It was during this nervous chatter, that he revealed a previous job he had worked on. His new client was familiar with it (he was in the same industry) and it turned out that he didn’t think much of the final result. To make matters worse, he knew the person who had been in charge of the project and had heard from her that the designer had been difficult to work with – rather too fussy and had missed some important deadlines.

The new client quietly made his excuses and left. Michael never heard from him again.

A hard lesson was learned. 

If you find yourself in a similar situation, there are some simple things you can do:

Once the customer has definitely confirmed they want to buy, then stop talking and deal with the practicalities

In other words, sort out the payments, the order form, the invoice or whatever, and conclude the transaction.

Don’t try and fill the silence

It is human nature to try and fill uncomfortable silences with words, especially if you are nervous. Resist the urge. If you must talk about something, revert to small talk – the weather, the traffic, anything harmless and uncontroversial.

Your customer doesn’t need to know everything

If your customer has decided to buy on the basis of what you have told them already, then they don’t need to know the other 101 features of your product or service. Everyone is slightly different and what matters to one person may not matter to another, so trust that you have said enough.

It can be hard to get customers to say ‘yes’ in the first place. Don’t do all the hard work and end up losing the sale once you’ve won it.

 

Janet is based in Enfield, north London and trains small businesses and entrepreneurs how to sell more. She has recently reached the final of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management’s national awards (BESMA 2016) in the category of Sales Trainer of the Year.

If you enjoyed this article and you would like to receive a free download: Janet’s 8 Proven Sales Tips, please click on this link now.
Click Here for 8 Proven Sales Tips

The best sales people know when to shut up

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The best sales people know when to shut upclosing sales by knowing when to be quiet.
Have you ever been in conversation with someone, there is a lull, no one speaks and you have the strongest urge to fill that silence with something, anything? We human beings don’t like uncomfortable silences and it is a natural reaction to try and fill this void with words or noise of some sort.

Have you noticed the way that time stretches in moments like this? A few seconds can feel like forever. It makes us feel uneasy and we don’t like it. 

Sometimes we take this to extremes. Who hasn’t chattered nervously about the most inane things because we feel we should? And it can be even tougher when we are in front of a customer. I was talking with someone at a business exhibition a few weeks ago and he was telling me how frustrated he was that he could think of several occasions where he had won the deal and then gone and talked himself out of it again! Read More