Sales

Preparing For Sales Calls

Published

1 month ago

October 30, 2019

Preparing for sales calls. This fear of sales calls usually stem from being rejected. Nobody likes to hear a no, even if you're trained to handle this kind of job. If you’re brave enough to put yourself in a position of being rejected, you will find long-term rewards, especially if you are prepared for the job. Here are some points to consider when preparing for a sales calls.

Personal Greeting

When calling a potential client, be different and come up with a personal greeting. There are agents that simply say "hello" and dive down to their speech. If you’re the client, calls like these are annoying. To avoid offending a potential client, be courteous and greet them professionally. Start your call by saying "Good morning Mrs. Smith" to set the tone and keep your customers at ease.

Introduce Yourself

When making sales calls do not forget to introduce yourself before launching into your spiel. Do not go into details yet. Mentioning what your company does immediately will give clients opportunity to decline your services. They might say that they are happy with so and so company, and you will not have a chance to tell them why you could be more beneficial to them.

Say Thank You

Always thank the receiver of your sales calls for talking to you. Express gratitude by saying something like, "Thank you for taking my call. This won’t take much of your time and will only take a moment so that you can get back to you busy schedule.” Saying thank you shows you know their time is important and recognize they are busy.

Purpose

State the purpose of your sales calls. Remember that you don’t want to waste time, because clients are busy like you. The best way to state your purpose is by asking a question. "What if I can tell you that we can cut your expenses to help you double your profit? Would you be interested in learning more?" Questions like these are more likely to get a yes.

Set Up A Meeting

At this point you are ready to set up a meeting or teleconference, so you can do your presentation. If the receiver is interested, be prepared to do it over the phone.For a face-to-face meeting, offer them 2 alternatives. For example, say, "Mr. Jones, can I drop by your office at 1:30 this afternoon to discuss this further, or how does tomorrow at 10 am sound?" By giving them alternatives you control the time of the meeting. Do not ask, "When are you free?" This will give them time to stall and you might never get that meeting.

Say Thanks For Time

End the sales calls by thanking them for their time and upcoming appointment. Reconfirm the date and time. Ask for directions if you have to. Give them your contact info with the best time to reach you in case they have something to share.

Follow-up

If your meeting is days away, email a follow-up to confirm date and time. Follow the same if the meeting is tomorrow. Keep your follow-up upbeat and concise.

Sales

How To Attract More Clients On LinkedIn

Published

5 days ago

November 30, 2019

Yvonette Sanchez

LinkedIn has over 500 million members in over 200 countries. It is the social media hub for everything professional. But this popularity has a drawback. You can fall easily between the cracks and fail to get noticed. However, there are strategies that can help you stand out and attract more clients. Check these out.

Niche

According to LinkedIn, 2 people sign up every minute. Professionals like the social network because it can help them build a network, find jobs or learn more things about their industry. With so many people on LinkedIn, it can be hard to shine through to your target market. To get over this hurdle, focus on a niche that is specific to your industry or product. Concentrating your efforts there will enable you to become a big fish in a small pond. By becoming an expert on your product or industry, people will look to you for advice. Once you become an authoritative figure, you have credibility and so does your product.

Easy to Find

Don’t get lost in the crowd and stay easy to find by optimizing your profile with keywords clients might use. To do this, add strong keywords to your title and summary so that your profile shows higher up in search results. Remember that you only search for people within your network. To really become easy to find, you need to expand your network to attract more clients. The broader your network, the broader your reach and the more searches you show up in.

Strategic Alliances

You also want to build a stronger relationship with key people in your industry. These people will have a bigger network than you and becoming included in that network can broaden your reach.You can also find professionals who have the same target market as you. Don’t offer the same product or service as they do. Consider offering a reciprocal relationship with them to generate referrals for each of you.These processes will boost your credibility and help to shorten the sales cycle with clients.

Keep It Professional

Making your LinkedIn profile look professional is one of the best ways clients will trust you and to help build your credibility. Include a professional headshot and a copy of your resume without spelling errors. If possible, fill out every section of the profile. To attract more clients, everything should look businesslike because LinkedIn is different from other social networks. It is a place where professionals connect and your profile should reflect that.

Use Tools

Don’t be afraid to use different tools to make it easy for you to find prospective clients. Tools like the LinkedIn Connection Revealer allow users to become more connected and more visible. It allows you to know how many 1st level connections people in your network. It can also be used to network with users that have bigger networks so that you can leverage their platform to promote your product. It is a free plugin for the Google Chrome browser.Other nifty tools you can try include Rapportive for Gmail users that allow you to send out invites without leaving your Gmail inbox. It also taps into your Gmail inbox to pull up anything LinkedIn related like Twitter handles or Skype accounts.LinkedIn is one of the places in the internet to generate business for your company. We hope that these tips will help you attract more clients on this social media platform.

Growth Hacking

5 Tips To Effectively Sell Products Online

Published

5 days ago

November 30, 2019

Yvonette Sanchez

The online marketplace is a great venue for all kinds of entrepreneurs. It’s open 24/7. Another good reason to sell products online is the global reach of the internet. Anybody can buy your product even if they’re on the other side of the planet. However, selling on the internet also has drawbacks. There are shady characters that are looking for ways to break into your website so steal information. There is also a lot of competition on the web. If you want to boost sales and make your brand well-known, consider these 5 tips when selling in cyberspace.

1. Highlight Your Advantage

One of the easiest ways to stand out and sell products online is to highlight your advantage over your competitors. Online shoppers want to know about your product right away without having to wade through tons of information. Give it to them immediately by telling them the benefits of using your product. What do they have to gain by choosing you?

2. Keywords

The world of internet searches is dominated by keywords. If you haven't received inquiries about your product it’s probably because you’re using the wrong keywords. Find out which words are being used by potential customers by using tools like Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Google Insights for Search, or WordTracker. For example, you are selling black shoes by Gregg, you can’t expect to appear on the first page of search results if you simply capitalize on "black shoes". Be more specific and use "black shoes by Gregg" as keywords to get better search results.

3. Let Them Try It Out

Tea bags started out as giveaways to customers to let them try a new batch of tea leaves. The idea stuck and years later we are still using teabags to make a cup of tea. Letting customers sample a product is easy when you have a physical store but it can be a challenge for online merchants. One way to entice people to try your product is to offer attractive discounts or to offer promos like buy one get one.

4. Image Is Everything

Make sure that you have good quality photos of the products you are selling online. Photos are worth a thousand words and they can help drive the point home. If you have poor quality pictures, guests and potential clients will think that you are not a professional and will go somewhere else. Before taking a picture of the product, make sure your lighting is good and you have a good quality camera to ensure that your images are clear. Make sure that you also have minimal background. If this is too much for you, consider hiring a professional photographer to take pictures.

5. The Right Platform

The right digital platform can make sharing easier when you sell products online. E-commerce platforms like Shopify and Etsy are good options. You can also build your own website in user-friendly platforms like SquareSpace. When choosing a platform make sure that it is easy to understand and manage orders. This will make it easier for you to continue making products or offering your services. Also make sure it is mobile-friendly so that you can also capture customers who prefer to use tablets or smartphones.

Business

Salesforce Predicts Shoppers Moving To Mobile Shopping

Published

1 week ago

November 25, 2019

Ginny Nguyen

Analytics have confirmed the presence of shoppers to be on their own mobile smartphones.

Jeff Barnett, CEO of Salesforce Commerce Cloud, shares his team’s vision on what’s to come for commerce in 2017. Shoppers are spotted to be taking their shopping online, strictly on mobile devices. Reports of a rate of 47% of orders from smartphones on U.S. sites grew in a span of a year alone, with costs of $2.08 worth of average spending on across U.S. E-commerce sites. In total, 4% of total traffic growth are summit to U.S. digital commerce sites. The data is looking at an uprise on mobile shopping, but in a downgrade on traditional brick and mortar retail. Discussion on stores making the ultimate decision on either changing their platform or to simply die off are being requested by retailers demanding flexibility in stores. The statics for mobile shopping means a decrease in retail profits. Customers have their attention on their mobile devices, neglecting traditional shopping. This forces retailers to upgrade and expand their business to newer areas.Traditional brick and mortar retailers should shift themselves to mobile in order for their business to stay afloat. Selling online will keep the business staying competitive and consumer needs met. A majority of customers are already online, all retailers need to do is meet with them there. Distribution is made to be an easier process, with the supply being from one location. Already predicting the end of ATMs, shoppers are beginning to ditch cash with cards. With cards, customers are able to get more purchases to be conducted with extreme convenience. This is a win for both parties.About 15% of U.S. malls will be disposed or will be converted into non-rental spaces within the next 10 years. Within 15 to 20 years, Howard Davidowitz, a retail consultant expects a near estimate of half of America's shopping malls to fail. More and more retailers are moving their business online to secure their awareness.“Three trends are upon us, AI, mobile, and chat, put them together, add water and shake, and what do you get, a long abated killer app for mobile commerce”. Rama Ramakrishnan, the Chief Data Scientist says. 2017 will be the year when AI chatbots for commas will soar and shift into mainstream across all stages of the shopping experience. “This time next year, we’ll look back and wonder how we ever shopped without them”.With the promise in accelerated delivery, the mobile shopping experience is only improving. Prediction that our own voices will be the next user interface for shopping in 2017. Through services like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Siri, consumers can do more than web searches, but can also purchase products and services online as well. Customer centricity is becoming everyone’s main task on the use of mobile shopping. Without predicting what consumers want, through online history and searches customers can get exactly what they want in their own time of need.The new shopping method seems to be in favor of the consumers, with new features created to cater shoppers. The evolution of shopping has changed drastically due to technology advancements, their efficiency has allowed many opportunities to open. Although the benefits are in reach for most, traditional retailers much adapt well in order to catch up with the competition. Once the adjustment is complete, finding customers and companies will be much easier.