Duane Sparks

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The Sales Training Series: Who Is This Customer Really?n nA lot of salespeople are good at organizing. Some are even good at sales strategy. But very few know how to use those sales skills to devise an effective, repeatable plan for gaining commitment from customers—a plan that begins to take shape before you make your first sales call.nnIf you can’t answer these questions before the call, uncover the answers during the call.nnThe more you know about your client’s busin

April 6, 2006

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Do You Have Sales Prospecting Woes? Get A Better Strategy! nnIn sales prospecting, your objective most often is to persuade a new customer to agree to meet with you face-to-face. To gain that commitment, you must convince the prospect that you are someone worth meeting. Every customer’s first major buying decision is whether to buy you—the salesperson. They’ll never decide to buy your products before they’ve bought you.nn You must begin to “sell yourself” in your

February 22, 2006

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How Will This Buying Decision Be Made? nnThree-quarters of the secret to professional, strategic selling boils down to asking The Best Questions and listening carefully to the answers. Most of the Best Questions have to do with uncovering the crucial, underlying needs your products or services might serve. But you also must know how to sell to a particular account. Using the same strategy for all customers is a big mistake. The issue is: how do you compete for this customer's

February 9, 2006

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Research shows that salespeople will never reach their performance potential without a well defined sales call procedure that they can follow and learn from. "Winging it" on sales calls has grim consequences - lost sales, extended sell cycles, margin erosion and no clear path to improvement. Bottom line: Your entire sales career can be mediocre if you "wing it."nn Performance improves by as much as 50% when salespeople have a consistent game plan for their sales calls. nnMost

December 8, 2005