Sales Training Articles

Create a Breakthrough in your Business through the Power of Partnerships. What is the 3-Step Power Partnership System that everyone is talking about? Is it the key to success and profits? You bet. And it all begins from the inside out; with your divine purpose, what we call a Partnership with ...

Most salespeople don’t grow up wanting to be salespeople. They grow up thinking that they’re going to become doctors, lawyers, or businessmen and women that leave the “unpleasant” task of selling to someone else. Well guess what, that unpleasant task is now the way you make your living and ...

This is a true story. Over the course of a year, a local branch manager had 7 separate photocopier sales people conduct face to face prospecting calls on her business. However, since the current equipment was on a lease with an expiry date far into the future, it was not the right time in the buying cycle to start the sales process. The branch manager asked each sales rep to call back on the same specified date in the future. Of the 7, only 2 sales reps called back. Only 2! Although this may sound unbelievable, it is more often the rule than the exception.

A time management technique that many books have been written about is planning. Planning comes in many different forms, however, spending five, fifteen, thirty minutes planning will save you hours in execution. It's time well spent. If you're not taking time to plan your like a tumbleweed ...

One of the most important things a manager of a business has to do is to train new employees. It can be a very trying and exhaustive process, but it obviously needs to be done. If your business is dependent on good customer service, the training process becomes exponentially more crucial. These employees are not only your labor force, but they are the face of the company to the average customer. If you’re the manager of a store, the customer will not be dealing with you, ba

Life without Leaders Can groups function without leadership? One of my connections on LinkedIn posed an interesting question that got me thinking. Can a Leaderless Organization Succeed? It really got everyone thinking about what Leadership really is. Whether you’re a manager, salesperson or ...

Dave, I am finding it difficult to manage my personal finances. As a commissioned salesperson, my income varies from month to month. It seems like I'm always struggling with finances. Do you have suggestions for me? Congratulations for having the courage to ask that question. Do I have suggestions? Yep, a bunch of them. First, a little perspective, so you know from where I'm coming. For almost my entire adult life, I have been a commissioned salesperson whose income varied

© 2004nhttp://www.copywritingcourse.com nnI was in shock. Honestly, I shook my head when I read his email. I meant no disrespect; I just couldn’t believe he really felt that way.nn“Karon, I want you to write the sales letter for my site. How much will it cost me?” read his note. After looking at his home page and evaluating his target audience, I didn’t feel a sales letter would be the best type of copy for his site. When I sent him my suggestion he replied with some

For most women, becoming a mother is a turning point in their career. It’s a time in one’s life that’s rife with challenges, frustrations, and uncertainties, but it’s also when many of life’s most rewarding achievements and miraculous moments occur. What many new moms figure out rather quickly ...

It’s no secret that many people in management shouldn’t be there, but some are world class managers and build inspired, dynamic teams. So how can we all be in the latter category and become leaders that others follow because they want to and not because they have to? When I was at business school, and even when I upgraded later in executive management studies, soft skills training was scarce. There has to be an easier and more effective way to acquire these essential soft skills other than through trial and error.

This book review is part of a series that covers the topic of Sales Training . Sales Training is tools and techniques which allow someone to be successful and confident in marketing and sales. Tom Hopkins is the Official Guide to Sales Training . Mastering the Art of Selling Real Estate: Fully Revised and Updated , by Tom Hopkins, is a valuable resource for people interested in Sales Trainer and it is available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble . n Product Description nThir

Here are five hints to enable you to discover potential clients on Instagram and the strategies you can apply to reel them in.rnWith more than 1 billion dynamic month to month accounts, there's something else entirely to Instagram than entertaining images, inspirational statements and individuals carrying on with their best life. As per Instagram, more than 2 million organizations as of now publicize on the informal community month to month including worldwide brands like Bea

Karon Thackston © 2005nhttp://www.copywritingcourse.com nnMechanical spiders have to eat. In fact, they usually have bigger appetites than the real-life spiders you squish under your shoe. What spiders am I talking about? The automated programs sent out by search engines to review and index websites. These "spiders" (sometimes called "bots") are looking for a reason to list your site within the database of their particular search engine. It's hard work roaming around the 'Ne

It’s 2010! And in honor of the new decade I thought we could start of the year with a top 10 list. We look at the first 5 on our top 10 list. You might notice that the entire list is focused on the front end of the sales cycle. Specifically targeting, prospecting and calling net-new leads. That’s because in order to make sales, you have to have more leads and better quality leads. You might remember that I am particularly fond of the expression “every sales problem can

In the past week - I felt like I should've been walking around with 2 thick magnifying glasses duct-taped to my head (and noooooo - I don't need bi-focals!) Examples of really lousy sales tactics and salespeople have been popping up everywhere. (always perfect fodder for a writer like moi!) ...

“So, what do you do?” Such a simple question that lands so many sales and business professionals in hot water. Hang around any conference and listen to how a bunch of “What do you do” conversations unfold, and you’ll hear some pretty anemic attempts at answers. The answers are painful to listen to. The only thing more painful… is when you’re the one who’s not quite sure how to answer the question. If you want to succeed in business or in sales, there’s no ti

In your opinion, what is the single biggest reason many people don’t achieve what they are capable of? Is it because they don’t work hard enough? Maybe. Is it because they don’t have written goals and therefore have no idea were they really want to go? Yes, sometimes, but the biggest monster in ...

Karon Thackston © 2005nhttp://www.copywritingcourse.com nnYou've got a great product or service. Now, how do you make buyers sit up and take notice? How do you get them excited about what you're offering? You have to pull the trigger.nnThere is at least one trigger for every product or service on the market today. Finding it is the hard part. Once you determine what will set your customers in motion, you've won half the battle. This was the case with ForecastWatch.com. nnWit

Before I got married, the most consistent piece of advice for me and my fiancée was, “You must have trust”. Nobody told me how to get trust – only that I had to have it. They didn’t tell me why I needed trust – only that it was necessary to build a successful marriage.nnSales leaders say the same about motivation. To be successful in sales, motivation (just like trust in a marriage) must be present. However, motivation (and how to acquire it) means different things

Clammy hands? Blank mind? Have you become an expert at creative avoidance? No one actually looks forward to cold calling, yet it’s a necessity for successful selling. Happily, there are some simple cold calling techniques you can use to become much more comfortable, move past your fear and enjoy the positive results you want. These cold calling techniques can really help: • Acknowledge your anxiety. Even professional athletes psych themselves up, put on their game face and focus only on desired results.r

Do you have an effective cold calling script that makes you feel confident when you pick up the phone? Or are you afraid and feeling like your telephone weighs twenty pounds? A key to building confidence and overcoming the fear of the phone is to have an effective cold calling script. Although ...

TOP 10 WAYS TO HAVE LOYAL CUSTOMERS FOR LIFEnnIn today's business world it's no longer enough to have satisfied customers - you must constantly delight them in order for them to become loyal Lifelong Customers. Customers who will return to do business with you again and again, year after year, despite your competitors' best efforts to lure them away from you. nnSince it costs 10 times as much to attract a new customer as it does to retain an existing one, it makes good sense

The easiest and simplest way to Buy Iraqi Dinars is to hire a reputed and reliable Iraqi Dinar dealer. You can find all relevant information about the Iraqi Dinar dealers on the internet because most of them have their websites online so that people who want to Buy Iraqi Dinars can seek their services by viewing their website over the internet. You can easily Buy Iraqi Dinars in no minutes time with the help of an authentic Dinar dealer. Therefore, before you Buy Iraqi Dinars

We’ve all been exposed to the notion of the business cycle: customer has need/problem, determines solution to need/problem, makes decision & commitment to purchase, and finally goes through the implementation process. For the B2B salesperson, this cycle must be repeated effectively and efficiently to be successful. In it's basic form, a sale is an exchange of value. Typically, it's an exchange of money for a product or service that the customer believes to be worth the value of parting with his money. How do you make more customers see the value?

© 2003nhttp://www.copywritingcourse.comnnAs a copywriter, I’d love to tell you that every site on the Web needs tons of copy. However, the simple truth is not all do. Many sites simply produce better sales when they use more graphics than words. Since search engines are hungry for words you simply have to use copy if you plan to get ranked high. Quite a dilemma, isn’t it?nnSo what do you do if you’re a graphic designer, if you sell jewelry, or if you have another site

High performance selling is available to anyone who desires it. Knowledge is power. Knowledge creates a competitive edge and powers salespeople to success. There are four things you can do to achieve a measure of high-performance in your sales career. 1. Define your talent. What are you ...

Sales managers are hired to solve problems. They’re also hired to lead, but they end up spending an enormous time solving problems within the sales team. Say a sales person is showing consistently poor performance? Take it to the sales manager. Quarterly sales stink? Let the sales manager handle it. Hiring a new sales person? Let the sales manager take that one. You can’t solve everything, although you may feel that you should – your ability to coach your salespeople so

Punch is a powerful beverage. Leaders at companies drink it and invest in major acquisitions. They expand overseas. They purchase zillion dollar new technologies for their companies. And they embrace all sorts of management philosophies and methods. As sellers, we all have punch. But it’s the rare seller who can get everyone they so desire to tilt their heads back and finish the cup. Sellers know they can help buyers succeed if they would only buy. They know they can create

To improve your sales performance, adopt the Golden Rule mentality.nnThe Golden Rule says to, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It also says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." The Golden Rule mentality in sales, says simply, "Sell unto others as you would have them sell unto you."nn Different Strokes For Different Folks nWhat does this mean? Aren’t there all kinds of different personalities that require different approaches and techniques? Well, yes and n

Wouldn’t you love to know what separates the winners from the losers in sales? Would you love to learn how to achieve the top sales in your profession? Well below are 4 simple secrets that can be the defining difference in your sales. 1. You’re Attitude. You may never have though about this but we actually contact more people through the phone than we do face to face. For this reason we need to be proactive in keeping our attitudes positive because we will without doubt run

When people read the newspaper, it is very rare they read every line of every article. There are just too many articles and too little time! In reality, people only have enough time to scan the paper, reading only the articles where the headline has caught their interest. Similarly, it is rare for prospects to meet with every sales representative who calls. There are just far too many sales representatives and too little time!

I am sure you have heard it said if you want to break a bad habit or make a change in your life you need to work on the new behavior or skill for a minimum of 21 days. Unfortunately, many people seem to think if they can quit smoking for 21 days they will never smoke again. The same goes for losing weight or making other changes in your personal life or your career. Not true! Go to any gym in January and see how many people made the New Years resolution to lose weight. Now g

So you’re at a place where you need to hire employees. Fantastic! How can you improve the odds that you’ll hire well? Follow some basic guidelines. 1. Know what you want The mistake we make is paying attention to the position and not the people. In order to hire effectively you need to have real clarity around what you want in an employee. You can teach someone a task. You can’t teach someone attitude. So, put down on paper what you want in an individual. Start with the simple stuff like: - They come to work on time every day - They are positiver

Whenever you meet new sales prospects be sure to focus on establishing rapport and building relationships. Most salespeople overlook the importance of these two priorities early during the selling process. Instead of reaching for your sales brochures try reaching out to your sales prospects by demonstrating your interest and curiosity about their business and their customers. Look, most sales don't happen during the first sales call - so why even bother to attempt closing the sale.

by Karon Thackston © 2005nhttp://www.copywritingcourse.comnnWhen it comes to search engine optimization, copywriting plays a big role. You want to have excellent copy that appeals to both your visitors and the engines in order to create pages that will rank highly. However, sometimes there can be potential problems with fitting copy into certain types of sites. Due to space constraints, page layout requirements or other issues, some site owners hesitate to include SEO copy t

Link popularity. The term has flooded the ‘Net over the last year, and everybody is in a buzz trying to build link popularity for their sites. But do we really understand what link popularity is, and how it works best? If not, you’re about to find out. nnDebra O’Neil-Mastaler of Alliance Link ( http://www.Alliance-Link.com ) is here to give us the ins and outs of link popularity and how to ensure your linking strategies accomplish your goals.nnKARON: Hi, Debra! It was s

Do you know when the best time is to help your prospects make their first purchase? Timing is everything in marketing. Get it wrong and you can't get your prospects' attention. Get it right and you'll see your revenue grow each month of the year. My daughter was twelve when we got a dog. She couldn't get enough of that cute, cuddly puppy and made good on her promises to take care of it – at first, anyway. The first week she fed, walked and brushed our new dog. The second we

Prospecting has never been harder – or easier. Yes, it’s hard to get responses, but you have all the tools at your finger tips to increase your odds of grabbing the attention of your top contacts and getting a reply. Gone is the dialing for dollars mentality. You can do better than that. You can use these tools to do everything from identifying who your best-odds prospects are to deducing why they’d want to speak with you, writing a powerful email, and ultimately attracting them to you.

I'm sure you'll agree, building rapport and trust with your prospects is one of, if not the most important presentation skills you can learn. It's been said many times, people only buy from people they like and trust. Have you ever had an experience with a salesperson and you have said to ...

By Diane Marie Pinkard “Sales Success with Happiness and Heart” It isn’t what you don’t know that is killing your selling success. Its: What you don’t’ know that you don’t know that is killing your selling success! This simple proclamation, packed with priceless wisdom, makes me think of a very successful business model in the marketplace today that I would like to share with you.

Matt got what he wanted. Mostly. After a shaky start in sales, he invested in training, leaned on his work ethic and honed his execution. It paid off with an eye-popping 543 percent increase in sales. He was now the sales manager and part of his new job was hiring new reps to do what he had done. But it wasn't going well. He made a couple of hiring errors that cost him time and revenue. The candidates were not living up to their billing — not what he wanted. During his call, he lamented, "I wish I knew a better way to do it. How do you do it?"

I'm sure you'll agree, building rapport and trust with your prospects is one of, if not the most important presentation skills you can learn. It's been said many times, people only buy from people they like and trust. Have you ever had an experience with a salesperson and you have said to ...

The word “strategy” means many different things to many different people. To some, the word “strategy” conjures images of war and the battle between armies or countries. To business executives, strategy is part of the planning process created by the CEO or board of directors. But strategy is a bit foreign to many salespeople or, if they embrace the idea, it is simply delegated to an actionable step they must exercise in order to meet their company’s objectives.

The first quarter of the year is now history. If you’ve set goals at the start of the New Year, by this time, you should have your resources in place and a plan of action underway. You may even have gained momentum on the tasks and projects necessary to achieve your goals. Maybe you've had to ...

© 2004, All Rights Reservednhttp://www.copywritingcourse.com/keywordnnWith all the shuffling that’s been seen in the search engine world within the last year, the issue of obvious optimizing has become a hot button. The current line of thinking is that most engines (especially Google) are on the lookout for sites that purposely make an effort to optimize their pages in order to get high rankings. While this theory has not been proven, I agree that obvious optimization is n

I will never forget my first call with Molly Lord. When I made the decision to produce a unique self-help film, I began looking for experts who were willing to share their personal stories of transformation. It was important that each expert share something that had affected them profoundly. I knew such stories would be more engaging than the trite sound bites we often hear in self-help or spiritual films. I wanted the stories to pertain to one of seven keys, and my goal was to share stories that would help to illustrate the importance of each of these keys, one of which is the Key of Faith.

The two most powerful words salespeople can say to prospects and customers are - thank you. People are starving for recognition. But if you don't get recognition you're not likely to give it. Big mistake! A simple thank you goes a long way. Are you trying to create wealth for you and your ...

Yep, its 11pm and your still working on the stuff you brought home. The kids are in bed and so is the spouse. By the way, the spouse is not happy about this either. This is not an isolated situation, rather it is happening more often than not to more people. With company downsizing and the ...

In sales, it can be tempting to think about your existing customers as loyal and satisfied, simply by virtue of the fact that they’re doing business with you more than once. Don’t trick yourself into that kind of thinking! Loyalty and satisfaction find their roots in something deeper than habit. There needs to be some kind of engaging , emotional connection between you and your audience, and the way you make that happen is through the way you communicate with them

© 2003nhttp://www.copywritingcourse.comnnAs a search engine optimization copywriter, I’ve seen my share of keywords. When working with me, clients choose their own keywords (or have someone else choose them) and then send me the list to include in their copy. I must admit, sometimes I’m just amazed at the selections I receive.nnIt’s absolutely imperative that you make wise choices in the area of keywords. Many people simply look at statistics. Others go strictly on the