Sales Don't Just Happen: 26 Proven Strategies to Increase Sales in Any Market - Softcover

Schiffman, Stephan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0793154634 ISBN 13: 9780793154630

Publisher: Kaplan Publishing, 2002

Synopsis

Sales and motivational trainer Schiffman describes an approach that relies on active selling rather than passive order taking. His 26 strategies for increasing sales include getting the prospect's attention, calling during off-peak hours, emphasizing what you know, and using terminology that gets a positive response. The volume does not contain bibliographical references. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

About this title

About the Author:

Stephan Schiffman is a certified management consultant and the founder of one of the country’s fastest-growing sales training companies. He has helped over 500,000 professionals become more successful through motivational seminars, workshops, and lectures. As a result, he has been rated by Selling Power magazine as the nation’s leading sales prospecting expert. Schiffman is the author of 18 books and numerous magazine and newspaper articles, and is a frequent guest on national radio and television programs.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

I N T R O D U C T I O N

About a year ago, I was talking to a senior member of my company’s management team about an opportunity with a Fortune 500 firm. I said, "What’s up? When are you talking with them next?"

He said, "I’m on top of it. I’m supposed to call them in December."

I said, "You’re on top of it? Have you checked the calendar? It’s October. What are you telling me? Are you telling me that you’re planning on leaving this relationship alone for the next two months, just because they told you you should call back in December?"

He said, "Uh, well, gee, hmmm . . ."

At that point, I picked up a pair of boxing gloves I keep next to my desk for just such an occasion. I flung the boxing gloves in his direction and said, "Go get ’em, Rocky! Make some noise in the ring for me, okay? Find some reason to get us on their calendar between now and the end of the month. Go!"

He took the boxing gloves to his office, then tried to call our contact that morning. As a result, he learned a couple of interesting things. First, our contact had been laid off. Second, the company was undergoing some major structural changes and wouldn’t be working with us for the foreseeable future.

Here’s my question to you: If he hadn’t made that call, and if he’d spent three weeks putting together a killer proposal to pass along to our contact when he made the call in December, how smart would that have been?

You need a certain number of "no" answers to generate a yes answer. . . but you must also avoid wasting too much of your time on no answers that sound like yes answers.

As it stood, we were actually looking at an old-fashioned "no" answer. I’m in sales, so that doesn’t really bother me. What bothers me is being on the fence with anyone. If I’m on the fence with someone, I always feel like I have to assume that one of us has really gotten off the fence, and just hasn’t gotten around to telling the other person yet.

It’s actually good to accumulate "no" answers as long as we recognize them for what they are. That’s because it takes a certain number of no answers to generate a single "yes" answer. Now, it would certainly be nice if the only time you ever had to deal with "no" was when the person actually said to you, "No, don’t call us for a while."

The truth is, though, that if you make it a habit to wait for someone to say, "No, we’re not interested!" or something similar, you may spend too much of your time waiting. Fortunately, there’s a much better definition of no and the yes in sales. To be effective as a salesperson, you must learn to hear yes when people agree to a Next Step with you. And you must learn to hear no when people refuse to give you the kind of specific commitment to short-term action that involves a date and time. We call such a commitment a Next Step. And at my company, if you’re working with us and we don’t have a short-term commitment for a Next Step from you, we want to know how we can get that Next Step from you.

Here’s how we look at Next Steps. If any of the things people say to us while we’re talking on the phone or meeting with them in person results in no Next Step, we have to translate that response in exactly the same way we would if we were to hear the word no.

Think of it this way: Some people do buy from us. Some people don’t buy from us. Most of the people who do buy from us follow a predictable pattern. They give us a Next Step!

So we have to start looking for that pattern. And we have to start thinking about ways to make that pattern more likely to come about.

This book is all about making Next Steps happen. It’s about making noise in the sales cycle. I’ve tried to make sure it’s direct, concise, and full of information you can actually use. I’d love to hear what you think about what shows up between these covers, because it’s basically the distillation of about 30 years of sales and marketing experience. So please get in touch with me at contactus@dei-sales.com to let me know what you thought of Sales Don’t Just Happen.

Are you ready to make some noise?

About this edition

• Publisher: Kaplan Publishing
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0793154634
• ISBN 13: 9780793154630
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208