Introduction

What is Sales?

Where do Customers come from?

The Traditional Methods
Advertising
Walk In's / Phone In's
Mail Shot / Fax Broadcasting / E-Mail advertising
Cold Calling
Referrals

Get Creative to Get New Customers

Getting the Itch
Beat the Competition
Everybody is in sales
Attract the customers first, then convert them
Be a Customer first, then a Salesman second
Swap Salespeople
Network

Keeping them Forever

Make friends with your Customers
Manage Mistakes Professionally
Manage Complaints Professionally

INTRODUCTION

Selling is a numbers game.

Having great selling skills, developing good product knowledge and being at the right place at the right time are all very important if you are going to be a success in sales. But your strike rate isn't going to change much from one year to the next. If you have to see 20 customers to close 4 sales, your strike rate is 20% (that is a ratio of 5:1) If you keep a record of your strike rate you will see that, apart from seasonal fluctuations, there will be little change month after month.

Your strike rate is an important measurement to keep an eye on. The only way to improve it is to develop better selling skills. If you do the same things this month as you did last month you will get the same results. This may not be a surprise but you will be amazed how many salespeople I come across who say they want to improve their performance, but don't want to change the way they do things. This makes no sense to me.

Okay. So you want to improve your performance so you change the way you do things for the better and your strike rate goes up from 20% to 25%. Next month you see 20 customers and you close 5 of them. Well done!

There is another way to get better results however. Let us say that you don't improve your selling skills, but instead of seeing 20 customers you see 40. Your strike rate will stay the same because you are doing the job in the same way this month as you did last, but your results will be dramatically different.40 Customers at a strike rate of 20% is 8 closed sales.

Selling is a numbers game. Double the number of customers you see and you will double your closed sales. If you are cleaver and have already worked out a favorable commission scheme you may have just doubled your income as well.

This work is all about getting more customers to sell to. We will not be exploring the various ways you can close this new business, that comes in another book, but we will be exploring some traditional and some new ways to get you in front of more potential customers and by doing that improveing your performance dramatically.