5 sales insights that are essential for growth

Success starts and ends with your thinking, change your thinking and you change your results. Here are our five secrets to immediate business growth.

Would you like:

  • To make more profit faster, easier and with integrity?
  • More happy clients who pay the rate your solution is worth and refer you?
  • To embrace selling and feeling confident each time you are with a client?

Secret 1: Sales = helping

Think of it like this – there are people that need something solved. These people may need what you have. If you don’t let them know you can help them you are doing them a disservice!

Be positive about your solution

Start off each day and interaction with ‘I’m here to help’

I need to let more people know how my solution can assist them in their lives/work by making them happier, saving money, making money, saving time, creating time.

Secret 2. Understand your customer

Stop trying to sell! Stop trying to ‘persuade’. Stop trying to close.

Move your attention and your focus onto ‘understanding’ your client and how your solution can help them.

Ask questions

Build an arsenal of open-ended questions to keep your client talking about their situation. Have hundreds of questions practised.

Be inquisitive

Your questions should be a natural expansion of what they are saying, It shouldn’t feel like an interview. There should be a flow. It needs to be obvious why you are asking the question.

Secret 3. Stop talking and start listening

The only talking you should be doing is asking intelligent and meaningful questions. 90% of the time the client should be talking. You need to be listening.

Be present – By being prepared for the meeting and clearing all distractions in your mind, you can focus 100% on what your client is saying.

Listen and beware

We have a tendency to hear what we want to hear, jump to conclusions or make assumptions.

Aligning

The client has told you everything they want – NOW forward your solution that aligns with their values, motivation, desires, likes and dislikes.

Secret 4. Do what others will not do

While I was blueberry picking with my 6-year-old he said ‘Mum let’s go through the middle  of the row’ which looked difficult. When I asked him why his response was ‘If you do what everyone else has done you will get what everyone else has got’. That’s what business development is about – finding another way in the door.

Plan

The answer to your dreams is having continuous growth. Business Development professionals know how much time needs to be dedicated to growing the business. They know how many calls and meetings they need to do to exceed target.

Take action consistently

You don’t get thin by eating one healthy meal – and you don’t grow the business doing business development once. Put times in your diary. Stick to it. Be disciplined.

Follow Up

The average follow up needed is 12. Most sales people give up after 3. The hard work has already taken place and then you lose it to a competitor simply because they happen to follow up more times than you. Learn about adding value with your follow ups so it’s not a ‘I’m just follow up’ conversation.

#Secret 5. Be in charge of your own mindset (your state of mind)

Success begins and ends with your mindset. If you think that client won’t buy, you are right. If you think you need to negotiate, you are right. If you think the market is tough, you are right. Conversely, if you think you can make 20 calls a day and the market is buoyant, you are right. If you think it’s easy, you are right. You really are acting out the sum of your thoughts.

Re-frame

One of the easiest ways to flip any negative mindset is to do a reframe. Quickly think of something worse. I read once that if we all wrote our problems on a piece of paper and threw them in a hat, once we saw what others wrote we would soon grab our own out again.

Positive anchor

The client who said thank you, this solution really helped. An email you kept from a happy client. Feel the feelings and hear the words of happy, contented clients.

Gratitude

Start your day with gratitude. It’s no surprise that if your standard of living has increased ten fold from when you were young then you probably start each day with knowing how lucky you are. If you are already blessed, so have no reference point, then take a trip to a shelter or hospital. Or travel to places where 10 living in a room is normal and be ashamed as they say exclaim how lucky they are because they are not on the streets.

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What to do

Learn more:

Grow your business and enhance your sales skills with these sales tips here and many more.

We are running sales training workshops all the time. Both Blended (Online plus Coaching through Video Conferencing) and face-to-face in Sydney.

Find out how people gain instant insights and strategies to create immediate change in their business.

Smarter Selling is sales and mindset coaching for high performing leaders and teams