10 ways to boost your sales

Tips & tricks - how to get the most from your efforts as a sales person. If you read this blog post, please do so on the understanding that it is largely here to remind me what I believe in and then to make me do it!

Have a plan and work at it every day
Top sales people know their targets, what they have got to do to achieve them and then focus on doing it. No chatting about reality TV programme at the coffee machine. They plan, set goals and constantly ask themselves “How can I achieve my goals today?”
Prospect for new clients every day
Sales is like a bucket with a hole in the bottom! If you stop filling the bucket, it will soon be empty. It doesn't matter how you fill the bucket - cold calling, networking, referrals, events, PR, marketing, direct mail or white papers - it needs to be topped up every day.

Be genuinely interested in your clients
It's hard to get motivated on the 47th call of the day, but if you can’t get interested in your client, then they wont be interested in you. Being genuinely interested in your client's business is a great way to differentiate yourself.

Ask great questions
Great questions come from two things: The first is being genuinely interested. The second is planning and preparation. Sometimes you have to rehearse your questions - this doesn't mean that you read from a script though. Make a record of your clients’ answers so you can build up a profile of them. Focus on this one area of your business over the next few weeks and it could well make a big difference to your sales pipeline.

Listen to understand
Two ears, one mouth - too many sales people work the other way around! Most sales people filter what they hear, listening for what they want to hear. For this reason, many totally mis crucial pieces of information because it wasn’t what they were wanting to hear at that time. This can kill a sale.

Know your clients
Few people know their clients well enough. This can lose business because if you don't have enough understanding how can you truly help your client.

The information you need could well include size, markets, customers, projects, turnover, values, mission, individuals, individual drivers, future growth plans, exit strategies etc. When you’ve gleaned this information, store it in a single, simple-to-access database that you and your colleagues can easily return to.

Sell solutions, not products
If you’ve ever had problems with trying to get clients to commit or had deals that seemed ‘on’ then went sour, then you were probably selling products not solutions.
As a rule, we shouldn't discuss specific products or solutions until we know our clients’ explicit needs. And these needs should be stated by the client, not you!

Target your perfect customer
Outline your perfect customer on a piece of paper… in detail. Check that there are enough of them to build your business to the size that you want to build it to. Work out how to reach them, and get to work! And don’t tie yourself to customers you don’t want anymore, as you’ll never find the time to approach those you do want.

Be proactive, confident and professional
The key word here is professional - not cocky! Set yourself high standards and strive to maintain them in everything you do. Another popular way of stating this is to be a player not a victim.

Never stop learning
Seek out people that you admire, who take responsibility for their own success. Find out what they believe in, understand how they behave and what they did to achieve their success. Then decide how you can use that information to improve what you do.

This post was based on an article written for Sage ACT! by Gavin Ingham (http://www.gaviningham.net) with a few twists of my own.

Now please excuse me because my bucket needs filling....

Digital native vs digital immigrants?

How do you view technology?

Apparently a chap called Marc Prensky argued there are two types of users of digital technology - Natives and Immigrants. There's an interesting discussion running on linkedin http://linkd.in/a8XHOr