Nicholas Bate

14 Routes To More Business

1. Follow-up everything.
2. Never lose touch with anybody.
3. Treat every customer individually.
4. Get the small stuff right from minute 1.
5. Be a person they want to talk to.
6. Make more calls.
7. Send more proposals.
8. Ask more customers for leads.
9. Brainstorm at every team meeting: what's working and how can we do more of it?
10. Anticipate the market; predict the client.
11. Make things easy for current customers
12. Make money and invest it in (1) skill development and (2) product innovation
13. Practise thinking differently.
14. Never, ever, ever allow yourself to doubt that you can get a bigger slice of a shrinking pie.

Seven Ways To A Better Sales Pitch

1. Start with a wow. Show you are there to give them value, a solution and talk business.
2. Briefly, oh so briefly, do admin, agenda and introductions.
3. Connect with the audience. Show this is not another generic slide-deck being read to another audience.
4. Explain the solution in jargon-free terms.
5. Take questions.
6. Summarise.
7. Ask for the next stage.

Fix It (1) Selling

(1) Don't sell price, sell the difference. Then the price will be justified. (2) Create difference not by tell but by ask. (3) Ask respects, ask engages, ask allows value to be built. (4) Ask questions which show you understand their needs (5) Ask questions which build urgency and a reason to take action (6) Ask questions which close on that action. (7) Above all, ask questions which remove the implicit and ensure the explicit. Bonus: check out the free PDF Selling Without Tears under the 'Free Stuff' heading on LHS of blog.

7 Selling Tips

1. Never stop proactively selling even when the pipeline is full.  Simply raise your qualification criteria and get even better quality customers.
2. Divide team  meetings into thirds: one on the figures, one on product knowledge and one on sales skills. Then the figures will always be good.
3. Sell with pencil and paper at the start of the meeting. Then-possibly-switch to PowerPoint.
4. Sell first. Then negotiate. Discount as a selling tool is a slippery slope to ruin.
5. Push back on unreasonable customers who are not giving you the time to do something by prefacing the push back with "I want to do an excellent job".
6. Get the marketing guys to come out on some sales calls.
7. Have a plan for the day which ensures you are maximising PCT and CCT; Prospect and Customer Contact Time respectively. It's in that time that sales are made.

Bonus: How To Sell Brilliantly in Good Times and Bad

 

Selling Tips 7

(1) Ensure that you are seen by the client/prospect as an investment not a cost (2) A good ratio of tell to ask is 20:80 (3) Explain benefits rather than list features (4) Present to sell not to show how 'whizzy' your PowerPoint slides are (5) Close 99% of the time for simple feedback that you are heading in the correct direction for the 1% of the time which is to get a PO number. (6) Sell, then negotiate. Don't negotiate to sell (7) Any discount is best attached to a particular deal or if necessary FY; it should not be 'for Life'.

SalesThen9

1. close some deals then have some coffee
2. sell the business then negotiate the discount
3. decide the objective then create some slides
4. train the team then give them tough targets
5. handle the objection then close again
6. listen to the prospect then explain what you can do
7. have a plan for the day then work that plan
8. take a break then return re-motivated
9. listen to a sales audio book on the way to work then arrive super-focused

 

The Seven TLAs You Need When Selling

1. ABC. Always Be Closing. Close every step of the way. Leave nothing to doubt.
2. MMM. You are a Money Making Machine. Make money for your client and they will spend more with you and see you as an investment. Don't be seen as a dead weight cost.
3. LxE. Logic times Emotion. All decisions are a mixture of both.
4. MAN. Money Authority Need. Does the person you are speaking to possess all three?
5. XiA. Excellence in All you do. Be different through your approach, not just your product features.
6. CPY. Company, Product, You. The three areas for differentiation.
7. 888. Stay sane. Stay balanced. 8h work, 8h play, 8h sleep.

Without A Doubt 7

1. There is always a fresh angle on any business. Find yours to maintain competitiveness, profitability and fun.
2. Any system in any business can be improved by giving it attention.  How about if e-mails were never printed? 
3. There are in most businesses very good people-often extraordinarily good people-who are regularly over-looked for promotion. Why? Because they keep their head down and do a great job. Look for those people before they leave or start their own enterprise.
4. Your ability to focus and concentrate on the critical vital few issues is priceless. Treat it as such: look after it.
5. A whole corporation can be turned around 1% at a time. It just needs great leadership to drive that 1%.
6. When things go wrong, customers/clients want to talk to people. Make sure they can in your business.
7. Regular strategic off-sites to think beyond the day-to-day issues will stop your business becoming a commodity/price-fixated business. Book one now with the team.

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