• Scheduling a second meeting
• Signing a contract
• Adding your site to a media list
• Giving you permission to say to a decision-maker you are seeing later that the client endorses your site/service

1. Your client says, "Can we do a sponsorship?"
   
2. The discussion has covered many topics for more than an hour.
   
3. Your advertiser seems undecided between giving you the business and staying with his current media plan.
   
4. Your advertiser has just said, "This sounds great. I had no idea you had this kind of reach and responsiveness!"

1. If you simply said, "Yes," that would not have been a close, because there is no client action step. Appropriate, specific action steps could be, "If that is available, do you want to book that?" or "Would you like to do that?" Your client then has to commit or decline.
   
2. If you simply moved to the next step, "So, should I put you down for X?" you might get a positive response. However, given that the conversation has been wandering all over for more than an hour, a more natural close would be to a) summarize; b) get agreement from the advertiser; and then c) close. For example, a) "We've covered a lot of ground here. Sounds like you're interested in X, Y, and Z; b) Is that right?" (Client: "Absolutely."); and c) "Great. Then the next step would be for you to send us [X], and then we'll have your ad up and running by Friday. OK?" (Client: "Let's do it.")
   
3. One way to help a client decide in your favor and move forward is to acknowledge the positives of staying with her current media plan and then to enumerate the longer list of positives for adding your site to the plan. Your delivery should be very matter-of-fact. "On the one hand, you like X and Y with your current plan. On the other hand, you said you liked A, B, and C with our site. Right?" (Client: "Yes.") "So, doesn't it make sense to add us to the plan?" (Client: "That does make sense. OK, yes I will.")
   
   
4. If you simply said, "Great," then you didn't close. You only affirmed her enthusiasm. When someone is obviously positive about your site and your proposal, then you can be direct or assumptive in closing. For example, "Great. Does this mean you would like to advertise?" or "Great. When do you want to begin?"

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Purpose, Focus, Confidence, Credibility and Performance are the path to the executive suite. Once there, sales come easily and continuously. You move from vendor to preferred supplier.

The sad truth is that most sales people believe they are high enough – especially for technical sales. What is even more disconcerting is that 90% of the sales people for any company don’t know how to get to, talk with, and perform to the standards of senior executives. If this seems unbelievable, ask any Sales VP or CEO how many senior level relationships they have that can be leveraged for price advantage and/or against competition. You’ll find it is very few.

Purpose

Top dollar sales people know there is a real purpose for being positioned at the top. Budgets are allocated there. Funds are released there - with or without a budget. Any changes to operations, systems or procedures are usually initiated there and are always approved there. Committees bring their recommendations for vendor selections there for approval.

Always ask yourself or your sales person, “What would happen to your chances of being the preferred vendor if your competitor gets there and makes a positive impact?” This should eliminate any doubt about purpose.

Focus

Getting to the top requires focus. If you set your sights there, you’ll figure a way to get there. Caution: Do not ignore the people below on your way to the top. They have to be covered, but realize the job is not finished with subordinates.

Set your scope upward towards senior managers. Target those with P/L responsibility for the division, region, company, etc. where your products/services are used. If you don’t, the ruling party will consider you a commodity that can be substituted or replaced, instead of a valuable resource to protect and use.

Confidence

Confidence is the belief that you belong with these leaders. Unfortunately, the lack of this self-assurance becomes our worst debilitator. The reason for this is that we have been programmed from childhood to fear authority figures. So we gravitate to lower, more comfortable levels and convince ourselves that the decision is made there.

We were also conditioned that selling is a negative profession. Who ever studied to be a sales person? Remember your parents’ words, “Don’t bother people. Don’t ask for favors. You’ll be annoying. You’ll be indebted.” Consequently, we feel afraid of what will happen, and ashamed (too proud or guilty) to ask for introductions, information or even the order.

To destroy self-worth further, there are past rejection experiences from meetings with executives that went nowhere and rejection from subordinates saying in so many words, “Your not important enough to go beyond me.” All of this conditioning has left many sales people without the confidence to charge ahead and make contacts and relationships.

The solution to this overwhelming intimidation factor is to prepare for the meeting and prepare yourself. Get help from your information / introduction network. Rehearse what will be said and done in the meeting. Reprogram your thinking that this working person with a title is no different than you. Overcome any self-doubt by realizing you are feeling afraid and fear is just negative projection. Pump yourself up to positively project. Think, “This person wants to see me and our meeting will be great for both of us. If not, it’s his/her loss – not mine.”

Credibility

Credibility is the door opener. If you’ve got it you can see this person anytime. Credibility means the person respects you, trusts you and believes you will deliver him/her results. Most sales people develop credibility at lower levels. Establishing credibility at higher corporate levels is far more difficult because access is limited and what needs to be done and said is very different. Slip here with boring, annoying or no-impact selling approaches and you’ll ruin any chance of credibility, further access and a relationship.

The key to gaining credibility is to use your Golden Network to transfer their credibility with the higher level people to you. They need to refer you, introduce you, and help you establish respect. Once you’re there, remember that to keep this busy exec’s attention you must talk about what’s important to him or her. If you don’t know, lead with questions to learn how this person thinks and acts. Keep in mind that senior level people love to talk about themselves and their problems. Once they realize you understand them, they may then listen to how you can help.

Performance

Finally, performance provides the real basis for attaining access, developing credibility and establishing relationships with senior executives. However, your performance at this level will be judged on what it does for the individual executive. It is now personal. Not only must the company benefit, but the executive must believe his/her career has been enhanced or protected by doing business with you.

Learn what the chief values and structure your proposition in a way that shows that she/he can get it better and with less risk of failure from you. Then deliver it. Measure the results by his or her standards and be sure the executive is satisfied. If so, that’s great. Ask for more business. If not, set a course to bring the results to where they need to be.

Conclusion

Working your existing accounts for more sales is so much easier than new sales to new customers. However, it requires getting positioned. This takes skills and a sensitivity that most people have never learned. Purpose, focus, confidence, credibility and performance are the route to the top. Learn how to implement them and never stop climbing until they offer you your own office in their C-Suite.

About The Author:
Sam Manfer is an entertaining key note speaker and delivers in-depth sales seminars for those anxious to increase sales. Sam makes it easy for any sales person to feel comfortable connecting with C-Level leaders. For more inspiring articles and to receive your free Selling Wisdoms E-zine with powerful selling tips visit his Advanced Sales Training Website. His books, CDs and manuals explain how to ask and what to ask that will get you right to where you want to be.

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"Slow" is in your head. It is more state-of-mind than it is reality. Typically "slow" months hold great opportunities for those with a plan to make things happen while others are content to wait to see what happens. Consider which of the following "fast start" strategies will best add value to your career and resolve to implement them now!

1. Finish the current month with a flurry . One key to starting next month fast is to gather momentum as you finish this month. You must also plant seeds so that when next month begins, you are not starting it from scratch. An effective strategy for accomplishing this is to initiate a phone blitz to achieve the following:

A). Close all working deals. Offer an end of the month, "desire for gain/fear of loss" reason for buying now! Both desire for gain and fear of loss are terrific motivations to buy. When you can use both techniques in a single closing phrase you compound your chances of creating the urgency necessary to make the sale:

B). Contact your customer base to thank them for their business and ask for referrals.

Bring closure to the clients who have lined your pockets with profits. While you're at it, offer your services to their friends/associates who might have mentioned needing what you sell in the future.

C ). Call all "dead" deals that you've had the past quarter and may have given up on. The chances are that some of these clients never bought anything and may now be ready to move forward with the purchase. If time permits, you can also contact those who failed to buy from you prior to the past quarter.

2. Set activity goals for each day and results goals for each week.

Activity goals are actions you take that will lead to a sale, whereas results goals are the sale! Remember a key sales tenet for success: The right activities, consistently executed, will bring forth the desired results.

Activity goals may include but are not limited to:

1. A specific number of appointments.
2. A specific number of phone calls to your customer base as outlined in the prior point.
3. A specific number of calls to all working deals as outlined in the prior point.
4. A specific number of calls to all "dead" deals as outlined in the prior point.

Mailers or email blasts offering month-end reasons to buy.
By putting activities in motion to finish your current month strong, you inevitably build momentum and create carryover business that gets the next month off to a faster start. Whereas if you finish the current month with a dried up pipeline of prospects, it could take half of the next month to get sales traction moving in your favor.

3. Institute Phase II of your phone blitz after the first-of-the-month.

If incentives and inventories allow, initiate a second phone blitz and/or mail blitz after the first-of-the-month to offer the good news to prospects that the incentive has been extended for a limited time; that new inventory has arrived and the like. Focus your efforts on building one final dose of urgency to start the new month fast!

4. "Camp out" in the service drive for early morning prospects. Obviously, this strategy is primarily effective for the thousands of Insiders reading this article who are in the automotive retail business. Depending upon your industry, you may be able to devise your own version of this strategy to help build your sales count without having to passively sit back and hope that something happens.

While working the service drive will consistently produce great results, there are two times in particular when the fruit there is more plentiful: end-of-year and during the summer. This is when people are more mentally ready and open to giving up the old and moving into something new. To maximize your opportunities, have a card made up that says something to this effect:

"Because of sales incentives and factory pressures to reduce inventory, NOW is the best time of the year to trade in your old vehicle and get a great deal on a new car/truck or van. If you'd like to learn more about our current purchase incentives and special trade-in allowances, please contact your salesperson at this dealership. If, for any reason, you are not already working with a sales professional here, it will be my pleasure to serve you."

This type of card plants an effective seed into your prospect's mind as it gives them a reason to purchase NOW. It also protects the other salespeople in the dealership as you direct the customer to their representative. There is a very good chance that the prospect no longer has a salesperson at the dealership; that he never had one there as a result of buying his vehicle elsewhere, or that he doesn't like the person he dealt with previously and will opt to do business with you.

5. Double your focus and efforts to work with urgency and effectiveness during the 10/20 window of the month.

While the first days of the month often have a buzz activity that carries over from the prior month, and the final ten days of the month naturally increase in intensity, your 10-20 window are often the key to having consistently great months. During this time, the natural instinct of salespeople is often to coast and wait for the momentum to turn back up for month-end. By consciously re-doubling your efforts to work the phones; re-contact your customer base; camp out in the service drive and the like, you can pick up additional sales that you would ordinarily miss due to complacency.

About The Author:
Peak performance author, columnist, trainer, speaker and radio show host for sales, management and leadership, Dave Anderson walks the talk as a leader. He has led some of the most successful retail automotive dealership in the country—the most recent dealer group he led had over $300,000,000 in annual sales—and now gives 150 presentations, workshops and speeches annually on sales and leadership development around the globe.

Dave is author of over 50 training programs on sales, management and leadership including the books, Selling Above The Crowd: 365 Strategies For Sales Excellence and No Nonsense Leadership: Real World Strategies To Maximize Personal & Corporate Potential. Dave authors a monthly leadership column for Dealer magazine, publishes a monthly leadership newsletter and hosts the weekly radio talk show, Dave Anderson’s Learn To Lead Hour. His books, cassettes, videos, newsletter, column, web articles and live presentations pull no punches and provide real world strategies for peak performance in business and in life.

Dave is a member of the National Speaker's Association and is a featured speaker at conventions worldwide.

Dave is president of the Dave Anderson's Learn To Lead and LearnToLead.com, a cutting edge web site providing hundreds of free training resources to thousands of subscribers in over 30 countries.

Contact Information:
The Dave Anderson Corporation
P.O. Box 1119
Los Altos CA 94024
Phone: 800-519-8224
www.learntolead.com
dave@learntolead.com

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There are only 4 outcomes to any sales situation: a sale, no sale, a continuance and an advance.

The first two outcomes are easy to comprehend. But the line between continuance and advance is the line between mediocre reps and immensely successful reps. If you’re interested in reducing the sales cycle, working on better qualified leads and generating more sales, pay attention.

The Continuance

Unfortunately, the vast majority of reps are superb at “continuing” a sale. A continuance is where it appears that the sale cycle is being closed but in reality, it is only being extended. This is sometimes a tough concept for reps to understand. Here are some examples to illustrate what I mean:

• I’ll send you some product brochures in the mail
  
• I will give you a call sometime next week to discuss the proposal
  
• Give the sample a try and we’ll review it latter on
  
• I’ll fax you the material and we’ll go over it
  
• Let’s meet sometime next month and we’ll assess your need then

On the surface, these statements would suggest that the sale is moving forward. Not so. Did you notice the two common denominators?

1. There is no firm commitment on behalf of the prospect or customer to take specific action.
2. There is no firm follow up date.

Some sales will, of course, occur but if you are interested in getting more sales in less time, and if you would like to disqualify those clients who are not actually interested in your product or service, then you must learn to “advance” the sale.

The Advance

The advance differs from a continuance in that it gets the client to take a specific action within a given timeframe.

Here’s how the above examples would look/sound like with an advance:

• I’ll send you a product brochure on Nite-White in the mail and what I would like to recommend is that we review these together next Thursday. How does 10:15 look to you?
  
• I’ll give you a call next week to discuss the MEA proposal. Suppose we schedule Wednesday at 2:20?
  
• I’ll be glad to provide you with an Atrium sample. Specifically when will you use it? What is the criteria for evaluation? What I would like to recommend is that we set up an appointment for Friday, at 8:30 a.m. to review your evaluation. How does that sound?
  
• I’ll fax over the material right now. Can you review them so that we go over documents together in about 45 minutes?
  
• Let’s set up an appointment for next month, say the 15th, at 2:45. At that time we can reassess your situation. Is that date okay with you?

Do you see the difference?

Each example suggests a specific action that must or should be taken by the client. This creates active participation from the client which moves the sale further through the cycle. Next, each example has a specific time frame for the accomplishment of the action which creates commitment. This is a powerful one-two sales punch.

If…

If the client will NOT commit to any action or follow up, it suggests that perhaps their interest is not particularly strong at this point in time.

If the client will NOT commit to the action, then withdraw the advance. For example,

“Ms. Finn, I get the impression that perhaps now is not the best time to send the literature. If it is not possible to set up a review date, perhaps it would be best if we waited and I call you at a later date.”

It takes guts to do this but what it really does is allow you focus only on genuine sales opportunities. You don’t waste time “watering dead plants.”

This is an extremely powerful technique. Use it and advance the sale!

About The Author:
Since 1991, Jim Domanski is the President of Teleconcepts Consulting Inc. and works with companies and individuals who are frustrated with the results they have been getting when using the telephone to generate leads and sales. For more information visit: www.teleconceptsconsulting.com or call 613 591 1998.

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