Roundup of Sales Tactics and Tips from the Pros
Tactics and tips: It’s an aggressive idea, one that will not get you very far. Bad sales people are always looking for aggressive little tricks that will give them the edge. They sell like they play chess, looking for traps, and surprises, and gotchas.
But sales is less like chess and more like life. People are not marks, or pawns, or targets. While there are some technical things you can do to increase your exposure, this list of tips can be summarized in the following way: Stay away from tactics.
This list of quotes is not intended to be used as bullets for your sales gun. If anything, they are helpful reminders for you to put your sales gun away.
A new client is not another notch on your belt. It is a privilege and responsibility. Here that message repeated in the pros own words:
1. It Is Always About Relationship
You don’t close a sale, you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise. –Patricia Fripp
The sale begins when the customer says yes. -Harvey MacKay
Internalize the Golden Rule of sales that says: All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust. -Bob Burg
This stands in direct opposition to the poisonous attitude of always be closing. That attitude reveals that the only reason you are even talking to a person is to get the money out of their pocket. Once you’ve done that, you’re done. That is the same attitude as the con man and the thief.
Instead of always be closing, try Fripp’s advice. Always be opening a relationship. Of course, you can’t open a sales relationship with much of the world if it depends on A+ credit, or a huge down payment. You will need to employ more generous financing options like those provided by Crest Financial, giving you the opportunity to say YES to more people more of the time.
If you limit you sales relationships to the very rich, then it really isn’t about relationship, just a quick sale.
2. Become a Master of the Follow Up
It is not your customer’s job to remember you. It is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don’t have the chance to forget you. -Patricia Fripp
One of the best ways to do this is to stop front-loading your sales with expensive bonuses and discounts. You are working too hard for the initial sale.
Instead, send your customer a thank you note, with a 20% off coupon on their next visit. Don’t wait until they have had a chance to forget you. Give them a reason to remember you, and to have warm feelings about you long after the initial sale.
3. Don’t Forget to Make a Profit
Profit or perish… There are only two ways to make money: increase sales and decrease costs. -Fred DeLuca
If you are too afraid to charge what your products are worth, they probably aren’t worth what you charge. That’s a freebie from yours truly. You are doing your customers no favor by not making a profit and going out of business.
Deeply discounting and racing to the pricing bottom is not about relationship, but a quick sale. Henry Kissinger offers advice on being more profitable by trimming the fat:
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent. -Henry A. Kissinger
In other words, don’t be the everything store. Be the everything that sells store.
4. Your Customers Are No Different than You
The main reason you don’t want to use aggressive, cynical tactics on your customers is you don’t want them used on you. As a sales person, you know all the tricks. Yet you still buy things. Figure out why and then do that. Or as one of the great ones put it:
Everything that works in sales has been done already. Just keep track of the crap that you buy, or the awesome stuff that you buy, and decide what was the trigger, and then just sell to people like you. It’s really that easy – and that’s what I do. -Tim Ferriss
None of these tips and tactics will fit into a sales gun mentality. You can’t just load them up and fire away.
These tips keep you grounded in a more human approach. Perhaps the best of all sales advice comes from one of the most famous voices of all time:
Treat others the way you would want them to treat you.
