From The Heart Sales Training Blog

A Marketing Idea Guaranteed to Boost Your Sales

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Would you like a marketing idea guaranteed to increase your sales? Would you like to stop people from shopping your product or service and losing business to your competition? Would you like to reduce the amount of rejection you’re receiving? Would you like clients to understand they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by buying from you?

Then offer a guarantee on your product or service. This one marketing idea can increase your sales volume dramatically; however, few companies use it to their advantage. Look around your market and identify how many of your competitors are offering a guarantee. I’m willing to bet very few if any.

A guarantee will set you apart from your competition.

You need to promote your guarantee like any other benefit of your product or service. You need to put your guarantee in print. You need to put it on every ad, sales letter, free report, application, business card and every other piece of paper that finds itself in the hands of an existing or potential client.

You should be shouting it out for your whole market to hear.

How to Craft a Powerful Guarantee

Guarantee that your clients will be so thrilled (not just satisfied) with your product or service they’ll want to share it with everyone they know. You need to offer an unconditional, money back guarantee.

When I talk about a guarantee, I want you to be specific and tell your customers exactly what you will do if they’re not thrilled about your product or service.

What ever guarantee you offer you need to be willing to live up to your guarantee. People will be more likely to buy from you and less likely to shop around to your competition when you offer a strong guarantee. Offering a guarantee will prevent you from over promising and under delivering. If you do then you’ll owe them. If you offer a strong guarantee you’ll be held accountable for providing the quality of service in your guarantee.

You’re probably thinking if I offer a guarantee I’ll go broke. People will use my guarantee to get something for nothing. Part of this concern can be addressed by designing your guarantee to be specific about what you will deliver. Making it clear to your clients as to what they can expect from your product or service.

A second part to this concern is looking at things that you’ve purchased in the past that offered a guarantee. If your purchase didn’t meet up to the claims that were made did you ask for your money back or did you just let it go? Statistically a very small percentage of purchasers will even take you up on your guarantee. However, that doesn’t mean you should provide a worthless guarantee.

Are you still afraid that it will cost too much to give a guarantee?

It will cost you much more if you don’t. If your competition gets wind of this idea and start offering a great guarantee, then your clients will be attracted to your competition and not to you.

Teaching useful marketing ideas is an important part of our sales training programs. A great marketing idea can provide you with new clients for years to come. and with out clients you have no sales.

Popularity: 31% [?]

How To Handle Rejection

Being able to overcome the ill effects of rejection is vital to success in sales.

This technique for handling rejection comes from one of my mentors, Tom Hopkins.

If you focus on this sales prospecting technique when you get rejected you’ll turn the bad feelings into good feelings. If you’re constantly risking rejection, finding it, overcoming it and closing sales you may not need to use this technique. If you’re not doing all these things, you need this technique. It will increase your sales your confidence if you do.

The first step to using this sales prospecting technique is to determine the cash value of each rejection you receive. How do you do that? Let’s say for every sale you close you are paid $500. Then 1 sale = $500.

The second step requires that you’re tracking your contacts-to-closings ratio. The top sales people track this and other information daily. Tracking requires little effort and yields valuable information. For example, when you see negative changes in your tracking information, you become aware of challenges you need to address before they affect your sales.

Let’s say you contact ten people to make a sale. This means your contact-to-closing ratio is ten to one. The top sales people are always striving to improve their closing ratios; however, the ten to one ratio is a reasonable average. Now, 1 sale = $500, 10 contacts = 1 sale, therefore, 1 contact = $50.

If you look at getting paid for each contact instead of each sale you’ll see rejection in a whole new way. Aren’t you paid by the contact and not the sale? After all, if you don’t make contacts, you don’t make sales.

Top sales people look at the value of the activity as well as the result.

Using this sales prospecting technique, making contacts and handling rejection becomes fun. Every time a contact results in a rejection of your product or service you can view the rejection as making money. In the above example you would make $50 for every rejection and be one contact closer to making a sale.

It changes the way you look at things, doesn’t it?

If you place a dollar value on prospecting and rejection as an activity, you will look forward to these activities. You will view the activity as making money and be inclined to do it more often.

Popularity: 37% [?]

How to Design an Effective Cold Calling Script

Do you have an effective cold calling script that makes you feel confident when you pick up the phone? Or are you afraid and feeling like your telephone weighs twenty pounds? A key to building confidence and overcoming the fear of the phone is to have an effective cold calling script.

Although there are more effective ways of reaching prospects, the cold call can still make you money if you have the right script. However, having a cold calling script is not the end all. You need to practice your script over and over until it flows off your tongue. You don’t want to sound like one of those telemarketers reading the words regardless of what you say.

Cold Calling Script Outline

First you should do your homework and find out who the decision maker in the company is and ask for them personally when you call. Address them as Mr. or Ms. and their last name.

Then give them your name and company and thank them for their time and let them know you will be brief.

You should further introduce your self with a short commercial. One sentence that sums up simply and clearly how you can help them solve a problem.

Next ask them a closing question which further shows the benefits of your product or service.

If you get a positive response, close for the appointment.

If you get a no, then you should have another question prepared stating another benefit of your product or service or be direct and if the benefit you are offering important to them?

Also let them know that the appointment they are setting will be brief.

I have many times said to prospects… I need about 10 minutes of your time to show you the benefits of my product or service. At the end of the ten minutes if you believe our product or service is not for you I’ll leave.

Is that fair?

Be prepared with answers to their objections ahead of time. You know what they are so be ready with answers.

Sample Cold Calling Script

Good morning Mr. James, My name is Sally Jones with Lessmony.

I appreciate you giving me a moment of your valuable time this morning. I promise to be brief.

I specialize in helping trucking companies boost productivity and reduce costs.

If I could show you a way to improve productivity and reduce fuel and mobile phone costs, would you be interested?

(If you get a yes, close for the appointment.)

I need about 10 minutes of your time to show you the benefits of my product or service. At the end of the ten minutes if you believe our product or service is not for you I’ll leave.

Is that fair?

Would tomorrow at 10:15 be good or would Wednesday at 2:45 be better?

(Then thank them and restate the time and the location of their office.)

Great, I will see you Wednesday the 29th, 2:45 at 2006 Clearwater Avenue.

(If you get a no, ask another benefit question or rephrase your first question)

So, improving productivity and reducing fuel and mobile phone costs isn’t important to you?

If you feel you may have a good prospect, keep closing, if not hang up and move on to the next.

Much of your success in sales will be determined by how much you prepare. This cold calling script is only one of many, however, it will give you a template to use to get started. Get a script that works for you, memorize it and use it to convert more of your calls to appointments.

Popularity: 35% [?]