Ron Marks

In the past twenty-five years I have seen thousands of sales meetings conducted by managers throughout the world. I can tell within a few moments whether a sales manager is a professional or an amateur by how they begin a sales meeting. I would bet you can too. Of all the things you do as a sales manager, this is the most public thing you do in your business. Holding an excellent sales meeting is a great chance to motivate the team and disseminate information and it is also a chance to lose momentum in a hurry!

Sales managers who have decided to run a sales meeting because they have something important to convey have passed the first test for a successful meeting. They have a purpose! I realize this test seems obvious, but think back to all of the meetings you have been to that had no value or agenda whatsoever.

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The average consumer knows at least three ways to stall or stop a sale. If you only know how to address two of those concerns, what are the odds of closing the sale? Not very good.

Keep a running list of the concerns you hear most often about your product or service. Determine the best ways to address them (perhaps among your sales associates). Then master those words!

After you address the concerns, it’s time to close. It’s been reported that the average decision-maker doesn’t say ‘yes’ to a buying decision until after saying ‘no’ five times. Count ’em, five! If that’s the case, the ‘average’ salesperson has to have at least six closes in their arsenal.

Champions must have even more. Average salespeople look at learning multiple closes as drudgery. Champions recognize each close as giving them another opportunity to serve their clients’ needs.

Are you limiting your opportunities or are you dedicated to mastering more closes? Dedicate yourself to mastering one new close every month.

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This information is copyrighted by Tom Hopkins International, Inc. for reprint permission, contact Judy Slack (judys@tomhopkins.com).

Being a good manager is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together.  The first time you try to fit the pieces together it takes awhile to get everything to fit smoothly.  The next time you attempt to make the pieces fit you are a little more familiar with the pattern and each time after that it becomes more and more natural to easily match everything together and have it all turn out right.  The pieces of the puzzle a manager has to put together are comprised of advertising, recruiting, holding productive meetings, motivating a person who is in an emotional or financial slump, handling types of personalities you don’t relate to and recruiting people that are happy on other jobs, but are ready for change if you follow-up with them properly among other things.  All of these techniques combined together make a great manager.  (more…)

Being a firm believer in the importance of choosing the right words in all situations, I often find myself studying the impact of things I hear. I think about how the words make me feel. Then, I try to turn the situation around to where I capture an understanding of the person who said them and what they really meant. Not many people do this. Few invest the time and effort into studying words, even though how you use them dictates nearly everything about life, relationships and business.

When you reach the level of manager, executive or business owner, you really have to watch what you say and how you say it. You now have a group of people whose lifestyles depend on your business. They will always be on the alert for any sign of challenge in the business that could negatively impact them. You must learn to be crystal clear in your communications, yet use words that evoke the emotional impact you desire. (more…)

Ron Marks

Most sales managers and their companies have terrible timing when it comes to improving the skills of their sales teams. Unfortunately most companies conduct training only when a sales person is new to the company. After they have a few sales under their belts, training stops.

If you were a military leader and had a critical mission in front of you, you would likely train harder and more intensely than ever before. You would want your team’s training to be current in order to be most effective. Yet sales managers send their sales people out into the field each and every day without the slightest bit of current training and skill development. (more…)