A few months ago Nicki and I went looking at exercise equipment. I was experiencing sciatica in my left leg (I didn’t know it at the time, but it was caused by a synovial cyst pressing on the nerve between L4 and L5; after an MRI revealed the problem, microsurgery provided the cure), was getting physical therapy treatments at the hospital, and needed to purchase an item for my home exercises. We went to a number of places, including two sports-equipment stores, finally found what I needed at a top-of-the-line exercise-equipment store on Golf Road in Schaumburg.

Author of Selling Fearlessly

There was only one salesperson in the store—a tall, lanky young man in his mid-30s. It took only a few minutes for me to realize I was in the presence of a real pro; I thought he was a terrific salesperson for the following reasons:

1. He was incredibly knowledgeable about every product in the store; the man knew his stuff.  He answered every question like the late Ted Williams talking about the fine points of hitting a baseball; it was impressive.

2. He asked a number of excellent questions directly related to my condition; he wasn’t about to proceed without getting the information he needed to do his job properly.

3. When I asked about a $2,000 piece of equipment (a similar piece of equipment I was using during my sessions at the hospital), he smiled, extolled its virtues, and then told me a $15.00 exercise rope would do the job for me for a heck of a lot less money. He wasn’t interested in selling me something he didn’t think was in my best interest. He was far more interested in establishing a long-term relationship with us than making a specific high-dollar-amount sale. (more…)

According to Leads360′s latest report, The Ultimate Contact Strategy – How to Best Use Phone and Email for Contact and Conversion Success, “Lead response persistence is critical to maximize conversion. Making more than one call and sending even just one email can have a positive impact on lead conversion, yet 50% of leads are never called a second time and 59% of leads never receive an email.”

When leaving a voice message for a new lead keep it simple. Leave your name and number twice – once at the beginning of the message. Again at the end. Refer to the fact that you’re calling about the information they requested. Then, state a benefit of your offering to pique their curiosity to learn more (thus increasing the chances they’ll either return your call or accept your next follow up call.) (more…)

I recently joined a select group of fellow business experts to co-author the book,
In It To Win It: The World’s Leading Experts Reveal Their Top Strategies for Winning in Business and in Life! The book was released by CelebrityPress™ – a leading business book publisher.

In It To Win It: The World’s Leading Experts Reveal Their Top Strategies for Winning in Business and in Life! was released on Thursday, August 2^nd, 2012 and features entrepreneurs and professionals from around the world revealing their top secrets on an array of subjects ranging from health, wealth and marketing, to business success.  Some of the topics covered in the book include meeting client expectations, luxury home marketing, growing your virtual business, keys to highly successful marketing leaders, thinking like an owner, re-engineering your sales force, the psychology of sales and creating loyalty, among others.

On the day of release, In It To Win It reached best-seller status in four Amazon.com categories – reaching #2 in the Direct Marketing category.  The book also reached best-seller status in the Small Business & Entrepreneurship, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship categories.

After such a successful release, I was fortunate to be recognized by The National Academy of Best-Selling Authors™, an organization that honors authors from many of the leading independent best-seller lists.

Order Your Copy of In It to Win It

How do negative thought patterns affect your life? They give you the emotional droops. Your drooping emotions bring on a mental sag. Then your sagging mental powers cause a downturn in your job performance. That downturn leads directly to a sharp decline in your income. The decline in your income gives you more negative thought patterns, and they add more spin to your downward spiral.

We all go into declines. We all slide downhill now and then. Here are a few things you should be continuously doing to keep from getting exposed to depression:

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If you have a nervous or stilted manner when trying to establish rapport with clients, instead of relaxing them, you’ll put them on edge. If you’re nervous, they’ll get nervous and start raising their walls of sales resistance. They’ll question your reasons for wanting to talk with them. They’ll become suspect of your every move.

In selling situations, many of your clients will respond to your demeanor in kind. What that means is that if you come across friendly and non-threatening, they’ll feel friendly and not threatened by you. In other words, you get what you give. That’s why it’s so important to be well-prepared before meeting with your clients. (more…)

We’re going to talk about the inner game of building your business. I believe that the inner game is simply all-important. “The inner game” is a new term for a classic idea explained many different times, many different ways by virtually every success educator, and even philosophers.

In the book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill reveals the secret using the words, “thoughts are things.” Dennis Waitley has worked with U.S. astronauts and Olympic athletes on their inner games. Author Tim Galloway explores the ideas of his books, The Inner Game of Golf, The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner Game of Selling.

Interestingly, there is a never-ending connection between the inner game in sport and the inner game in business, allowing experts like Waitley, Galloway, ex-quarterback Fran Tarkenton and golfer Arnold Palmer, among others, to step back and forth between expounding on success techniques in the athletic and business worlds. (more…)

In the rapport setting stage of selling, your #1 goal, as stated in other blog posts on this site, is to help people to like you, trust you and want to listen to you. If you think about selling situations you’ve been in yourself, you’ll have to admit you have the same preference. The sale just seems to flow more smoothly when you learn that you have something in common with the salesperson. So, part of your job in this stage of the sale is to learn something about your buyers that you have in common and talk about it briefly to demonstrate that commonality.

Here are some areas to consider in consumer sales (B-to-C):

• Are they married?
• Do they have kids? If so, how many? What ages? Are the kids involved in sports, music or other activities?
• Are these people sports fans? What sports? What teams? (Take note if they’re wearing a local team’s jacket, shirt or baseball cap.)
• What part of town do they live in?
• Have they always lived in this city? If not, what area of the country did they move from? If you moved to the area from elsewhere you can briefly talk about first impressions of the area or what they enjoy most about living there. (more…)

I’m proud to announce that my latest book, Selling in Tough Times, has won the 2011 National Trophy for Business Books in the category of Tools & Methods in France.

Here’s a brief except of the book that I hope you find useful:

Steeling Yourself for Survival by Tom
Hopkins from Selling in Tough Times

In order to survive any challenge that negatively impacts your selling career, you need to follow the Boy Scout motto of “being prepared.” So, how do you prepare yourself for some unknown event that may pop up on the horizon?

You begin with a commitment to personal growth. Personal growth is a process of increasing your knowledge and effectiveness so you can serve more, earn more and contribute more to the betterment of yourself, your family and all of humankind. It demands an investment of time, effort and money. Keep in mind that if you’re not moving ahead, you’re falling behind.

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Your primary goal when working with a new potential client is to get them to like you, trust you and want to listen to you. That’s the absolute most basic foundation of all of my training. The reason you take the actions and use the words I teach is that they’ve all been designed and proven to make you likeable, demonstrate trustworthiness, and say something worth listening to.

This is one of the most miniscule strategies I teach, yet it can make or break your career. Don’t dismiss this or take this information lightly because it’s one of the first things people see in an intial contact and it sets the stage for how the rest of your contact goes. (more…)

I’m not trying to get you happily involved in a new supplement here. The vitamins I am referring to are for getting and keeping enthusiasm for your sales career rather than getting physically fit. Take a daily dose of these vitamins and you’ll start closing more sales:

Vitamin D – DISCIPLINE
Discipline is having the ability to do what you don’t want to do when the motivation to do it is gone. Discipline helps you to control your mind and protect your body from the daily pain of rejection a selling career can bring.

Discipline will help you make one more call after a rejection because your daily goal is to end on a positive note.

It will get you out of bed in the morning to face each new selling day with a positive outlook.

It will help you serve your clients better by returning calls and handling challenges as quickly and effectively as possible.

Think about how disciplined you are in your career. Be honest and note any flaws you have. Then discipline yourself to start working on improvements in those areas.

Vitamin E – ENTHUSIASM
People will make buying decisions based more on your enthusiasm for your product or service than on your product knowledge. Don’t believe it? Pay attention the next time you feel motivated to make a purchase. It’ll be fairly likely that the salesperson uses the product themselves or would if they could afford it. They are excited about its features and the benefits owners experience.

Vitamin B – BELIEVABILITY
This vitamin works in connection with Vitamin E above. If you don’t truly believe your product or service is exceptional and can relate the details of its benefits honestly, people will know. They’ll recognize insincerity in your voice, body language or even in your eyes…and they won’t buy.

Vitamin C – COMPREHENSION
Not only must you comprehend the value of your product or service, you must understand the emotional states of your potential clients.

If you are in retail, there’s bound to be a reason your customer is considering the purchase of that expensive pair of jeans, beautiful dress or finely tailored suit. You want to find out and build on those emotions until you have their credit card or check in your cash drawer.

In business sales, purchasing agents or committees want to make wise decisions because they then become the heroes for the company. There’s a certain emotional satisfaction and perhaps some recognition or reward in finding a good solution to a company challenge.

Vitamin A – APPLICATION
When you learn new strategies and techniques for selling, it’s essential that you apply them as soon as possible to a real-life selling situation in order to start benefiting from them. If you don’t, you’re old reflexes will quickly have you reverting back to your previous sales methods that just weren’t cutting it. Application is what helps you develop new habits and achieve new, higher levels of production.

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