“There are no secrets in sales. Instead, there are ingredients that can be identified, learned and embedded into daily routines.
Do the right things and you will enjoy excellent results.”
MICHAEL SIMPSON, 29i

Selling “skill” is best achieved via real-world practice supported by guidance from others who have taken the same career path previously and are generous enough to share their learning experiences. I’m a big believer in constant learning and refining of essential ingredients–not just from books, but from the day-to-day application of the selling process. Every month, I’m out in the field training sales professionals and helping them to overcome their lack of balanced ingredients. It’s amazing how many new skills and strategies you can pick up when talking with other successful sales professionals who are on top of their game. It’s critical to align yourself with the top performers. Whether you like it or not, you are the product of the people you are around most. The key to expanding your ingredients and perfecting your sales psyche is to have a constant high-quality stream of resources and top quality people from which to collect your information.

The 29 ingredients for sales success have been identified, hand-picked and analyzed because of their importance to the makeup of a top producing sales professional. Never before has such an in-depth analysis been performed to understand how ingredients, experience and sales skills mold successful producers. They are:

The basics of Ingredients

When sales are robust and things are going well, there is no reason to fix things. When things go wrong, when you feel the walls collapsing around you, it’s time to get back to basics and hit the reset switch. Getting back to basics will enable you to reexamine your ingredients and your current psyche. This is one of the greatest abilities we have as human beings, we can stop – take a look around – and adjust to the current environment. The purpose of “Hitting the Reset Switch” is to examine your sales approach get rid of bad ingredients and focus on building positive ingredients that compliment you and your personality. Sometimes this means you may have to modify your behavior in a certain way to get in line with your vision of the perfect you.

“To attain knowledge, add things every day; to attain wisdom, remove things every day.” – Lao Zi, Tao TeChing

One way to remove bad ingredients is by constantly adding fresh ingredients that push the others out. The reason why we hear the term burnout so much in the sales profession is because many sales professionals stop learning and studying new ways to be effective. You see, you need to be persistent and constantly upgrade your psyche with new information and remove things that do not work. Learning is how you avoid becoming stagnant and a good way to grow your sales wisdom.

If you are new to sales make sure you start with the basics, as I did above. Do not try to be someone else or shoehorn your sales approach to mimic the top dogs. You become a top dog with your own set of ingredients that fit your values and beliefs. 29i will help you identify and obtain the ingredients necessary to propel you into sales greatness so you can truly become a top sales professional.
Your desire to achieve sales greatness starts with a commitment to analyze every ingredient with an open-minded approach. Then, you will mentally set the stage to strategically alter or implement each ingredient into your psyche. Finally, you will tie all the ingredients together into one award winning master sales psyche.

Ingredients and the Selling Process

Selling success is measured in terms of deals or products sold as a direct result of personal selling efforts. For this reason, it is necessary to fully understand the selling process and the basic activities required. Whether it is convincing someone to make a purchase, accept a point-of-view, change attitudes or an infinite number of other behavioral decisions, it all comes down to persuasive communication or selling. Here are the 7 steps in the selling process:

1. Prospecting
2. Interviewing
3. Analyze Needs
4. Presenting
5. Negotiation
6. Closing
7. Follow-up

The selling process is a set of basic activities undertaken to successfully obtain a commitment and begin building long-term customer relations. The basic activities outlined above apply to all forms of selling and can be adapted to most selling situations.

It should be noted that while I present these activities in an order that is suggestive of a step-by-step approach, in many selling situations this will not be the case. Additionally, you will encounter circumstances in which all activities are required but the order these are carried out may be disrupted. For instance, you may be confronted with a buyer who is resistant to making a purchase even before you have made a presentation. This will likely force you to immediately adjust your selling process (see “Adaptability” ingredient).

Examining the sales process you can see how the 29 essential ingredients play an important role. Prospecting is an ingredient, interviewing is part of the Listening ingredient, analyzing needs is also part of the Listening ingredient, presenting is part of the Sales Communication ingredient, Negotiation is an ingredient, Closing is an ingredient and follow-up is also part of the Sales Communication ingredient. These are the base ingredients needed for the selling process to work and when combined strategically with other essential ingredients they become the backbone to master your sales psyche.

QUICK TIPS

Discard what is not useful. Sometimes knowing what to let go of is the best knowledge we can have. Not everything or everyone you learn from will help you hone your sales psyche, so take what’s useful and discard the rest.

Understand that most of the 29 essential ingredients may work independently but usually require other ingredients in order to work well for you.

While handling sales objections may sound like a difficult part of selling, most successful salespeople including myself actually welcome and even encourage it as part of the selling process. Why? Because it is an indication the prospect is paying attention to the presentation and may even have an interest in the product if the objection can be effectively addressed.

Objections are a requirement to a successful sales day. In fact, without them, you’re likely not engaging your prospects and customers. It’s the introduction of an objection that can spark a flow of information that can help you further qualify a sales opportunity and better understand the needs and current environment of your prospects. For this reason, you should work to embrace and understand the true objections you might be facing.

To overcome objections, sales professionals must make sure they clearly understand the prospect’s concern. Sometimes prospects say one thing that appears to be an objection to the product but, in fact, they have another issue that is preventing them from agreeing to a purchase. Understanding the true objection(s) will help you get one step closer to where you need to be – whether it’s to the next stage with your current prospect or investing your time elsewhere. Sales professionals are rarely able to make the sale unless this resistance is overcome.

When individuals or companies have an objection to making a purchase, it’s one or even a combination of the following eight reasons. Review them… know them, and when you’ve hit a wall, check your situation against them and make adjustments to align yourself with the sale.
1.lack of perceived value in the product or service
2.lack of perceived urgency in purchasing the offering
3.perception of inferiority to a competitor or other offering
4.internal political issue between parties/departments
5.lack of funds to purchase the offering
6.personal issue with the decision maker(s)
7.initiative with an external party
8.”it’s safer to do nothing” perception

Selling is rejection intensive. It is absolutely critical to understand and learn to appreciate that a larger percent of potential new customers will reject you and your offering more than accept it. Selling is a numbers game and unfortunately to be successful at it you have to learn that customer rejection is not personal and “no’s” can be as valuable as “yes’s”!

Michael Simpson is the Author of 29i – Mastering Your Sales Psyche and a national speaker and sales trainer. Learn more online at www.michaelssimpson.com.

Defining and identifying your most profitable customers, as well as understanding which products you have to offer that can be introduced to them to gain a greater share of their spending, is an important and often overlooked growth strategy for Sales Professionals. The art of understanding and responding to high value customers requires a level of confidence, strategy and knowledge that is often ignored by sales professionals. Sometimes we are so eager to chase down that “new sale” that we forget about the ones we already have in our pocket.

This brings into focus two other important areas that are byproducts of customer intelligence management; Customer Relationship Management or CRM and Relationship Marketing. Both are focused on customer retention and loyalty. Sale professionals who understand and use these tools effectively can increase their sales and build a base of long-term customers.

Today, there are numerous software programs designed to help you gather customer intelligence and effectively manage it. ACT, Goldmine, Microsoft CRM are just a few of the robust tools available that allow you to build an effective database of customer intelligence with specific functions created for the sales professional. These functions allow you to access this intelligence and use it to build targeted sales activities that include follow-up, consistent communication, up selling, and opportunity tracking. Keep in mind that these are tools used for your overall success and in no way do they create sales on their own. You see, I have seen too many sales professionals get sidetracked believing that they could automate the entire sales process with technology only to find they were wrong.

I love the integration of technology into the sales profession and I use it daily, but I know that it is a tool and an important ingredient not the only answer for sales success.

Get more killer ideas from my new book “29i Mastering Your Sales Psyche” at www.29ingredients.com

Speaking effectively is extremely crucial for success in sales but it is the combination of speaking and visual presentation that puts you over the top. This ingredient will focus on achieving communication skills relating to visual sales presentations, including preparing for the presentation, making the presentation, delivery “do’s and don’ts” of the presentation, and incorporating visual aids into the presentation.

Preparation for the presentation is almost as important as the delivery of the presentation. In sales you must analyze the selling situation and the audience, determines the goal and objective of your presentation, choose and shape the content and the appropriate communication style, and craft the presentation. Each of these presentation preparation steps will be the building blocks for a first-class presentation recipe.

When analyzing the selling situation you must determine why your presentation is essential Knowing the situation will help determine the way you shape your content and choose your style. In this analysis you need to ask yourself the following questions:

1. What is the need or reason for the presentation?
2. How can you be of assistance to the customer?
3. How does the presentation address the customer’s situation?
4. In what setting will you make your presentation?
5. What do you expect to happen after the presentation

Analyzing the audience can be difficult. The audience will determine the success of your presentation, remember, your presentation is successful if your audience responds the way you want them to. Effective speaking is always reliant on the audience. Identifying how your audience will respond to your presentation depends on knowing the following information about your audience: their educational level, cultural background, knowledge of what you are presenting, what they are expecting, and level of expertise. Knowing your audience’s personal and professional profiles will help determine what you should say, what you should not say, and the “tone” you should use. For example, you need to investigate the personalities of your audience; this will help you determine whether your style should be relaxed and informal or professional and to the point. Questions that can be used in audience analysis include the following:

1. How much does my audience know about me?
2. What does the audience expect from me?
3. What is the audience’s attitude toward me and my product or service?
4. What position does the audience occupy in the organization?
5. What is the educational background of the audience?
6. What are the political and religious views of the audience

Determining the Goal and Objective

Determining the goal and objective of your presentation will help you design your presentation around a specific purpose. Whether you are trying to sell a product, a service, or an idea, you must keep in mind you are also selling your competence and your value to the organization. You must make your purpose evident and relate it to your audience’s perspective. Make sure you state the main point in the beginning of the presentation so that your audience knows what the rest of the presentation will cover. State your objective in one simple sentence. For example, once you have determined your objectives, use the “T3″ approach: tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, and finally tell them what you told them. If you use this approach you will not digress and your main points will be emphasized.

Choosing and Shaping the Content

Choosing and shaping the content can be very complicated. You want to keep your sales presentation short, interesting, and relevant. Choosing meaningful information that will appeal to your audience and situation is very important. For example, including statistics, testimonials, cases, illustrations, history, and narratives in your presentation can help convey your message. Overall, make the content interesting, but make sure it pertains to the goal of your presentation. 

Choosing the Appropriate Style

Choosing the appropriate presentation style will determine the effectiveness of your content. How you speak can make or break a sales presentation. Questions you need to ask yourself as the presenter include the following:

1. What approach does the audience expect from me?
2. What kind of tone do I want to use?
3. What kind of image do I want to create?
4. What level of language do I use?
5. How formal should I be

The most effective style of oral communication is a conversational style because it suggests you are really talking to your audience. This type of communication includes concrete language, short sentences, and a warm and friendly tone. Do not read your presentation to the audience, this sounds impersonal and unnatural. Instead, rehearse what you are going to say because this is crucial for the success of your presentation.

Organizing Your Presentation

Organizing your presentation is the order in which you present your ideas. You must organize your presentation to comply with your audience’s needs and perspective. Usually a presentation starts with an introduction that embodies your main point and a preview of what is ahead, the main body of information that supports the main point stated in the introduction, and a conclusion that reiterates and reinforces your main point. In the introduction grab the audience’s attention, and in the conclusion leave the audience with a positive feeling about you and your product, idea, or service. MAKE AN IMPACT! For example, the opening and closing of the presentation are extremely important, so make sure you spend extra time preparing these sections. Include an interesting story or quote that relates to your presentation, it will grab the audience’s attention and make your presentation memorable.

Making the Presentation

When you begin your presentation, greet your audience and create a comfortable atmosphere by starting with small talk that is unrelated to your presentation topic. After you feel prepared and comfortable, start you presentation. Stick to the plan for the presentation; tell the audience what you are going to tell them, then tell them, and at the end tell them what you have told them. Do not digress, keep to the time allowed, and when concluding ask if there are any questions. Do not leave your audience with questions; clarify all uncertainties.

 Get more killer ideas from my new book “29i Mastering Your Sales Psyche” at www.29ingredients.com

Delivery “Do’s and Don’ts”

Delivery entails a variety of “do’s and don’ts” . The following list is some of the most obvious, yet crucial do’s and don’ts:

Do speak clearly (test the acoustics of the room).

Don’t rush or deliberately talk slow.

Don’t tell jokes.

Don’t speak in monotones instead vary speed, pitch, and tone.

Do maintain eye contact but not with only one individual.

Do keep an eye on audience’s body language and audience reactions.

Do keep appearance clean and professional.

Don’t move around too much.

Don’t talk to your visual aids.

Do be enthusiastic and confident, it will reflect in your presentation.

Some important points to emphasize are your voice (how you say it is as important as what you say), your body language (your body movements express what your attitudes and thoughts really are), and your appearance.

The success of a sales presentation relies heavily on your delivery style. All the preparation work can go smoothly, but if you do not deliver your presentation with confidence, enjoyment, assertiveness, and passion, then all the preparation is worthless.

Visual Aids

Visual aids, if used correctly, can enhance interest in a presentation. Effective communication is both visual and verbal. Visual aids can be used to show relationships among ideas so that the audience can understand and remember what you said.

A presentation with effective visual aids is more persuasive, more professional, and more interesting than one that does not utilize visual aids. Effective visual aids should be kept simple, relate to your topic, fit the needs of the audience, and be clear and easy to understand. For example, a good visual aid would be a PowerPoint slide that shows a simple breakdown of numbers in pie chart form. Be careful; do not rely on PowerPoint slides to communicate your messages, only to enhance your message.

Get more killer ideas from my new book “29i Mastering Your Sales Psyche” at www.29ingredients.com

Secondly, I believe this means more money for you because with so many firms continuing to reduce headcount in other departments in order to beef up sales, competition for the “best closers” — the only kind of hire many sales VPs will make these days — is fierce. They will have to sharpen their sales recruitment efforts and reconsider the harsh stance on sales compensation that has typified negotiations with candidates for the past couple of years.

You see, not only is this a great time to accelerate your sales, it is an ideal time to master your ingredients for sales success. The sales professionals who spend the extra effort to network, self promote and hone their sales skills now, will be the clear leaders when the economy turns upward. People and clients will remember you, you will be miles ahead of new sales competitors, and you will be more confident knowing that whatever happens, you can prevail.

Seek out advancement in your knowledge of sales and build your psyche based on your own expertise. Start with 29i – Mastering Your Sales Psyche, your road map to sales greatness and be the one that recognized this recession as an opportunity to be the best at your profession.

29i – Mastering Your Sales Psyche
29 Ingedients For Sales Success
Available online at www.29ingredients.com or Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google Books

Most people believe that when you are speaking all the focus should be on you. This is true to an extent but to go beyond mediocre and really engage with your audience it is also important to listen. Whether you’re presenting to an audience, participating in a sales call or facilitating a meeting, if you struggle with the listening ingredient, chances are you’re missing opportunities that can make you more money. In a normal day, we all listen nearly twice as much as we speak and four to five times as much as we read and write (Rivers, 1981). The challenge is to capture key points and ideas as a result of listening.

Here are 10 methods to help you stay focused and keep your listeners attention while you are their focus.

1. Make solid eye contact. This shows your listener you’re really listening. Try this trick – If your speaking to a larger crowd, pick three points. One on the right, one in the middle, and one on the left side of your audience. When you look between these points, it will give 80% of the audience the impression you are making eye contact with them.

2. Pay attention to your listener’s body language. If they’re looking at you versus away from you, most likely they’re interested in what you have to say—If their arms are crossed, they may be objecting to what you are saying. Try to involve them more or hand them something to get them to open up.

3. Pause before answering. This encourages your listener to provide you with additional information and gives you an opportunity to “think on your feet.”

4. Listen for changes in your listener’s tone of voice, inflection, or volume. If the voice has more inflection, they’re communicating a positive response to your message. If your listener’s voice increases in volume or carries a harsh tone, listen and then respond with a softer volume and tone.

5. Listen for key ideas and facts. When your listener touches on something you want to know more about, simply repeat the statement as a question.

6. Summarize and paraphrase key points periodically to guarantee you’re hearing and understanding your listener’s words. Say, “If I understand you correctly…,” or “So what I hear you saying is…”

7. Be patient and avoid interrupting, even though you may believe what your listener is saying is wrong or irrelevant. Indicate simple acceptance, not necessarily agreement, by nodding or perhaps injecting an occasional “I see.”

8. Always acknowledge your listener’s concerns, frustrations, and challenges. Without acknowledgment, they’ll continue to focus on the emotion versus the issue being discussed. Say, “I can imagine you must feel…” or “I get the impression you’re unhappy about… “.

9. Don’t get emotionally involved. Avoid expressing your own personal views, because they may influence or inhibit what your listener says. Try simply to understand their concerns first and defer evaluation until later.

10. Encourage your listener to provide additional information with phrases such as, “Tell me more” or “As I understand it, what you’re saying is….”

Speaking is an art with multiple ingredients that need to be studied and mastered. Begin by studying the communication ingredient and then make sure you master your confidence, knowledge, listening and body language ingredients.

Over the last ten years, I have consulted with many organizations that seem to have a common problem – their sales force performance. Rather than get to the real root of the problem which is individual behavior and habits, they tend to grasp for the latest sales training fad, guru or gimmick that is going to magically transform their sales force into super closers and produce sales gold. It is in human and corporate nature to keep trying to improve and create processes that are expected to generate results or achieve established goals.  But one thing that is almost always overlooked is the psyche of the individuals expected to perform.

In psychoanalysis and other forms of depth psychology, the psyche (pronounced \ˈsī-kē\) refers to the forces in an individual that influence thought, behavior and personality. The word is borrowed from ancient Greek and refers to the concept of the self, encompassing the modern ideas of soul, self, and mind. The Greeks believed that the soul or “psyche” was responsible for all behavior. Who you are and how others see you are all part of your psyche and this psyche is the root of all happiness, health, abundance and success. The ingredients that make up “you” are projected out to the universe, and in return, you receive what it is that you think about most. This is called “The Law of Attraction” and your psyche is the base from which this law operates. Change your psyche – change your results!

“Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better” – Sydney J. Harris

Trying to outshine competitors many companies are starting to use iPad tablet computers to spruce up their pitch to potential clients, and at the same time giving Apple Inc. a crucial foot in the door to business customers.

The iPad offers new ways to display product information, videos or powerpoint presentations. Their quick start-up times mean the salesmen can jump into their presentations before clients lose interest.

“The iPad enables our sales employees to do a much better job of engaging in a really different way than we’ve done before,” Mike Hedges, chief information officer of Medtronic, said in an interview.

For Apple, the iPad — with its quirky position somewhere between a giant smartphone and small computer — is further opening the doors to new corporate accounts, a trend that began with the iPhone. While desktop computers running Microsoft Corp.’s software continue to dominate office cubicles, iPads are gaining traction as an alternative to laptop computers for traveling workers and sales professionals.

Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said during the company’s last quarterly conference call that 65 percent of the Fortune 100 companies are either deploying or testing the use of iPads.

Medtronic, a Minneapolis-based maker of implantable heart devices and other products, recently bought 4,500 iPads for its sales and marketing team, making it one of the iPad’s biggest corporate buyers. Hedges said the company could buy as many as 6,000 iPads. Before making the purchases, Hedges said he had attended a dinner with several cardiologists when one asked about Medtronic’s drug-eluting stent. Normally, the conversation would have shifted to another topic, but one of his salesmen quickly pulled out his iPad with the product information, which kicked off a discussion. “Try pulling out a PowerPoint from your briefcase or from a piece of paper,” Hedges said. 

Bottom line, the iPad has the potential to change how sales and marketing people operate on a daily basis. Take any sales demo you’ve ever done. Take any presentation you’ve ever done. Now take it on the road. Got a prospect you want to impress? Bring out your Keynote app (iWork for the iPad) and you’re showing your presentation or demo instantly on a 10 inch glass screen without the hassle of keyboards, mice, remotes, or plugs. Just open your leather binder, hit one button and be the show.

It always amazes me when I have to work hard to market marketing to so many potential clients that believe they should be cutting back on marketing and advertising because of the tough times. Too often, marketing is seen as inessential, wasteful and, worse, unnecessary. In an ideal world, marketing activity would be self supporting, always pay back ten-times what it costs to execute, and be effective in reaching every potential buyer in the appropriate sector all the time. But reality is, marketing activities are driven by several factors, including perceptions of the company, economic forces that drive consumer behavior, and other factors beyond your control.

Time and again, businesses who have defined marketing as wasteful fail to grasp the importance of this essential business function. Because of mediocre marketing efforts that produce little results, they often focus on the cost side of the equation – advertising costs, web site development costs, print collateral costs, etc. They see a marketing budget as a target for cutting costs, and it could mean that they have to make a choice between preserving jobs or marketing. The economy has made all of us work with a smaller pot, and tough decisions have become excruciating. After all, how could you justify spending limited resources on a new campaign when the cost of the campaign includes letting go a valued employee?

Every business plan involves getting customers to pay for a good or service. If you’re unwilling or unable to put forth the resources to achieve this goal, your company may simply cease to exist…Maybe not in the short-term as existing clients can sustain a company for some time, but when the economy recovers, your company may have lost any competitive advantage and market share it worked so hard to acquire or your brand may lose traction all together. Cutting the marketing budget only reduces the opportunities available to build the brand and boost product awareness and memorability in the mind of the consumer, and will reduce market share and profitability in the long run.

Few brands are strong enough to survive without advertising, product promotion and customer service support. Brands are like delicate houseplants – they need attention, support, bolstering, and polishing or they will wither and shrivel to a shadow of their former self. This is not a position you want your corporate brand to be in when the growth engine for the economy accelerates. Many studies conducted by prestigious business publications and university think tanks have come to the same conclusion based on the data they gathered on U.S. companies:

“Those that reduce their presence in their key service markets are in a far worse position in terms of profitability, market share and market competitive presence when the downturn eases and profitability growth returns than those that maintain their marketing activity levels. Those companies that are so bold as to increase marketing activity stand a great chance of taking market share from their less aggressive competitors and can rule the category if the downturn lasts long enough.“

Downgrading the quality of your marketing campaigns and materials.

This mindset will actually cost you both in the short- and long-term. You might save a very small incremental amount on cheaper paper, shorter, smaller brochures, cheaper handouts, smaller trade show giveaways – but the damage you’re doing to your brand and the resulting poor reflection on the company as a whole does far more damage than can ever be repaired by spending those few dollars later to try and fix it. Not to mention shaking the confidence of your customers by giving them a visual representation of how poorly your company is performing! “Gee, they must be in trouble, this looks like cheap junk. Maybe I’d better take my business to the other company that’s likely to be around to support their products down the line,” is the thought you’re promoting by reducing quality in your publicly released materials.

When times get tough, I believe we need to ramp up marketing, providing the market with visual evidence of your corporate strength, your brand leadership, your resilience in the tough market, and the supportive strength you offer for your products and services. Now is the time to not slash your marketing budget or reduce the quality of your materials. Everything you do today will reflect on the health of your company, and cutting here shows the most and helps the least.

Michael Simpson, Director of Marketing and Creative Services for XMARketing (www.xmar.net) has been consulting with businesses for over 15 years. Focused on the needs of small to mid-sized businesses, Michaels specialties include brand strategy, marketing strategy, brand development, marketing efficiency, long-term brand strategy and internet marketing. Michael can be reached at (847) 707– 3507 or msimp@xmar.net .

I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us- everything that exists — proves that there are infinite laws behind it. I have managed to tap into the power of the universe through my thoughts and feelings, now I enjoy why I am here and where I am going.

Discovering this intelligence takes us to a higher level not ruled by the past and transcending the encumbrances set by society. True advancement of the human race by focusing on science and the greater universal energy will bring more abundance and happiness than has ever been known to man.

By breaking the chains of organized religions and unorganized governments, we can open a new level for human advancement that puts us all in touch with a real god – ourselves.

Michael Simpson