Showing posts with label Sales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sales. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

My Sales Funnel Theory of Article Marketing IV

So I am talking about this idea of a sales funnel with your article marketing. I have been talking about this idea that we each start out at the small end of the sales funnel. We create a $10 product, then a $47 product, then a $97 product. Then maybe a $500 product, and if we are really ingenious, then a $5000 product.

But what if we started at the big end?

What if we envisioned a $5000 to start with?

And then we built every other product in our sales funnel to build up to that big product?

Would we sell more at the end of the year, than if we started with the $10 product?

Sure, it would take longer to get any sales. But once they started coming, it would be like an avalanche.

So let’s envision this ‘reverse sales funnel’ – can I call it that?

Of course I can, I just made it up. So this reverse sales funnel.

Let’s start at the big end. What would a $5000 product be?

Let us assume that you are in dog training. You can be in dating or construction, or whatever. But I like dog training. So for this example it will be dog training.

So what could you sell for $5000 that is dog training related? Rephrase: What will people buy that will put $5000 in your pocket?

Now I am assuming that you are a dog trainer in this example. To make a $5000 product, you have to have some knowledge in your field.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, 'Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide'

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a big online subscriber list fast? Click here: Secrets of List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 9034 articles in print and 14 published ebooks.

Have You Got What it Takes for Sales?

Going on to have a successful and fulfilling sales career is seldom an easy task even for the most promising sales candidates. The fact is that succeeding within the sales sector has a lot less to do with specialist knowledge, experience and training. It actually has more to do with the right attitude. With the right enthusiasm and motivation for sales, there is nothing which sales professionals cannot achieve both in the short and long run. One of the greatest challenges which a sales professional will face during the course of their career is finding a way of maintaining high levels of motivation. This point is quite key because to a large extent, the most successful sales professionals are those who are able to keep high levels of enthusiasm and drive at all times.

Once a sales candidate has been deduced to have the right sales attitude, the next step is for them to undergo a comprehensive sales training program. At this point, it is worth mentioning that there are only a hand full of companies and recruitment consultancies which offer this sort of training to inexperienced sales candidates. This invariably means that graduates and graduate calibre people will find it more difficult to obtain the most rewarding sales roles. The good news here is that there are still quite a few graduate selection and sales training companies which provide complete sales training and support programs. Graduates have an increased chance of securing some of the best sales role on the market with the aid of such firms. Some of the most reputable recruitment firms of this kind continue to provide support and guidance to candidates even after a sales job placement has been successfully secured.

There are certainly quite a few examples of sales training consultancies which provide this type of support and training to their candidates. These companies offer sales training concepts and techniques that are respected through out the industry. As such, many competing recruitment firms have been emulating the unique way of sales selection, training and recruitment provided by industry leaders. Recruiting agencies throughout the United Kingdom have been effectively deploying their sales recruitment services to a large number of small and medium-sized organizations in order to build their brand names. In fact, some of their clients include the world’s most prestigious multinational companies. This is why when it comes to sales training and recruitment, there is no better option than to work with a recruiting agency.

Scott Deane is the Marketing Manager of meta-morphose international, a specialist sales recruitment agency with a focus on graduate sales jobs. The company have graduate jobs in the UK and Internationally.

Sales Training Courses Can Help You Close More Sales

As the global economy has changed over the past 12 months or so, more and more people are turning to Sales training courses to help them secure more sales.

For the past number of years companies have not had to worry about sales training as the economy was buoyant and sales people with the title of sales people did generally not need to fight for business. In fact to be honest in many industries they were order takers as opposed to salespeople. With this in mind sales training courses were not very popular as consumers with more money in their pockets were prepared to purchase anyway.

Based on personal experience I will try and explain what I mean:

If you were buying a new car in 1990 sales people would be trying every close in the book to sell the car to you. In fact they were even offering you a full weekend test drive, where you could take the car for the weekend to try and help you make the decision. In these times Sales training programmes and sales skills were badly needed as the market was tough. Formal sales training was a must for numerous companies.

Now roll on the clock 15 years to 2005 and see how difficult it was to take a car for a test drive for 30 minutes never mind a weekend. The problem was the market had changed and if you don't buy the car some one else will come in shortly after you and they will buy it. I understand this is generalising and it is not fair to paint everyone with the same brush. However this meant sales training courses were not in the same demand as sales training skills were not seen as a priority.

The same can be said for numerous industries, another example of this is the real estate business where purchasers trying to get on the property ladder were at times camping outside new housing developments overnight to secure a property. You have to ask the question how much sales training skills would the real estate agent need in this type of market?

The difficulty now from a sales training point of view is that many people who were recruited as sales people over the last number of years, are for the first time having to use the type of sales training skills that can be learned from attending sales training courses.

More and more companies are turning to sales training courses to up skill their salespeople to close more sales.

Would you like to close more sales? Frank O'toole from Premier Training is helping people to achieve with sales training. Sales Training Courses from Premier Training, let's achieve.

Is Your Sales Team Stuck in the 1980s?

1985-2005: The Era of Sales Technology

Is your sales team from the "dot-com" sales era?... During this era, the internet boom was coupled with the wide-spread use of computer technology in client organizations. Because sales processes were well understood and consumer behavior become well known, organizations turned to technology to help speed up salesperson reaction times to market trends, keep them abreast of important industry news, and develop a more solid understanding of their clients. Customer Relationship Management and Sales Force Automation tools became widely. The newly available information enabled the entire transaction experience became more widely understood by marketing, selling, and servicing departments.

Within sales training, more emphasis was placed on service after the sale as well as bundled products into more encompassing solutions. Companies began teaching salespeople about consultative selling and how to valuate solutions. Salespeople were taught to become more problem solvers and required to think more like a CEO who understands the entire ramification of a purchase decision. Due to the complexity in the market, training focused on vertical expertise and project management skills. Sales managers began to hire for skills rather than training existing salespeople. Training programs began to focus on new-hire programs as sales talent become harder to find. Centralized training and annual events became more difficult due to dispersed teams.

Do you work with a dot-com sales organization?

- The paradigm seems to be "hire for the right skill and personality traits" as opposed to training existing salespeople. - New hire training focuses on CRM training, product training, and administrative skills. Selling skills training is almost non-existent. - Salespeople are responsible for the own professional development and skills attainment. - Sales managers spend more time troubleshooting deals, filling out paperwork, and working company issues than coaching salespeople.

Brian Lambert is the Director of Sales Development and Performance at the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD). In this role, he is responsible for meeting the unique challenges of performance professionals focused on the sales profession. He is responsible for conducting primary research and creating resources, articles, and other custom content that helps individuals design and deliver sales training, manage and develop high performing sales talent, and improve salesperson performance. Brian has fifteen years of experience in sales, sales management, sales training, and sales consulting and is an internationally recognized expert on the state of the sales profession as well as current trends in transforming sales team systems, processes, and people.

Brian is a highly sought after world-wide speaker, author, and trainer on sales competency, sales performance, sales process, sales professionalism, sales ethics, and sales process.

Find out more about Brian at http://www.brianlambert.biz
Visit Brian's work on sales competency at http://www.astd.org/communities/salestraining

Are You Training Your Sales Teams to Fail?

There are in deed hundreds of articles on sales training and how to sell. Every company needs good sales training for their sales staff no matter what kind of products or services they offer. Unfortunately, many companies do not have adequate sales training and if you fail to train your salespeople you are also training them to fail.

This is because you are not correcting the mistakes they make and they are getting into the habit of making them continually. In fact their mistakes become habits that cannot be broken. Once this occurs even a robust sales training system may not be enough. They say; old habits die hard and it is true also in the sales training arena.

If you fail to train your salespeople you are training them to fail. Are you training your sales teams to fail or have you secured competent and professional sales trainers to come in and teach them how to do it correctly? I did not mean to put you on the spot and you do not have to answer my question, but I hope you'll think about it.

If your company fails to make its sales numbers and you are running the company or the manager of a division of salespeople and you fail to do training, then in the end you will be the one who is fired, as someone must be brought in to replace you. It is as simple as that if the company fails to make sales the company is no longer a viable business. Please consider all this in 2006.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington