The Six P’s to Sales Performance

By Byran Flanagan

Sales Performance is achieved by implementing certain strategies, procedures, and techniques.  In a client-focused approach to selling (i.e., a relationship selling environment) we believe there are certain elements that contribute to your sales success.  Listed below is an overview of these elements. 

1. Prospecting — identifying the individuals and organizations that have a need for your products and services
2. Preparation — gathering information to assist you in contacting the prospect.  Remember:  preparation compensates for a lack of talent
3. Process — understanding the prospect’s needs, issues and concerns via a step by step sales process
4. Product — understanding your product and interpreting the values, advantages, and benefits to your prospect
5. Presentation —presenting your solution with confidence, competence and comfort
6. Person — possessing the belief in yourself and understanding your role as a business problem solver

Obviously, these will vary with your sales environment, industry, and prospect base. Yet, the above mentioned categories are important for most sales success. By mastering these elements, you will attain greater sales achievement.

And, yes, Ziglar provides education in each of the elements. For more information on how you can develop your skills in these areas, please give us a call.

Bryan Flanagan is the Sales Ambassador and premiere sales trainer for Ziglar.  You can contact Bryan at bflanagan@ziglar.com

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Experience is Highly Overrated

By Chuck Sink

A passage in a classic book compares experience to fashion by illustrating that methods proven to be successful today will be unworkable or irrelevant tomorrow. So true! That got me thinking about the explosion of minutia cluttering the marketing profession blogs, trade pubs and websites. Keeping up with all the new media vehicles seems overwhelming and can devour our time – the only precious commodity that is 100% irreplaceable!

I believe that we in the marketing and selling professions should relax a bit and refocus on the fundamental principles of moving audiences with emotion-producing ideas to take positive action. Then we can take real advantage of the wonderful new media tools available.

Social media, after only about 3 years on the business scene, is now a full-time professional discipline in most large or marketing-driven organizations. That’s good because we need specialists to keep up with emerging media technologies and applications. I believe marketing strategists and business development executives should defer to these new pros for recommending efficient marketing tactics. The executives should focus more on the immutable principles of marketing and relationship building. By definition, principles cannot change but new rules and tactics (“best practices”) do change, often rapidly.

I liken experience to fashion; what proved trendy or useful yesterday is unworkable and irrelevant today. Think about popular personal media of the 1980′s and 1990′s such as the VHS tape, the corner video store and music on compact disc. Now even the cell phone and laptop are becoming obsolete as “smart phones” and “net books” (iPad) are mainstreaming. Mobil media technology is exploding. So just how valuable is experience? Sometimes it’s of little or no value at all, depending on product and technology lifecycles. The most experienced VCR technician is of little marketable skill value today yet in the early 1990′s his work was in high demand and business was booming for him.

Now we have all these new media apps to keep up with but I’m really positive about it. These are exciting times and I’m not the least bit worried about my skills keeping up because I have an app for that! It’s called osmosis. I’m surrounded by the technology and the people who help develop it every day and I study and absorb enough to be safe!

As a sales and marketing executive, my job is to deliver valuable messages that create a cultural and emotional attraction to my goods and services. I accomplish my best work when I’m meeting with someone, presenting to a group or having a telephone conversation utilizing primitive communications technology such as vocal chords.
A marketer may have at his fingertips the most advanced and efficient communications technologies but if his message has nothing valuable or resonant in it, even the coolest tactics will be rendered useless.

Dare I bring up age-old principles like branding? How about good old fashioned creativity? Let’s not forget great salesmanship either. There always was, is now, and forever will be an app for that stuff!

Carry on.

Chuck Sink is the Business Development Manager at wedu, Inc., a strategic marketing firm that leads the pack in brilliant thinking and creative executions.

Humor Break

A salesmanager was soliciting resumes through a recruitment agency to replace a salesperson who had just resigned.  The next day the recruitment agent came in to meet the manager and beaming he handed over a resume and said, “M’am, we have got just the right person you are looking for.  The salesmanager after skimming through the resume was visibly upset.  Puzzled, the recuritment agent enquired what the matter was.  The manager replied, “This candidate on the resume is the best salesperson we have in our company!”

Ziglar Recommends

Closes, Closes, Closes features Zig as he demonstrates the numerous sales closes described in his best-selling book, Secrets of Closing the Sale. This will prove to be a valuable sales training tool as you learn the “how to’s” of sales closing techniques.

For more information, click here.

This newsletter is published by Ziglar, Inc.  Ziglar.com

admin Uncategorized attitude, closing the sale, professional growth, sales, sales professional, strengthen skills, Zig Ziglar