1. The easiest cheap way to dramatically increase sales:
Call your customers.
Or write to them.
2. Be helpful:
I know that times might be tough for you. Is there anything I can do to pitch in and help?
3. You'll end up doing a lot for your customers. Which is a wonderful privilege. Even for those that dont reciprocate.
- Seth Godin
4. The most important qualities in a marketing executive are: patience, imagination, ego-strength, and aggressiveness.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
5. When fielding questions from a customer, paraphrase his objections, avoid showing resistance, and question him tactfully on those parts of his arguments that seem to be weak.
- Amacom, The Skills of Selling
6. If you're only there to sell one thing, make a suggestion or assumption and let them tell you youre wrong. People have a need to feel smarter than you are.
- Mark McCormack
7. The Gold Standard in selling:
Be indispensible to the Client.
- Tom Peters
8. Sprinkle your sales letters or presentations with references to your subjects first name.
- Mell Holloway
9. Offer your customer a choice between two alternatives; dont force the customer into a yes/no decision on one alternative.
- Mirek Springer
10. Summer sales calls should be scheduled in the middle of the week to avoid prospects who are taking long weekends.
- Salesmakers Syndicated Services
11. Keep your word.
- Tom Peters
12. Sales reps spend 32% of their time on waiting and travel, 24% on administration and meetings, 5% on service calls, and only 39% of their time selling.
- McGraw-Hill Research
13. Keep it simple! No matter how sophisticated your product can be, if you can’t explain it in a phrase, a page, or to a 14-year old - you haven’t got it right yet.
- Tom Peters
14. Thank You Notes: World ’s highest-return investment!!!!!!!!!
- Tom Peters
15. Make sales presentations one-to-one to the key decision maker. Try to restrict it to one person because this does not allow the dynamics of the interrelationships of the individuals to affect the presentation.
- Mark McCormack
16. Always have the chief decision maker to invite his/her secretary to the sales pitch. This makes follow-up meetings and phone calls easier to schedule.
- Ben Casnocha
17. Once you get the point in a sales pitch where you have asked for a commitment, dont speak again until the other person has replied in some fashion.
- Mark McCormack
18. Smile.
- Dale Carnegie
19. You must live the product.
- Tom Peters
20. Leave more white space on websites and in retail stores.
- Andrea Learned, On Marketing to women
21. The Segway had captured word of mouth.
Everyone was talking about it, didn’t ’t even have direct experience with it.
- Dave Balter, on Word of Mouth Marketing
22. In the end, it is people who decide what is worth talking about.
- Dave Balter
23. The core of Service Marketing is Service itself.
- Harry Beckwith, ‘Selling the Invisible’
24. Focus Groups don’t work: You are selling to individuals. Talk to individuals.
- Harry Beckwith
25. Selling things people want is easy. Find out what your prospect wants first. Then show them how your product is what they want. Or smile and leave if your product isnt what they want. There are others who want it.
- Scott Reynolds
26. Don’t cold call - ever… instead, make a warm call… try to get others to make a connection… four rules to warm calling: (1) convey credibility by mentioning a familiar person or institution, (2) state your value proposition how can I help you, (3) impart urgency and convenience by being prepared to do whatever it takes whenever it takes to meet the other person on his/her own terms, (4) be prepared to offer a compromise that secures a definite follow-up
- Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz, Never Eat Alone
27. How to convert people:
1. Make contact
2. Gain confidence
3. Establish conviction
4. Gain conversion
5. Work for continuance
- A 16th century religious group, instructing its field men in the art of making converts
28. If you are selling something complex, simplify it with a metaphor.
- Harry Beckwith
29. The Greatest Secret in Selling
Show people what they want most, and they will move heaven and earth to get it!
- Frank Bettger
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