A few tips on selling

Are you having the success you want from your MLM, home business or direct sales opportunity?  Were you lured into MLM on the promises of the American dream?  Are you finding that it requires more selling than you were led to believe?

Well it does and so what,  Selling is just another skill that you can learn.

One of the most common mistakes people make is that they lead with their product, service or opportunity.  As soon as they meet someone, they pull their widget out of their back pocket and try to sell it to their prospect.  This immediately serves to put your prospect in defense  mode, just looking for a reason to say NO!  So if your marketing efforts use any of the following methods:

  • Network groups
  • Buying leads
  • Researching target marget prospects via the internet or yellow pages
  • Placing ads in local papers and newsletters
  • Placing ads on Craigs list
  • Communicating and ad via the internet social networks (facebook, twitter, linkedin, etc.)
  • Mail or Email campaigns
  • Internet marketing
   
Changing your approach can greatly improve your odds of success.

In spite of what your upline tells you, you do need to sell and knowing how is important to your success.

Here are today’s tips:

  1. Stop leading with your product – Don’t even mention your opportunity until later in the process
  2. Build rapport -  Engage the person in conversation, be genuine and show genuine interest in the person.  Some typical ways or building rapport are looking for common interests, work experience, religious background, ethnic background, hometowns, places lived, hobbies, favorite restaurants.  Another good way is to work a generality into the conversation- something like-  where you ever stopped at a traffic light and the person in the lane next to you backs up or rolls backward and you step harder on the brake, or did you ever notice that if one person in a room yawns then others will follow suite….
  3. Stop Talking and Listen – listen carefully and figure out what drives, motives and how this person makes decisions- encourage the prospect to talk
  4. When you do talk ask questions -  Find out what the persons situation is, what they are looking for, what they want out of life, what their successes and failures are, what they are losing sleep over.  The goal here is to get a good idea if this person is a good prospect and how you can best guide them to a decision to buy your opportunity.
  5. If they ask you what do you do- that would be a good time to INTRODUCE your opportunity, go slow, be interruptable for questions and don’t try to get the sale on the spot.  The outcome you should be thinking about is to get to step 2 (setting up an appointment to discuss your widget).  Be attentive and pace this based on reactions and interest.  Try to do your pitch more by asking questions while assessing interest and level of commitment.  Pace yourself.
  6. Address objections with more questions –  Never get into a debate with a prospect about the merits and benefits of your opportunity.
    Ask if they are ready to proceed, or which option makes the most sense for them. If they reply with “I don’t have the money right now.”  You can ask, How long has this been the case?  Would you like to do something about that?  If they say they need some time to think about it.  You can ask specifically what part of what I’ve described do you need to think about… and do you have anything that you are not clear about that I can explain more thoroughly.  Ask what their concerns are.
  7. You don’t have to close on the first conversation -  get small commitments/decisions to continue the process.  Followup set a date and time and followup.  Always ask if they are still interested and to tell you if they are not. 
  8. Be persistent but know when it is time to opt out.

Comments and suggestions are encouraged, we learn from each other.
Posted by Lloyd Lande at 2/19/2009 3:54 PM
Categories: Sales
 

What did you think of this article?




Trackbacks
Trackback specific URL for this post
  • No trackbacks exist for this post.
Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Leave a comment

Submitted comments are subject to moderation before being displayed.

 Enter the above security code (required)

 Name

 Email (will not be published)

 Website

Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.