Increase Sales Blog

Posts Tagged ‘selling yourself’

With so many small businesses in the market place, determine the price of your products or services respective to the value they bring is difficult.  Under price and you may be operating at a loss. Over price and you may not increase sales and herein lies the selling yourself dilemma.

Ford’s recent new pricing strategy of having the hybrid Lincoln MKZ at the same price of the standard MKZ is an interesting approach to bridge this challenge. With hybrid vehicles generally costing more than their non-hybrid counterparts, Ford has taken an innovative approach specific to this luxury sedan.

Pricing if you sell services however is a bit more dicey. A great post at Training Zone actually provides a great explanation behind the decision making process as how to construct your pricing  strategy.  The author also included a doable formula.

One great point by this author, Verity Gough, is if you set your fees to low you may not be viewed as being credible. This is why being able to determine return on investment from past solutions delivered is necessary.

What it appears is that business people must know, understand and then articulate value to their potential customers. Yet, from my observations very few can accomplish this feat.

P.S. Read today’s business column on that critical customer experience and how it develops customer loyalty.

First, there are many talents and behaviors to be a top sales performer. To think that there is just one or two is folly.

For example, yesterday, I received an email from a company that does performance improvement, organizational development and sales training. This email shouted product based marketing and education based marketing wasn’t even on the plate less alone the buffet. I truly had a difficult time reading it and to be honest it was causing a negative emotional reaction.  Sales Training Coaching Tip:  People buy on emotions and justify the purchase with logic.  The absolutely last thing you want to do is to create negative emotions specific to you as an individual or about your company.

I did not recognize the person’s name.  So I decided to role play and see where this was exchange was going as I saw an opportunity for a learning experience and probably enough content for another article.  I sent a returned, proactive and respectful email back for clarification.  The sender a woman responded:

• I had downloaded a white paper
• She had attempted to look up my company ADVANCED SYSTEMS, but could not find any information
• Then went on with  blah, blah, blah about what they do and how they could help me

In my final response to hear, I thanked her for that clarification and indicated surprise she could not find anything about my company as she already had my corporate email account.  Now anyone in sales who is even the least bit tech savvy knows how to look up a company by the email address. Even if the person does not have a corporate email account, you can Google their name.  If she had taken this action, she would have discovered 124,000 hits on my name and golly gee whiz the first hit is my corporate website.  Of course, if she was really smart, she might have looked me up in LinkedIn and would have quickly found me.  Sales Training Coaching Tip:  In today’s technology driven market place, the last thing you wish to be is foolish because you failed to do your homework.

I  can only imagine what type of sales training their potential clients are receiving and it is probably far more than I charge since this is a multiple national offices organization.

My observations from the 30,000 ft. viewpoint is this individual is truly not a top sales performer because she was not creative, she spewed one of the 3Ps virus (product, price and proposal) and most importantly  she did not even attempt to build a relationship.

For example instead of writing the following:

I wanted to introduce myself as your account representative for (company’s name) and would appreciate a few minutes of your time on the phone at your earliest convenience.

The following would be a far better introduction:

Good day Leanne.  Recently you downloaded a paper (insert name of paper). As the contact person for (insert company), I was wondering if you have a few moments to share your thoughts about this paper and your company specific to some of your current challenges?

When you examine the first actually received email versus the one I suggested, you will notice the first one presumes an existing relationship.  Big mistake especially when there was not one and I could not even remember this person or company.

To be a top sales performer is all about selling yourself. This unsolicited email dramatically failed in the arena of “How to Sell Yourself” and do it well.  Currently I am writing a series of articles on just this topic “Selling Yourself”  beyond this blog to be posted to a variety of article directories and blog sites including:  Evan Carmichael, EzineArticles, Sales Gravy and The Sales Corner.  Sales Training Coaching Tip: People buy you as the salesperson first before they even considered your products, services or organization. You truly have only one opportunity to make that first connection memorable.