The fear of rejecton is manifested in your reluctance to cold call; the reluctance to pick up the phone and dial; the seereluctance to add one more dial when things are tough and you feel that you have called enough. It is also manifested in your fear of clsoing and asking for the sale. It is manifested in your need for approval. You feel that sales is about making friends and less about making customers. You don’t like to hurt other people’s feelings by asking them for the close and putting pressure on them. You feel that they-the prospect- should know best, and you don’t know best. If you are sales manager, you will identify the above in your sales person’s consistent pattern of excuse-making; lack of confidence, not a self-starter; always in need of and asking for motivation; squealing about the leads/data; no momentum; and off course- no sales.

The sales process is not about who is right and who is wrong. It is not to prove a point, push an agenda, make a person look like a fool. It is about building value in the eyes and mind of the prospect. So remember that no one has bought after he was beaten in an argument, debate or discussion. Stephen Covey calls this “win-win or no deal.”

Via Brian Tracy Once you've developed your marketing strategy, there is a "Seven P Formula" you should use to continually evaluate and reevaluate your business activities. These seven are: product, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning and people. As products, markets, customers and needs change rapidly, you must continually revisit these seven Ps to make sure you're on track and achieving the maximum results possible for you in today's marketplace. Product To begin with, develop the habit of looking at your product as though you were an outside marketing consultant brought in to help your company decide whether or not it's in the right business at this time. Ask critical questions such as, "Is your current product or service, or mix of products and services, appropriate and suitable for the market and the customers of today?" Whenever you're having difficulty selling as much of your products or services as you'd like, you need to develop the habit of assessing your business honestly and asking, "Are these the right products or services for our customers today?" Is there any product or service you're offering today that, knowing what you now know, you would not bring out again today? Compared to your competitors, is your product or service superior in some significant way to anything else available? If so, what is it? If not, could you develop an area of superiority? Should you be offering this product or service at all in the current marketplace? Prices The second P in the formula is price. Develop the habit of continually examining and reexamining the prices of the products and services you sell to make sure they're still appropriate to the realities of the current market. Sometimes you need to lower your prices. At other times, it may be

I realised this early in my sales career while as a life insurance rep. I would gather info, meet he client, present my proposal, but never close. Not to mention-never even attempt to ask for the sale. Then I would leave them to think about it, and come back for the revisit and find that another life insurance rep had signed them up. If you are like me then you would analyse why you don’t ask for the sale. With me it was that I was scared of the word “No”. I was scared of rejection. The problem is that I liked to be liked. I didn’t want to feel like a high pressured sales person. Stop making your prospects clever and armed with info that makes them sign up with other sales people. What happens is that you ask questions, uncover needs, and don’t ask for the sale. The next rep comes along, and he doesn’t need to do anything because you have done it all. He now just needs to ask for the sale. Start asking for the sale often and you will start closing often.

The most important pressure your prospect must feel from you is that you are making sense about why he should buy. He should be thinking “ man you are right.” That kind of pressure is a nudge. Frequent nudges in the form of test closes. He should not be feeling any other pressure from you where it is felling like a push. That is when you become billed as a high pressure sales person. And, if you did manage to sign the person up, buyers remorse and regret and cancellation of services or product or premiums is more likely to happen.

When handling an objection, make sure that you start by deflecting the objection that the prospect had mentioned back to the prospect in the form of a question. E.g Prospect: "I have an existing funeral plan" You: Mr Prospect, do I hear you correctly when you say you have an existing funeral plan?" This is a vital step in the sales process because the client likes to hear that his concern or reason has been heared before you respond. Too often sales agents respond without giving the prospect the relief that his concern had been acknowledged. This step also helps build trust. The next step is to start peeling the layers off the reason that he says he cannot buy now. The whole idea is to get to the core of the reason. Often it is not the real reason. So you unpeel by asking questions and building benefits using the features. And, if it is the real reason that he cannot buy, then you need to reduce that reason to a reason why he should buy. Struggling with handling objections? Send me a mail with your objection that you need assistance with. kenny@kennyrajah.co.za

If you ask questions, give info on your product and interact with your prospect with no energy, enthusiasm and conviction; and if your client cannot feel the pressure that this is a sales call or a is heading that way, then you will only come across as an information giver and not a sales person. You will lose the sales and future sales unless you change. Drive the conversation; test close; use power words and phrases.

Via Business Insider In most truly effective negotiations, no one should come out a "winner" or a "loser." That's according to Amy Trask, CBS Sports analyst and author of "You Negotiate Like a Girl: Reflections on a Career in the National Football League." The former NFL exec argues that the best negotiations feel a lot more like collaborations. "People in business say, 'Let's sit across the table from one another and negotiate,'" she told Business Insider. "I don't believe that sitting across the table and negotiating is as effective as sitting side-by-side and collaborating." Trask worked for the Oakland Raiders for nearly 30 years, starting out as an intern. She eventually became CEO of the team, and the NFL's first female front-office exec. Throughout her career, she's honed her own style of deal-making. Trask asserts that negotiations are rarely zero sum games — and that it's a huge mistake to treat them as such. It's also a major tactical error to focus more on one-upping the other party than achieving the desired outcome. "I'm going to focus on the deal itself," Trask says. "Not the process, not the quid pro quo. It doesn't make sense to me to expend one's energy worrying about gamesmanship." So, how do you pull off a truly successful negotiation? Trask says to start off by identifying the points that matter most to each party. "If there's something that's important to you in a negotiation that just isn't as important to me, then I'll concede the point," she says. "It doesn't have to be a zero sum game. It doesn't have to be a quid pro quo." In Trask's experience, putting all your cards on the table in a negotiation doesn't put you at a disadvantage. In fact, oftentimes, it leads the

Every sale person must be able to identify a USP in their service or product.   A Unique Selling Point is that which is unique to your offering. Many prospects will see/perceive products as similar to each other. That is why you need to bring your differences to the fore; whether in the presentation or during objection handling.   And since prospects always buy you first, even you as a sales person must have a USP-something that is different to other sales people.

My coaching style as a manager was enhanced by these words from Jon Stewart, the former anchor of The Daily Show before Trevor Noah took over. This is Jon Stewart's view on Bruce Springsteen after watching him at a concert in 2009. "But that is not the power of Bruce Springsteen. It is that whenever I see Bruce Springsteen do anything, he empties the tank – every time. And the beautiful thing about this man is that he empties that tank for his family, he empties that tank for his art, he empties that tank for his audience, and he empties it for his country. And we, on the receiving end of that beautiful gift are ourselves rejuvenated, if not redeemed, and I thank you." Now I empty my tank every time I intervene with my sales managers, team leaders or sales consultants. I make sure that I don't leave them feeling that I could have done more for them. I immerse myself in them. I show them I care. No half measures. Listen attentively, question effectively. Impart my wisdom. Personally I show them that sales is my obsession.