"Sales" Posts
My Best Sale, Ever!
By Ken DiPrima
Whenever salespeople gather, the conversation almost invariably turns into them swapping their personal sales war stories. It makes sense—selling is their stock in trade, and most salespeople are very good at telling stories. Their tales can vary from closing the most skeptical of clients, to converting a competitor’s best client into their own.
There is nothing wrong with a little harmless bragging, especially if it makes the storyteller feel more secure and comfortable among their peers. Almost everyone has experienced a moment when they accomplish something extraordinary during their professional career. These fetes remain indelible in their minds, and …
Learning Through Rejection
By Ken DiPrima
“Beat it kid, ya bother me!”
“The answer is no, and that’s final!”
“Thank you for your proposal. Although it has great merit, we regret to inform you that our committee has formally rejected it.”
Nobody enjoys rejection, no matter what the situation may be. Even though it happens in all of our lives, it is always painful and difficult to accept. Rejection is the most common emotional assault we sustain in our daily life. And now with the advent of social media, electronic communications, and apps that help us find soul mates, people are exposed to the risk …
Selling Via Personality
By Ken DiPrima
How many times have you made the same sales presentation, eliciting what you considered to be the same client responses, only to achieve mixed sales results? More than likely, it was not what you said, but how you presented the information, which made the difference.
If you have arrived at the point in a sales call where you are actually making a full sales presentation, you have captured the client’s attention and, by definition, they are interested. How you present your case, what you emphasize, where you guide the facts, and what kind of closing question that you ask will …
The Dumbest Farmer Grows The Biggest Potatoes
By Ken DiPrima
Years ago, a young man was hired by a Wall Street brokerage house to become a stock broker. The process required a six month training period, followed by the successful passing of a difficult New York Stock Exchange examination. One day, early on in this training period, the young man was busy at his desk studying the rules and regulations of the industry, when a well established broker within the firm walked by.
This very successful broker was a legend among the many brokerage houses clustered on LaSalle Street in Chicago, because he wasn’t a classically trained and educated financial …
Keeping Score—The Best Sales Motivator
By Ken DiPrima
Management consultants having been preaching, for years, how important it is for a business to measure all of its activities, from a complete breakdown of all receipts, expenditures, time to complete specific tasks; to everything vital needed to produce and deliver a product or service. The purpose of this is to give a business the necessary information to manage every aspect of the business towards attaining profitability.
Sales people who do not follow this same sort of discipline, while managing their activities, lose valuable opportunities to maximize their income, make their job more satisfying, and provide their company with the …
Thanksgiving & Giving Thanks In Sales
By Ken DiPrima
As the holiday season unfolds around us, and thoughts of family gatherings, social parties, and gift giving begin to fill our minds, it may be a perfect time to examine and evaluate the bounties of the year just past.
How appropriate it is that we celebrate Thanksgiving, first. The past year has been filled with joy and sorrow. It brought great wealth as well as financial woes. It supplied affirmation of good health for some, while disclosing terrible illness to others. It welcomed new acquaintances in our lives and lost a few, perhaps, even to death.
Most of us experienced …
Overcoming Sales Slumps Using Your F.E.A.R.
By Ken DiPrima
Someone once asked Pete Rose, who recorded more base hits than anyone in the history of baseball, how he handled batting slumps. Rose looked quizzically at the person, paused for a moment and proclaimed that anyone performing at his level would consider one bad swing to be a batting slump. The answer was just to step out of the batters box, regroup, and become fully prepared for the next pitch.
Anyone who ever made a living as a salesperson knows what is a sales slump. Not everyone knows how to break out of one.
I attended a sales management conference, …
Sales Incentives: Just What The Doctor Ordered?
By Ken DiPrima
Almost every sales organization in the country has, at one time, or another, used some form of sales incentives or awards program to stimulate a flat sales trend. Their use has become a staple in the arsenal of sales tools and is almost universally believed to be a sure fire solution to revitalizing a stagnant sales team.
After all, the increase in sales results is usually quick to occur and often dramatic in its success. Practitioners have long argued that awards extrinsically motivate employees without the financial or psychological costs of formal compensation. It is also a fact that monetary …
A Small Business Owner’s Overview of Pinterest
By Zach Miller
What Is Pinterest?
Pinterest is an innovative tool that small business owners can employ in order to connect with potential customers in an engaging arena, share their industry expertise, and complement existing marketing efforts with a creative flourish. With more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn; Pinterest is worthy of your consideration.
The Pinterest community shares content that is judged according to its initial visual engagement. The quality and novelty of your photos, or ‘pins,’ is the root of a successful Pinterest profile. Trailing at a close second is the actual content behind the photo, i.e. the article, page, …
How To Increase Sales
By Ken DiPrima
“Nothing happens in business until somebody sells something.” How many times have you heard that? It makes no difference whether that something is a product, a service, a commodity, a tangible, or an intangible. Nor does it matter how good is your manufacturing operation, how cutting-edge your technology, how tight your financial goals, or how progressive and forward-thinking your management techniques. You must still have a sales mechanism, in place, or everything else is useless.
Sales is the one department in which a business organization generates revenues. Sales supply that vital elixir that all businesses need—the steady flow of cash.…
