080 – The Language of Sales and Selling
This episode is about the Language of Sales and Selling.
Let me start right here and define these words:
- Sales: Sales is the result of selling. It is a noun.
- Selling: The activities you engage in to make a sale. It is a Verb.
Selling is a much more powerful word. Verbs are action words. Sales requires a lot of Selling activity.
That’s what we will focus on.
Innovating your selling activities So That you can achieve more sales in the limited time you have.
Sales professionals learn how to Optimize and Maximize their – Golden Hours of Selling
And there is some language that needs to be defined. We will start with that one – and here are the 9 others…
Sales Language around the Activity of Selling
- The Golden hours of selling
- Lead conversion
- Sales funnel
- Prospecting
- Selling the appointment
- Discovery and Rapport
- Proposals
- Presentation
- Close
- Follow Up
Sales Language around the Activity of Selling
1. The Golden Hours of selling
The metaphor of the Quarters – Each quarter equals a quarter hour.
Every day you get 32 quarters, every week you get 160 quarters
You have to spend them. Or better – you have to invest them.
Every quarter Expires every 15 minutes – You can Not save them!
How you use your quarters today, this week determines your success.
Stop being busy being busy and Get to Work Selling!
Work on the Best Work you can do!
The best work a salesperson can do is be in front of a great prospect.
Don’t get bogged down in miscellaneous busy work – and get to work On the selling activities
This language is also the Best Activity of selling.
2. Lead conversion –
marketing is…lead generation – selling is taking those leads home
Marketing is Positioning You and your company as the best option.
It is softening the beaches
Marketing’s job is to Generate Leads
Selling is taking those great leads and converting them to a new customer.
“Someone has to separate the customer from his money” – and that is Your job as a salesperson
Every else is Busy work. Your job is to make sales to create customers!
How do you do that? With a sales funnel
3. Sales funnel
A sales funnel is all the steps of taking a good warm prospect – all the way to becoming your next customer.
Like a funnel it is wide on one end and narrow at the other – bc as you take prospects through the steps many will fall out.
That’s not bad or sad – it is the reality of selling.
Tom Hopkins – “Some will, some won’t, so what, next!”
You have to have a funnel so that you know where your prospects are in the sale.
The sales funnel starts with prospecting.
Prospecting is where marketing and selling cross-pollinate
4. Prospecting
Prospecting gets its own podcast – BECAUSE it’s that important.
Here’s why! You want to invest your 32 quarters today with the best prospects.
Everyone is Not your prospect! And you need to know why they are not
Not all business is good business – see episode 77
Tune in 2 weeks for deep Dive in prospecting
5. Selling the appointment – Language!
We say, the first sale you make is the appointment.
You have to sell the appointment So That you can begin selling.
If you get yourself in front of a quality prospect – there’s a very high probability of selling them.
But getting in front of a prospect is hard – it requires a strategy and a lot of work.
Selling the appointment is ASKing for it!
Sales is Asking!
One tip from Steve Shiffman in his book: Cold Calling Techniques. That really work
Your variation of this: “the reason I’m calling is to ask for an appointment to show you what we’ve done for other companies like yours to…”
Selling the appointment is ASKing for it!
Then when you get the appointment it’s your opportunity for Discovery and Rapport
The language of Selling is so important it requires two episodes.
