Sales & Marketing Consultant, Bestselling Author & Sales Conference Speaker

There are few things more important in the marketing world than being able to make the perfect sales pitch when it comes down to it. It doesn’t matter how refined your marketing solutions are, how good your keyword research is, or how targeted your advertisements are. If you can’t close the deal, its going to be tough to bring in business.

However, that is not to say that selling is an inborn skill, like some salespeople would have you think. Like nearly anything else, it is a learned ability. Sure, some people have a bit more of a penchant for it – but anyone can learn. Here are a few of the keys to making a perfect sales pitch.

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

You should always be prepared to make a sale. You don’t know who you’ll sit next to on the bus, who you’ll meet at dinner, or who you’ll see in the elevator on your way to work. Always have a 30-second sales pitch ready to go, and keep it updated with relevant information about your company.

Beyond this, know your industry inside and out, and know your customers’ industries inside and out. If you’re going to a trade show, research the competitors of every company you’ll be speaking with. If you can immediately demonstrate value by discussing a potential customer’s competitors and how he’ll be able to use your product to dominate the market, you’re already two steps ahead of the game.

Bring the Proper Support

This is essentially part of preparation, but make sure that you have any necessary documents or back-up materials on hand when you might be meeting with a customer. This could include anything from sample products, to company documents, to industry reports, to personal research. It doesn’t really matter what the information is, so long as it’s relevant.

Visual materials serve two major purposes. First, its much easier to give a sales pitch or any other type of presentation when you have a visual aid to reference. Second, it just makes you look more prepared and more professional, which always helps to close a sale.

Be Confident

It’s often said that it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong. If you’re confident enough, people will believe you. Personally, I don’t know if I’d take it that far, but there’s definitely a grain of truth to the saying.

And nowhere is this more applicable than in sales. If you’re not 100% confident about the product that you’re selling, how can you expect who you want to buy it from you to have any faith in it either? You always need to be 100% confident.

Fortunately, this all works together quite nicely. Proper preparation and the proper support materials will go a long way toward making your more confident in your selling, and a bit more confidence will go a long way toward closing more deals.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com

This blog is about marketing, and today we’re going to talk about the most fundamental aspect of marketing – how to sell. As a business owner, you undoubtedly know quite a lot about how to sell, and have likely been selling something, in one form or another, for much of your working life. However, it never hurts to revisit the basic, and maybe you’ll pick up something extra that you missed along the way.

In short, the keys to effective selling are knowledge and effort. If that sounds overly simplistic, allow me to explain a bit further.

Know Yourself, Know Your Customer, and Know your Competitor

The first step to successful sales is having a full range of knowledge, about your own company and product, as well as about your customer’s needs, and your competitor’s company and his products.

Every single time that you talk to a customer, you should start the day by researching their company. Strive to never give the same sales pitch to two different customers. Research each customer individually, and look for ways that a relationship with your company can bring them a unique benefit.

When customers are confronted by a salesperson who truly knows what they’re talking about, and who truly understand both their own company and the wider industry, they are automatically less defensive, and much more likely to walk away from the conversation one step closer to making a purchase.

Put in the Effort

Even more important than sales knowledge and techniques is putting in the full effort required to close a deal or make a sale. Never treat a customer like someone who you can do without; every time you make a sales pitch, you should tell yourself that there is no failure – that the company is on the line and you absolutely have to make this sale.

This is doubly important if you’re no longer directly involved in the sales aspect of your business, and you rely on others to do it for you. In your hiring and training processes, ensure that motivation is your primary goal. Never hire someone for sales based on their knowledge of the industry, however encyclopedic it may be. The determining factor in the success of a salesperson is their motivation level, and ensuring that they’re going out every day, meeting with clients, and taking the risks required to make sales.

These may seem like fundamental issues, but it is the fundamentals that make sales, and making sales makes companies.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com

Much like the complaint and suggestion boxes of yesteryear, the internet is, among many other things, a place where people gather to complain about things. Movies, music, politics – think about how much of what you see on the internet is negative reactions and reviews. You can use this to your advantage in looking for ways to run your business more effectively.

To take a simple example, imagine that you were running a hotel. In looking to make your hotel the best one on the market, you could go onto a site like orbitz or expedia, and look at the reviews of your competitors, the other established hotels in your area and price range. However, by focusing on the lowest reviews, you could find exactly what customers didn’t like about the hotel, and find ways for your product to pick up on opportunities that were missed by your competitors.

You can do this in any industry, and with any type of business. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look, and how to properly turn the negative feedback into useful and constructive advice.

Begin by knowing where to look, and what to look for. This depends primarily upon your industry. There are hundreds of industry-specific review websites and social networks out there, some of them better known than others. Twitter and Facebook are obviously great places to start, as are social media sites like Yelp, provided that they are relevant to your industry.

To find additional review sites, just browse through what people are linking to on Twitter and Facebook, or do a Google search for “your industry + reviews.” You’ll be surprised just how many sites there are out there.

Once you find negative feedback, you’ll need to incorporate what you’ve learned into your business. So if you see a lot of customers complaining about a business practice that is common in your industry (even if the complaints are specifically directed toward your company), then you know to change that practice. For instance, if you see a lot of complaints about online marketers sending out too many useless emails, you might want to take a step back and think about whether you’re personally guilty of that sin.

On the other side, if you see a lot of people complaining about something that doesn’t exist, then you may have found a niche for your business to profitably expand into.

At the end of the day, it’s always good to know what customers are saying about your business, and the other businesses in your industry. And considering that people are 10 times more likely to post a negative comment than a positive one, looking for negativity is a great way to start.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com

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