Best Selling Techniques Bring Top Results!*

Selling techniques are important for business success. From 1997 through 2002 my primary business activity was conducting facilitated management training as a licensee of a leading management and leadership training company. The company required all prospective licensees to complete successfully a selling techniques training course. The company well understood that to be successful in any business one has to use proven techniques for selling products and services.

The company knew a great deal about selling techniques. Their founder put himself through college as a salesman -- earning more per year than his own college President. Immediately after graduation, when just 22 years old, he started his own company to train others to use the selling techniques he found so successful.. His company soon became the leading sales training organization in North America. 

What's my point? During those years I learned the best selling techniques from the those who were and who had learned from the very best in sales. I learned some of the best ways to sustain and grow a thriving business. I'd like to share some of those with you in hopes that you and your company may benefit. I'll also recommend some ways you can improve your own skills and techniques -- and those of others in your organization.

What you must do to sell anything.

Centuries ago the philosopher Aristotle laid out in three Greek words what must be done to sell anything: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.

• Ethos: you must first establish a trusting relationship with your prospect 
• Pathos: you next must establish an emotional reason for buying your product/service, and finally
• Logos: you present the logical reasons why your product/service is superior.

More about Ethos

Techniques for establishing a trusting relationship include referrals, branding, reputation, client lists, etc. Two areas of current interest are cold calling and internet selling. Both involve making a first contact with a prospect -- an the techniques are aimed at establishing trust first. 

Cold calling.

Let me start with cold calling from a prospect list. Given the backlash created by telemarketers, cold calling to establish initial contact increasingly is becoming a daunting task. However, using the appropriate selling techniques actually work in your favor. They serve to qualify those for your subsequent sales efforts, thereby allowing you to focus your efforts on your best prospects. 

To be successful at sales you must target the person who has the purchase decision authority for your products/services. For management training, that always should be the head of the organization/operating unit -- the toughest person in any organization with whom to establish initial contact. A highly successful initial contact selling technique is known as the VITO letter.1 

VITO is an acronym for Very Important Top Officer and was coined by Anthony Parinello's business best seller Selling To VITO.² His approach quite simply is this. You craft a one page letter focusing on the value of your products/services to the prospect, ending with a promise to follow-up with a phone call at a specific date and time. You send the letter in some distinctive manner (today it may be by FedEx or other similar means).³ You then follow-up at the promised time and schedule a short appointment to discuss further how your products/services can meet the VITO's business needs.⁴

NOTE: there are several telephone handling techniques you should master to improve your follow-up call results. One involves the effective use of voice mail. Because voice mail will be reviewed, it offers a powerful way to get your message across -- especially when used in conjunction with the VITO letter.

Internet Selling - Building Trust

Small businesses face a similar challenge in selling their products and services using the Internet. You first must win the trust of your prospects. There are many Internet selling techniques including having great content, email and a newsletter. One of the best approaches I have reviewed is presented by Bob Serling in his session, The New Rules for Internet Marketing.⁵

To me Bob's most important New Rule is that you must establish trust offering a valuable, but relatively inexpensive, product/service through your web site. Following the same three steps to sell anything -- ethos, pathos, logos -- you offer your introductory product/service with a full guarantee. The idea is to promise and delivery an outstanding product/service and a very low cost -- without nay risk to the purchaser. Deliver more (over deliver) that what you promise and you have taken the first step in turning your prospect into a long term customer.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Bob's approach is that prospects contact you for your products/services. They are already motivated and have trust in you because you have demonstrated that you can deliver the value you promised.7

Network Marketing - Building Trust through the Internet

Network marketing (multi level marketing or MLM) traditionally is done using face to face methods of selling products and recruiting individuals to join your team (your down line who generate commissions for you  from their sales).

Most network marketing organizations also offer Websites (they generate excellent revenue from selling you sites/upgrades/other supporting services such as leads, etc). However, these websites do not generate sales or new recruits because network marketing organizations do not know how to sell on the Internet (i,e., they just don't understand Bob Serling's internet selling techniques that lead  prospective clients to you.

So, the newbie network marketer spends a lot of effort trying to recruit new folks and has no time to sell the products/services required to generate enough income  to cover expenses, much less the time invested. So a very high percentage fail. Indeed, many successful successful MLMers advise just get out there and sell the product -- stop trying to recruit!

However, there is one very successful network marketer who has over 20 years of successfully recruiting folks into her down line, and they, following her process, are successful at network marketing and making a good income while building their network marketing business.

She offers a free book which I highly recommend that you read.  It will completely change you view of network marketing+ and reveal how you can get candidate successful down liners to come to you! Just click here for your copy.

I will share with you other selling techniques in my newsletter and other pages at this site. Click here for additional information. 

Regards,

Richard Dowell
President, Best Managers on the Net

We are a business consulting, training and development company dedicated to helping good managers and their companies prosper by reaching for the top.  

*If you really want to be successful in sales, read this.

Click here to learn how one of the world's sales leaders motivated himself to success.

1You also can send the letter via UPS/FedEx and call after it has been delivered.

2Click title to read more about the book -- which, by the way, should be required reading for anyone in sales.

3Parinello recommends sending the letter in a large envelop, regular mail. For me FedEx produced the best results. Others negotiated better rates with Airborne Express and other providers. Note: the best day for your letter to "arrive" is on Tuesday -- the lowest mail day of the week. I've tried all forms of this letter and they all work. However, the approach explained in footnote 1 above is the best. NOTE: This approach also works if you have someone else make the follow up calls to set appointments for you.

4The techniques for successfully "opening the door" to scheduling an initial appointment with the head of an organization apply also to scheduling a meeting with any other person in the organization.

5Click on the title for more information about Bob Serling, this teleconference and how to obtain your own copy of the materials.

6The real work in is developing the product/service, providing compelling copy at your website, and then getting the "right" traffic to visit your website (using the marking and selling techniques covered in detail by Bob in his teleconference and supporting materials).

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