Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Are you aware of what is happening in your world?

Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Are you aware of what is happening in your world?: When last did you take the time to look around your world? If you dare to observe, you would notice, the rapid change going on all arou...

Are you aware of what is happening in your world?

When last did you take the time to look around your world? If you dare to observe, you would notice, the rapid change going on all around you every day. So if you want to survive and thrive, in this new world, with its ever increasing pace of change, you must become a keen observer. Never allow a day to pass without looking for answers, to a list of questions about what may be changing in your world.

As you know, creating an inquisitive mind requires work; it is not something, which most people find easy to do though. Yes as children we were all curious and looked eagerly around our worlds to see the wonder it offered, but as we grew older society and its demands, forced us to switch off our inquisitive mind. Instead of looking and being fascinated, by the incredible things in our world, we allow the smallest thing to frustrate us. Becoming a keen observer requires you to re-awaken that child in you once again, so that you can once again observe things with fascination, instead of allowing frustration to limit your perspective.

Developing your power of observation

There are a few simple exercises, which I recommend you try, to re-awaken your slumbering powers of observation and creativity. Make a conscious effort to try to do something completely new every day. Simple things like eating or writing with your other hand, pushing the seek button on the radio and listening to different music on the radio, tell the waiter at the restaurant to bring you the item on the menu, which is listed at no 10, so that you can eat something new and surprising for a change. Or really do something different and arrange to go sky diving, mountain climbing, salsa dancing, to a rave party, or SCUBA diving etc.

All these unusual activities cause your brain to develop new neural pathways, which re-awaken your brain and get you thinking differently. My wife and I have a saying “When last did you do something new, for the first time”. We aim to do something really different and unusual at least once a month and more often if our schedule allows. Dare to try something new and to do things differently, all you stand to lose is your mundane life and you will gain a new more empowered brain.

Uncovering the Answers you seek

On a more practical level, draw-up a list of questions, which you ask yourself every week. Really invest time to try to find answers to the questions you pose for yourself. This exercise is only effective if you commit to invest sufficient time to search and discover answers to your questions. Obviously your questions will be unique to you and your needs. I have listed a few questions below which I use to keep abreast of changes in my world.

• What is changed in my industry?
• What has changed in the markets I service?
• Are there any new opportunities, which have opened up for my services?
• What has changed from a legislative perspective?
• What changes are there in my community?
• What changes are there in my Country?
• What changes are there around the world?
• What new challenges have presented themselves?
• What new personalities are influencing the world?
• What new tools, techniques and technologies have come to light?
• How can I use any of these changes to my advantage?

Invest the effort to become an acute observer and astute evaluator of all the change going on in your world. You do not live in a bubble, so be aware that everything going on around you affects you in one way or another. As things continue to change at an ever increasing pace, the need to be aware of all the changes becomes even more important.

I am sure that you want to start inviting success into your experience. As you know it requires you to be alert, awake and to observe life and all of the subtle messages it sends out. When you are aware you will see the most incredible opportunities, emerge from the most unexpected places. If you are not paying attention, observing and continually asking questions, these opportunities will pass you by, without you even being aware that they were there in the first place.

Motivational Sales Speakers

Three Secrets to Sales Success

The three secrets to sales success are simple – “PREPARATION, Preparation, preparation”. I believe that the more prepared you are before any sales call, the more likely you will be able to, help your customers and prospects, understand their specific needs, see how your product or service can completely satisfy their requirements, the easier it will be to get them to know, like and trust you and see the value you bring. Proper preparation allows you to engage with your customers or prospects on a much deeper level and supports you to have a greater understanding of their business and personal needs. This will obviously make connecting with them and showing the value you bring far easier.

The old school style of cold calling, where you just arrive at someone’s door and say “Tell me a little about your business” and hope that they are a perfect fit for your product or service. Makes you look unprepared, unsure and unprofessional and already puts your customer or prospect on the back foot. People do not have time to waste in unnecessary meetings with sales people, who are on a fishing expedition and do not have a clue about their prospects business or needs.

Preparation  

There are so many ways to research any new prospects, before you even try to arrange a meeting to meet with them.

• Almost every company has a company website. Spend some time surfing through their site; identify a few strategic pages, which you can make printouts of. Read through the pages several times, familiarising yourself with the company, its operations and structure. Make some notes for yourself, on the printout and prepare a few questions on things, which you do not understand. Read through your notes and the questions just before the meeting, so that you have all the relevant information and the questions you need to ask, in the forefront of your mind. During the meeting, you should ask those questions, which you have prepared. This will show that you are prepared and are only looking for them to elaborate on some key areas to help you improve your understanding of their business, so that you can better help them.
• Put the person’s name, who you intend to meet, into a Google search. There may be an article written by them or you may be guided to their LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook page. There is an incredible amount of information, you can glean from all these sources, which will help you get a better understanding of the person you will meet. Information, which you can use during the meeting to help you connect with them and positively influence them to see the value you offer.
• Contact your prospects own sales team and ask them for information on the company, the person you intend to meet with etc. Sales people are really willing to divulge information and will speak freely, giving you a whole lot of very useful information.
• Read as much of your prospects literature as possible. Even though it is normally written as a brag document, most of the ones I have read, also give information on shifts in the company’s emphasis and even market coverage etc. It also gives you an insight into what they think about themselves and their products or services. All this information will be invaluable, when you meet with them.
• Try to make contact with their vendors. This can be more difficult and some vendors are reluctant to speak about their customers. If you can get one of their vendors to speak to you, try to ask questions about their relationship with your prospect. Ask questions like how well they pay and your prospects expectations and additional requirements etc. Vendors are seldom used as they are difficult to discover and often reluctant to divulge any information, but can all the same be an incredible source of information.
• Contact their competition and ask them for information about your prospect. I know sales people should never directly run their competition down, but they do. Call on your prospects competition, starting with their sales team and try to get as much information as you can. My experience has shown that the more the competition hates your prospect, the better they usually are. Competitors hate people who constantly take business away from them.
• Try to contact their customers and get information on delivery, organisation, quality and any subtle information, which can give you better insights and a competitive advantage.
• Use your inner circle or people in your network to try to gather information on your prospect. A quick email or telephone call to people who know your prospect or who have done business with them, may present you with the bonanza you are looking for. They may be able to connect you with the right person or give you some very useful information.
• Give your prospects PR or Marketing department a call. They can also provide you with some valuable information.
• Finally think carefully about your objective and purpose, when making the meeting.

I know that it is far easier to just wing it and to cold call on prospects. It takes far less time and allows sales people to knock off at lunch time every day. But if you want to excel as a sales professional and make a real success in selling, proper perpetration is crucial. Yes, preparation takes time and effort, but when done properly, it saves you the time of calling on the wrong prospects and you appear very impressive, when you do sit opposite your prospect.

He or she can see that you are prepared and will be silently impressed and unconsciously connect with you. This first impression, created due to great preparation, is incredibly powerful and is the one crucial element, which separates a great sales professional from an average sales person. It is a huge advantage, which every sales professional must take advantage of. Forget about your sales pitch, power point presentation, own literature, samples and business cards, you know the same stuff your competition is doing and instead focus on researching and understanding your prospect and their needs and you will close.

If you want to excel at sales, you can no longer afford to blunder blindly into meetings with your customers and prospects, where you sit with your feet braced firmly against the desk. Maintaining a one sided perspective, where you are looking to get as much as possible from every individual transaction or interaction, with your customers or prospects. Rather ensure that you every time you meet with them, you have a meaningful and well thought through purpose, for calling on your them, where you authentically always have their best interests at heart.

Everyone is pressed for time nowadays and as such they have very little time available in their day to merely catch up with people and have a pleasant chat with someone, who wants to “SELL” them something. Most people do however have time or they can make time, to invest with someone, who is well prepared and has a sincere intention to “HELP” them mitigate challenges, reduce costs or better satisfy any needs they may have.

Author: Andrew Horton Sales Training

Everyone is in sales

It cannot be disputed that certain people have specific strengths, which will certainly support them to be better at what we would traditionally call sales, than other people. I do however believe that, as we are all in sales, from the moment we utter our first cry, where by crying, we are attempting to influence someone to act in a certain way towards us or to perform a task for us, like change our nappy etc. We all have an innate ability to sell or should I say influence people to do things.

We are all born in Sales

Asking your mother to buy you a sweet when you are five and nagging her until she relents, is a form of influence, granted not one that will work with a million dollar deal, but it is sales and influence all the same. As you grow up your natural ability to negotiate with or influence those around improves and so for example, when you are standing outside a cinema negotiating with your wife, trying to sell her on going to see the movie of your choice, instead of the romance she wants to go and see. Both of you have honed your negotiating skills throughout your lives and are pretty adept at putting your point of view across, trying to influence the other to person to see your point of view and thus go to see the movie you want to see. This is nothing more than sales or positive influence.

Any natural talent can be improved

As the ability to influence the people around you is a crucial survival and life skill and one we all possess to varying degrees. Selling or the ability to positively influence the people around you is a natural ability present in everyone and thus one of the easiest skills to teach anyone.
The hardest part in this process is to get people to stop only thinking of themselves, when they are attempting to influence people and instead to focus on discovering a mutually beneficial solution, which sees both parties win. Once you make this crucial shift, learning the art of selling or positively influencing people, becomes merely a process of gradually learning a few new skills and developing a few daily routines or success habits to support you to make the sale.

Sustainable Sales Success starts with Fair Exchange

I am sure that you have read a number of sales books or attended sales seminars, where you have been told the importance of being of service to your customers and always looking for ways to support them and satisfy their needs or help them to solve any challenges they may be facing. All the books and seminars you have read are all absolutely correct and all these elements are crucial, because this is how you connect with your customers and prospects, so that you can reach a point where both parties feel that they are winners.
The secret to become successful at sales requires you to always look for ways to ensure that a modality of fair exchange exists. Where your customers or prospects, feel that the value you bring, is equivalent to or exceeds the value or money they will need to pay to you in exchange for your product or service. Once you can consistently show your customers that the value you bring or your value proposition exceeds the price you expect them to pay, you will effortlessly close every sale.

How do you do this?

There are two crucial elements necessary to make this work for you and your customer:

What does your Product or Service do?

You must firstly know what you product or service actually does. People don’t buy drill bits, what they are really buying are holes, people who buy houses are not buying a house, they are buying a place to rest, rejuvenate and be fulfilled, people who are buying a car are not buying a car, they are buying status and a means to comfortably and conveniently get from one point to another, people who buy a front end loader are not buying construction equipment, they are buying a hole in the ground and someone buying a camera is buying a means of recording memories.
Action Idea: Based on the previous example, explore your value proposition and uncover exactly what it is that you sell? Look beyond the obvious here and discover what your product and service actually provides to your customer.

Who needs what you sell?

Once you are absolutely clear on what it is your value proposition offers, the next step is to look around your world and discover people and businesses, who need exactly what you offer. The better the fit, the easier it will be for you to find ways to create a modality of fair exchange, where your customers and prospects understand that the value you bring, exceeds the price you expect them to pay for it.
If you want to excel at sales, start by getting the two elements I have described above in place and then approach every sale or potential sale from a perspective of “WIN – WIN” and closing sales will become effortless.
Now all that is left for you to do once you have all of this in place, is for you to hone your ability to understand and clearly communicate your value proposition to your customers and prospects and for you to learn the art of finding better ways of discovering and connecting with your ideal clients or prospects.
Selling or the ability to influence people comes naturally to all of us; it is a crucial life and necessary survival skill. Make the shift away from your own self-interest and instead find ways to be of service to others and selling will feel as natural as negotiating with your wife or child.

Author: Andrew Horton Sales Training

You were Born with an Innate Ability to Sell

It cannot be disputed that certain people have specific strengths, which will certainly support them to be better at what we would traditionally call sales, than other people. I do however believe that, as we are all in sales, from the moment we utter our first cry, where by crying, we are attempting to influence someone to act in a certain way towards us or to perform a task for us, like change our nappy etc. We all have an innate ability to sell or should I say influence people to do things.

We are all born in Sales

Asking your mother to buy you a sweet when you are five and nagging her until she relents, is a form of influence, granted not one that will work with a million dollar deal, but it is sales and influence all the same. As you grow up your natural ability to negotiate with or influence those around improves and so for example, when you are standing outside a cinema negotiating with your wife, trying to sell her on going to see the movie of your choice, instead of the romance she wants to go and see. Both of you have honed your negotiating skills throughout your lives and are pretty adept at putting your point of view across, trying to influence the other to person to see your point of view and thus go to see the movie you want to see. This is nothing more than sales or positive influence.

Any natural talent can be improved

As the ability to influence the people around you is a crucial survival and life skill and one we all possess to varying degrees. Selling or the ability to positively influence the people around you is a natural ability present in everyone and thus one of the easiest skills to teach anyone.
The hardest part in this process is to get people to stop only thinking of themselves, when they are attempting to influence people and instead to focus on discovering a mutually beneficial solution, which sees both parties win. Once you make this crucial shift, learning the art of selling or positively influencing people, becomes merely a process of gradually learning a few new skills and developing a few daily routines or success habits to support you to make the sale.

Sustainable Sales Success starts with Fair Exchange

I am sure that you have read a number of sales books or attended sales seminars, where you have been told the importance of being of service to your customers and always looking for ways to support them and satisfy their needs or help them to solve any challenges they may be facing. All the books and seminars you have read are all absolutely correct and all these elements are crucial, because this is how you connect with your customers and prospects, so that you can reach a point where both parties feel that they are winners.
The secret to become successful at sales requires you to always look for ways to ensure that a modality of fair exchange exists. Where your customers or prospects, feel that the value you bring, is equivalent to or exceeds the value or money they will need to pay to you in exchange for your product or service. Once you can consistently show your customers that the value you bring or your value proposition exceeds the price you expect them to pay, you will effortlessly close every sale.

How do you do this?

There are two crucial elements necessary to make this work for you and your customer:

What does your Product or Service do?

You must firstly know what you product or service actually does. People don’t buy drill bits, what they are really buying are holes, people who buy houses are not buying a house, they are buying a place to rest, rejuvenate and be fulfilled, people who are buying a car are not buying a car, they are buying status and a means to comfortably and conveniently get from one point to another, people who buy a front end loader are not buying construction equipment, they are buying a hole in the ground and someone buying a camera is buying a means of recording memories.
Action Idea: Based on the previous example, explore your value proposition and uncover exactly what it is that you sell? Look beyond the obvious here and discover what your product and service actually provides to your customer.

Who needs what you sell?

Once you are absolutely clear on what it is your value proposition offers, the next step is to look around your world and discover people and businesses, who need exactly what you offer. The better the fit, the easier it will be for you to find ways to create a modality of fair exchange, where your customers and prospects understand that the value you bring, exceeds the price you expect them to pay for it.
If you want to excel at sales, start by getting the two elements I have described above in place and then approach every sale or potential sale from a perspective of “WIN – WIN” and closing sales will become effortless.
Now all that is left for you to do once you have all of this in place, is for you to hone your ability to understand and clearly communicate your value proposition to your customers and prospects and for you to learn the art of finding better ways of discovering and connecting with your ideal clients or prospects.
Selling or the ability to influence people comes naturally to all of us; it is a crucial life and necessary survival skill. Make the shift away from your own self-interest and instead find ways to be of service to others and selling will feel as natural as negotiating with your wife or child.

Author: Andrew Horton Sales Training