In this issue:
Food For Thought
7 Day Guide To Promoting Your Website (Part II)
Top Ten Strategies For Making The Major Sale
Business Books
Should Your Business Be Online?

Food For Thought:

When things are bad,
we take comfort in the thought... that they could always be worse.
And when they are,
We find hope in the thought... that things are so bad,
they have to get better.
--Malcom S. Forbes

If you make a sale you make a living. If you make
an investment of time and good service in a
customer, you can make a fortune.

Seven Day Guide to Promoting Your Website (Part II)
by Terri Gray - Gray's Internet Consulting
www.homeimages.com/gray

DAY FOUR:

Do a search for businesses/websites that market to your same target market. Make a list of why it would be of a benefit for them to link to you or for you to link to them. Then contact the webmasters of the sites and see if they are interested in exchanging links. (NOTE: Try to set up your link area at the end of your site, so that your prospects don't click off to another location right away. Other things you can do to keep folks at your site is to make use of frames or the tag: TARGET="new" so that a new browser window will be opened instead of the visitor actually leaving your site. IE: <A HREF="http://www.the url of the linked site" TARGET="new">Linked Site Text</A>

DAY FIVE:

Write a signature to be used in all your e-mail and newsgroup posts. Keep it short and simple. No more than 4 - 6 lines. Each and every time that you send out a piece of mail, post to a newsgroup or mailing list, you could be advertising your business. There are so many e-mail packages that people use, that it would be impossible for me to cover each one in detail. But I will cover a few of the more popular ones in use.

The item you need to find is your signature file or sig file for short. If your package has a help menu item, click on it, and do a search for "signature". The sig file is a text message that is attached to each and every piece of mail that you send out. This allows you to, with out any effort on your part, to advertise to the world about your business. An example might look like this:

*************************************************
FREE Marketing Newsletter - Websites as low as $10.00/mo
http://www.HomeImages.com/gray
Put The Power Of Internet To Work For You!
List Your Biz At The Outdoor Sports Web: http://www.OSWeb.com
*************************************************

*********************************************
Gray's Internet Consulting (512) 339-0648
Web Design And More! We Create Success!
Check Today's Special Offer and FREE Marketing Newsletter!
http://www.homeimages.com/gray
*********************************************

The Key is to keep it short, and to pique their interest so that they follow-up with you.

Hands On:

Eudora Mail Program - The sig file can be found under the Tools menu. Select the signature option and type it in the box that pops up. When you are done, simply close down the window, and it will prompt you to save the info. Very simple. I would suggest getting a copy of Eudora if you are directly connected to the "Net". You can download it from any number of shareware sites on the Internet. The shareware version will do about 95% of what you will need your mail program to do for you.

Pegasus Software - Another fine mail program and is free to download. Again you can get a copy under our software selection page. Under the "File" menu select "preferences" and select "signatures" then select "Edit signature Set 1", There is options for weather you are sending locally, to the net, and on a netware server. You want to put your sig in the internet slot. Then when you are ready to send email, simply select the signature box, and your sig file will be appended to the end of your email. It's that simple.

Netscape Mail - Comes with most distributions of Netscape's Navigator. Under the "Options" menu select "Mail and News Preferences" A pop up window will appear, and you need to click on the "Identity tab". It has a slot for the filename of your sig file. With this program you will have to have a text file already created to place in this slot. Make sure and save the file in ASCII text format, otherwise your sig file will be all messed up.

For a FREE report on "The Top Ten Ways to Get More Traffic To Your Website", e-mail our autoresponder at: freerpt@homeimages.com and enter the phrase: get free report in the body of your message. Also visit our website at: http://www.homeimages.com/gray for a FREE monthly Marketing Tips and other FREE reports.

Terri Gray is an Internet and Small Business Consultant. She provides Web Design Hosting, Promotion and Internet Training Services. She may be contacted at: grays@homeimages.com or (512) 339-0648 You can also visit her website at: http://www.homeimages.com/gray

This report may be freely distributed, provided all information remains completely intact and is reproduced in its entirety.

THE TOP TEN STRATEGIES FOR MAKING THE MAJOR SALE

What is a major sale?

That depends on who you talk to. If you're used to selling $19.95 retail items and your boss puts you into $500 items, you've just moved into major sales.

Major sales usually involve speaking with more than one person before a final decision is made. Major sales usually take several sales calls before the sale is concluded. Major sales usually involve the more sophisticated type of clients, especially professional buyers. The larger the sale, the more cautious buyers become about making buying decisions.

Whether you're selling a five hundred dollar software product or a ten million dollar jet airplane, you already know if you're in major sales. If you don't know, you'll know when you get there.

If you are now or plan to be in major selling, here is my version of the Top Ten Strategies For Making The Major Sale:

1. Advance The Sales Process

Very few major sales are made on just one call. There are usually several intermediate steps that move the sale to its final conclusion. Your goal should be to decide in advance what action you want the prospect to take which will confirm that the sales process is moving in a positive direction.

2. Traditional Sales Techniques Don't Work

It would be a big mistake for you to go on a major sales call and try "alternate of choice questions, sharp angles or multiple closing attempts" in your presentation. If you do, the odds are very good that you'll be eaten alive. Or if you're lucky, you'll just get thrown out of the office.

Traditional sales techniques make sophisticated clients and customers feel that you think they're stupid and that you think that you can manipulate them into buying.

When it comes to making the larger sale, you're better off just forgetting everything you ever learned about "sales techniques."

3. Conduct An Interview

Major sales are made around solving the buyer's problems. To do that, you need an arsenal of pre-determined questions that will bring the buyer's problems to the surface where they can be examined. If your product or service cannot solve problems for the buyer, there is no valid reason for him or her to do business with you. And to solve problems, you must first know what they are.

I recommend that you begin your interview by asking permission to ask some questions that will determine if the two of you can do some business.

4. Dig Deeper For More Pain

Offering to solve the buyer's problems too soon will work against you rather than for you. You must probe deeper to uncover the seriousness and consequences to the buyer if the problems he/she just revealed to you are not solved.

You must carefully explore the overlooked ADDITIONAL problems that occur as a result of not curing the cause of the problem. In sales, as in medicine, you need to find the CAUSE of the disease before you can offer a complete cure.

You do this by asking questions like: "Tell me Mr. ______, what effect will it have on your overall operation if that problem is not solved? How much will it cost? What will it do in terms of morale? How much production are you currently losing with the way you're handling this now?"

Before you can make the major sale, you must know how to develop major explicit problems from minor implied problems. And you must do all of this before you explain the value of your product or service. (Are you with me?)

5. Let The Prospect Do The Selling...Not You

One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is that they start offering solutions too soon. Doing so will invite objections, especially price objections.

You get the prospect to sell herself by asking her "Solution Questions."

Solution Questions allow her to explain the benefits of your product or service and how it will solve her problems. Example: "What will it do for your company if we can reduce the cost of that operation by 10%?"

6. Offer Benefits...Not Features

Presenting features will cause objections in your presentation. Only offer benefits, and only offer benefits when the prospect has expressed an explicit need that absolutely has to be met. Remember, let the prospect do the selling.

7. Stage Your Presentation For Others To Sell Others

Most major sales involve several people. It's what goes on between your sales calls that is the most important...when you're not there.

By asking problem questions, probing deeper and asking solution questions, you allow the "influencers" you're selling to discover their own problems. They then become the "experts" and present your product or service as the solution to problems "they" discovered. (Don't you just love this?)

8. Don't Ever Close

Traditional sales closes will hurt you in the major sale. But what are you to do? Simple. You tell or suggest to the buyer what you want him to do. This is done in three steps:

a. You make sure you've covered all of the important concerns of the buyer. You ask her if there is anything else that's important to talk about.

b. You summarize the problems explored and the benefits (solutions) of your product or service.

c. You suggest an appropriate step to take: setting up a meeting with key players, getting your prospect agreeing to give you previously inaccessible information or simply ask for the order. (No multiple closes here.)

9. The Right Way To Demonstrate

Before you present your product or service, it's critical that you build a strong need to have problems solved. You build tremendous value in what you sell if you can get the prospect telling you the frustrations he or she has and the determination to get those situations taken care of. When that happens, you then simply demonstrate how your product or service will solve the problems and the close is almost automatic.

10. Practice On The Small-Fry

It's amazing how many salespeople will go on an important sales call to "practice" a new sales behavior. This is a terrible mistake.

Before taking on a major sales prospect, be sure you write out all of the problems that that person or organization may have; create specific questions to ask that draw those problems out into the open; develop even more questions that will allow you to explore deeper to find other problems that may be lurking under the surface; and then practice those new sales behaviors in unimportant sales situations or with family or friends...but not practice in the real world with a major sales prospect.

Aren't you just dying to try these ten strategies out?

Copyright 1997 by Sales University All Rights Reserved Hilton Johnson, hilton@salesuniversity.com The Sales Coach http://www.salesuniversity.com

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