Monthly Archives: July 2010

Evaluate your customers

It is one of your most important sources of information – Your customer database.

As mentioned in the previous blog, you are probably not in contact with 80% of your customers.

So where do you start?

This will very much depend on the information that you have on your customers. If you run a CRM system, everything should be on hand but that is often not the case.

An example of this deficiency was when I was at the start of a sales development project with a local company and asked them for their customer database.
I got a blank look, with the response; ‘What’s that?’ Continue reading

Use your customers

This is not an invitation to get them to purchase items they do not need. That is the recipe for disaster! Continue reading

What do you sell?

A question I always ask clients when I undertake the initial investigation into their sales development is ‘What do you sell?’

The usual answer is; ‘We sell so & so widgets or a service’.

Yes – Is my reply, but that is your product not what you sell. To which I usually get a look of disbelief.

So what do you sell? Continue reading

Listen to the question

Sounds simple but it takes time to develop the right form of questions to ascertain a potential customers needs, but more importantly is do you listen to the answer.

One of the tips given to me when I undertook my sales training is use your mouth and ears in the same proportion, i.e. two ears, one mouth – listen twice as much as you speak.

It is not easy, believe me.

As an example a couple of years back I was looking for a new mobile phone, so I took the advantage whilst at a large shopping mall to see what was available,

However I did have an slightly out of the ordinary requirement, because I use to regularly visit customers with security areas & you cannot take your mobile phone with you if it has a camera: understandable.

Into the phone shops I went with my specification: a phone with Bluetooth but no camera. Continue reading

Contact

Telephone +44 (0)1268 704461 Mobile: +44 (0)7746 175034 e-mail: mike@thesalesmentor.co.uk

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