The Sales Hangout

Looking for cost effective (free) selling skills?

Whether you are new to sales or a proven veteran of the sales profession, we all need to continuously seek out new ways to improve our selling skills. Why? Things are changing all around us everyday and we have to be open to learning new skills to keep our top edge.

As a Sales Director, I am always on the look out for new creative training tools to share with my sales reps. One site I recently found offers free selling skills training from Brian Tracy, a world renowned sales and business leader who has written multiple best sellers and produced dozens of sales and motivational DVD's and CD's. You can find the free Brian Tracy CD offer on this site; www.freebriantracy.com

Brian offers multiple topics to choose from including; How To Be a Sales SuperStar, How To Increase Your Productivity and other relevant topics. If you are a sales manager, there is also some great material here to help you become a better manager and leader of people.

Take advantage of this free offer from Brian Tracy today... as I am not sure how long he will offer this. Go There Now: www.freebriantracy.com

Now Go Sell Something And Make Some Money!!
John M.

This sales training tip may seem basic, but you would be surprised how many sales reps have no concept of the power of this technique.

This training tip is one that I have shared with hundreds of sales reps over the years and I have found that some people naturally do this almost instinctively, and others never really seem to grasp the technique.

What is it? To borrow a phrase from a movie classic, “Caddie Shack”… Be The Ball!

In other words, you must think like your customer if you are ever going to sell anything to your customer. You have to mentally take yourself out of your position as the salesperson and assume the role of your prospect.

Ask yourself these questions before you ever walk in the door…

- Why do you think they accepted an appointment with you?
- What would they gain if they purchased your product or service?
- Why would your product make their job easier?
- What is their role or position in the company?
- How does a decision to purchase from you affect their position?

Once you get into the appointment, continue to mentally put yourself in their shoes as they begin to interact with you in the call. Here are some questions to ask yourself during your appointment:

- Does the prospect seem at ease or comfortable with me and my style? If not, why?
- Am I going to fast? Too Slow?
- Does the prospect seem interested in what I am saying?
- Are they answering my questions freely, or are they reserved and guarded? Why?
- Do they prefer a more formal conversation or are they more relaxed and friendly?
- Are they focused on our conversation or preoccupied with something else? Why?
- Do they like making eye contact or does that make them uncomfortable?

The bottom line here, is that you have to continuously monitor your prospect during the call and adjust your style and approach accordingly. Don’t just ignore all of the signs that your prospect is sending out and ram through the call with your standard pitch and then hope that you are going to sell something.

Key point here, is to think like your customer. Figure out what makes them the most comfortable in a selling situation and make your adjustments on the fly to give yourself the best chance of making a sale.

My recommendation is to always start your presentation off cautiously and conservatively until you get the “feel” of your prospect and then move forward as you start to gather some data or intelligence on them.

At all costs, avoid ramming into a call with an overbearing personality and a predefined pitch and risk turning the prospect off in the first 20 seconds of a sales call.

With practice, you will get very good at this and you will find that your prospects will favor you over your competition simply because you "understand them…"

In my opinion, developing this skill is fundamental if you want to be successful in your sales career. This is a great sales training tip for newbies, veteran reps and sales managers to take to heart.

Now Go Sell Something And Make Some Money!!
John M.

With the current state of our economy and the loss of jobs that we are experiencing, more and more people are looking at getting into a sales career and as a result, sales training is a hot topic right now.

Over the past several months, I have gotten a lot of calls and emails from people that I have worked with over the past several years asking me;

"Do you think I would be good in sales"?

"Do you know of anyone hiring new salespeople"?

"Do you have any sales training tips for me if I started a new career in sales"?

"Where should I go for some free sales training to get started"?

Yes, there are a lot of sales jobs out there; some legitimate and some just down right Cheesy... so my first advice is always - Be Careful about what you jump into!

Make sure it is a legitimate company, with a proven product or service, and talk to some of their customers and to their current sales people if you can. Do your due diligence. Find out if they offer any free sales training tips for new hires and how much time and effort they put into ongoing sales team development.

Once you jump in with both feet, make a commitment to this new sales career and be a student of the sales process. Read, listen, study, watch and be open to learning everything you can about sales because it is very competitive and you will need to be sharp to survive!

You can't just buy a new suit, call yourself a salesman and start making $100,000 next week. It just doesn't work that way! Trust me... I tried it!

Obviously, I am a huge proponent of sales training and admittedly, seminars, books, sales training CD's / DVD's etc... can get expensive, especially when you are just starting out and are probably a little strapped for cash.

My advice in the beginning is to look for any source of free sales training that you can get your hands on. The library is a decent place to start for books on sales training tips, although some of that information will be a bit "dated" and may not be real effective for you. Also, ask your new Sales Manager what resources they have and absorb everything you can get your hands on.

Another great source for the newcomer can be found at this site: Free sales training.

Brian Tracy is a Sales Master that has a wealth of great sales training tips and techniques and he gives a lot of it to you for free! Take advantage of it... this is priceless information!

Here is the link again to his free sales training page: http://www.salestrainingfree.com

Sales can be a very rewarding career, but remember, it takes a lot of hard work to really master the art of selling and to reap the big rewards!

Good Luck!


Now Go Sell Something And Make Some Money!!
John M.

This Sales blog was created and is maintained for ALL Salespeople to come together to share information, get some new ideas, learn new sales skills, laugh a little and get re-energized.

Like a familiar hangout; it’s a place where everyone here can relate to your world… the world of sales!

Being a salesperson is like no other career that exists. The competition that we face is intense and the challenges that we face, both mentally and physically, will never be understood by anyone that has never “Carried the Bag”.

After 25 years in the field, at all levels of sales and sales management, I have seen and experienced some amazing things, met some crazy people and I still love my life as a salesman.

I have gone through some of the top sales training in the world, read countless books and absorbed numerous videos and CD’s on the art of selling and I have stories that I can tell for the rest of my life!

If you are "Linked-In" you can find me at: John Morey. You will see that I am not a professional circuit speaker, pretentious trainer, author of a sales “theory” book, or a fake blogger. I am just a real guy that has been fortunate enough to make a living in sales my whole life. I have made some great contacts, traveled, learned, taught, coached, laughed and have been through all the craziness that being a salesperson brings with it.

At the SalesHangout, I want to bring people together that are committed to making sales their career and are open to learning and sharing with a network of other like minded sales people.

I intend to post links to some of the sales training tools that I have benefited from, and write about topics that are relevant to all salespeople, in the hope that everyone, veteran or newbie, might gain something from my experiences and from others that post on this site.

We will also share our humorous stories of cold calling, sales situations we have been in and people that we have met along the way.

Have a funny story? Share it here and maybe you will bring a laugh to everyone's day!

Bookmark this site, share it with a friend and come back often. We will have free stuff for you to download, polls, surveys and contests that you can participate in and guest contributors that will blow you away!

Most importantly, we will always have great new articles for you to read that will keep you fresh and relevant in today’s changing world of sales.

Feel free to post a message, send me an email, add me to your Linked- In network or follow me on Twitter.



Now Go Sell Something And Make Some Money!!
John M.