How To Build A Selling System That Charms, Seduces And Puts More Gold In Your Pouch

Today’s guest post is from a new friend of mine, Dov Gordon. Dov helps small-business and small company CEO’s build such loyal employees and life-long customers, that even their competitors enviously spread their renown.

The lead horse wins by a nose, and you can build a selling system that charms, seduces and puts more gold in your pouch with only a bit of extra thought and discipline.

1. Build your own “Ultimate Sales Machine Map.”

A winning sales machine incorporates several stages, each with its own goals and corresponding tools, skills and disciplines.

For example, your 1st stage is to generate leads.  The 2nd stage would be to qualify those leads and make sure you are talking to the decision maker. Your 3rd stage would be to develop a trusting relationship with the decision maker.  The 4th stage would be to understand his needs and wants.  In stage 5, you’d recommend a product or service. Sixth, you close a deal. Finally, you ask for referrals and repeat.

2.  Each stage has distinct, and clear goals.

Look at each stage and ask yourself, “What is the ideal outcome here?”  “What will we see when this stage is achieved?”

For example, consider Stage 4, gaining a deep understanding of your prospect, which can be tricky. The goal is not that you feel you understand him but that he feels you do. When a prospect feels you really ‘get’ them, they start to say certain things, do things, ask a new kind of question. Your goal in Stage 4 is to spark this change in behavior. Describe it clearly.

3.  Craft the best tools and disciplines.

The heel of your shoe does a shoddy job of knocking in a nail. You want a hammer of the size and balance appropriate for the nail. Similarly, each stage in your sales system also requires goal appropriate tools – and disciplines.

For example, this article is a tool in my Stage 1 of attracting qualified leads. By placing a practical and immediately useful article on a blog with quality readers, it’s likely that some of you will want more.  And so I’ll offer you a free tool, you’re very own “Sales Machine Map” template. It’s a simple visual depiction of the ideas in this article that you can fill in and start using in minutes to grow your sales.

The discipline for me in Stage 1 is to write regularly, and so I spend the first hours of most days writing.  Some days, the result is a jumble of ideas in no useful form. But in the long run, the daily discipline ensures that eventually, the slapdash brush strokes coalesce into art.

USING THE “ULTIMATE SALES MACHINE” MAP:

The first step in using the Sales Machine Map, like any map, is to identify where you are now. As simple as this sounds, it’s easy to mess up.

When you’re on the phone with a prospect, you may are sitting in the same office chair, but your geographic location on the Map will vary.  The science is to build your map.  The art is to know where you are on the map with every prospect at every moment. You’ll get this clear every time, with a little practice. This alone is a tremendous competitive advantage.

So if you’re talking to a lead and you discover that he’s not the decision maker, but his company does qualify, you’re NOT in Stage 2 or 3.  You’re back in stage 1.  Your goals just changed to the stage 1 goals and you need to go back to the stage 1 tools. This may include a question such as “Who in your company will ultimately make the decision about buying widgets?”

YOUR NEXT STEPS:

- Get your Fill-In-the-Blank Sales Machine Map
- Break your sales process down into stages appropriate for you.
- Write out the objectives for each stage.
- List the tools you can use to achieve each outcome.
- List the disciplines you must live to achieve each outcome.

I tell my clients all the time, “Clear thinking is the most valuable work.”  With the clarity you’ve gained from doing this, go ye now forth and earn ye more money.

You’ll also enjoy Dov’s free, practical and immediately relevant seminar recording on “The Critical 10% of Management Skills that Make You Look Brilliant 90% of the Time.”

Get it at http://www.DovGordon.biz/the-10-percent.htm

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