Btb Guest Author

Jonathan Farrington

INTRODUCING…………..

Last Wednesday, we shared some exciting news with the entire Top Sales Experts team, and now I can at last share that news with you.

When we formed Top Sales Associates in 2007, our original plan was to follow the successful launches of Top 10 Sales Articles and Top Sales Experts with a number of other “Top Sales” initiatives and create a global brand.

However, as we all know, time is a great “educator” and based on the experience we have gained during the last two years, and after lengthy discussions with the TSE Executive Board, we have decided to change our strategy.

The desire to ornate the definitive sales related location remains strong, but instead of diluting our offerings, we are going to merge them and build an all-encompassing, one-stop, “sales supermarket” – so welcome to …..

Top Sales World…The Global Sales Resource.

We intend to use the Top Sales Experts project as the foundation, and in fact, we will only be promoting the products/services/solutions of the TSE team, plus those of our  Sponsors and TSE Strategic Partners.

This is of course, our most ambitious project to date, and it is outside the scope of our existing resources. We will therefore be working with outsourced expertise where necessary, specifically; website design, copywriting and marketing.

The projected launch date is January 12th.

So let me share with you what precisely is involved.

Site Content – Existing Sections:

Top Sales Experts
Top Sales Masterclasses
Top Sales Roundtables
Top 10 Sales Articles
Top Sales Articles/Top Sales Podcasts/Top Sales Guides
Top Sales Newsletter/ Top Sales Ebook
Top Sales Assessments
Top Sales Blogs

Ok, so that’s the eleven existing successful sections. Now let me introduce you to the seven new ones …..

Top Sales Leadership Zone
Top Sales 2.0
Top Sales Tools
Top Sales Jobs
Top Sales Store
Top Sales Events
Top Sales Advice

Those then are the eighteen areas that we have identified, and there may be two more to be added before we launch.

For example, it would make sense to have a “Top Sales Resources” Section  where we promote our Strategic Partners.

Project Timetable:

Site design chosen – October
Build begins – November
Testing phase – Mid-December
Launch – January 12th

In Summary:

We are building the significant sales related location
It will contain every conceivable sales resource
We will only be promoting the products/services/solutions of the TSE team and those of our sponsor and strategic partners

Top Sales World – Where in the world do you want to go today?

More soon….

This post appeared in Joinathan’s blog on October 3rd.

———————-

Jonathan Farrington is a globally recognized business coach, mentor, author, and consultant, who has guided hundreds of companies and tens of thousands of individuals around the world towards optimum performance levels.  He has authored in excess of three hundred skills development programmes, designed a range of unique and innovative process tools and has been published extensively on a wide range of business topics including organizational and sales team development, leadership and the customer imperative.  Jonathan’s first book, “Tougher At The Top” will be published early in 2009.  Visit his website @ www.jonathanfarrington.com

Btb Guest Author

Cindy King

So you want to make your business international?

Traditionally there are 7 different options open to you. Each path has advantages and disadvantages.

Businesses just starting their business development abroad will need to study these options very carefully.

Online businesses starting to develop a regular international client base will also find it very interesting to look at the traditional business development strategies. You never know where your international internet business can lead you.

Here are your international business expansion options.

1 – Sell Directly To Your Foreign Clients From Your Home Offices

The advantages are:

• No expensive foreign offices
• No foreign taxes
• You retain full control of your international strategy

The disadvantages are:

• More difficult to penetrate foreign markets
• More cross cultural communication issues
• No local expertise in-house
• You handle all sales issues that arise
• Full responsibility in the event of legal issues

2 – Open A Local Office To Represent Your Business

The advantages are:

• Local presence
• You retain full control of your international strategy

The Disadvantages are:

• Full responsibility in the event of legal issues
• Need tax advice on how to set up finances
• Local taxes due
• Financial results not fully integrated with main company

3 – Create An Overseas Subsidiary

The advantages are:

• Local presence
• You control your sales strategy

The Disadvantages are:

• Expensive solution
• Separate company structure has financial, fiscal and legal repercussions to be researched fully

4 – Hire A Sales Agent To Sell To Foreign Markets

The advantages are:

• Local presence
• Local expertise
• You control your sales strategy
• This is usually a cheaper option than going through a distributor

The Disadvantages are:

• Research needed for legal and taxation issues
• May cost you a fee to terminate agreement

5 – Find A Foreign Distributor

The advantages are:

• Local presence
• Local expertise
• Sales network in place
• No expensive foreign offices
• No local taxes
• Distributor is usually responsible for local legal issues

The Disadvantages are:

• You lose control over your sales strategy
• Distributors are generally more expensive than sales agents
• To end a distributor agreement you need to give notice

6 – Develop A Franchise Overseas

The advantages are:

• Local presence
• Local expertise
• Benefit from franchiser investments

The Disadvantages are:

• Not always an option
• Strict legislation sometimes

7 – Enter Into A Joint-Venture

The advantages are:

• Local presence
• Local expertise
• Possibility of mutual benefit if a good fit
• Each partner keeps the ownership his side of the Joint-Venture
• Flexible structure

The Disadvantages are:

• Need to research the legal responsibilities and implications involved
• Opens your intellectual property to risk

Research Your Options

This list gives you a quick glance at the different international development options and their advantages and disadvantages.

This list is by no means complete. There are many parameters involved. You will need to do your own research and contact the authorities involved.

But this list is interesting for the online businesses starting to get international sales. It is a reminder of how your business could evolve, of the directions you could take your business.

You might find the ideal distributor or sales agent for your products and services one day. This is just a reminder of your other options.

International internet marketing allows businesses to enter into international business development one step earlier.

Internet business does not exclude any of these traditional international development options.

An international internet marketing strategy can be a very good international market research tool leading towards more traditional international expansion methods.

——————–

Cindy King is a Cross-Cultural Marketer & International Sales Specialist. With over 25 years field experience in international sales & marketing and 3 years professional copywriting, Cindy helps businesses to get more international sales, primarily by:

• Creating international business development strategies to shorten time to profitability

• Developing international lead generation strategies

• Lead generation copywritin —interviewing international clients for success stories, case studies, & white papers

• International SEO & Web Copywriting

Cindy can be found @ www.getinternationalclients.com or @ her blog cindyking.biz

——————–

In the News

TSE Captain and powerhouse sales leader, Jonathan Farrington is very very close to reaching the milestone of publishing 600 blog posts - he is on 599.

Here is a video of how Jonathan likes to motivate the TSE Team

THANK YOU JONATHAN

I would like to congratulate Jonathan on this tremendous achievement, thank him for everything that he has taught me and for the continued patience and kindness he has shown towards me.

Well done Jonathan, please continue to INSPIRE us all.

Btb Guest Author

Jonathan Farrington

Micro-blogging service Twitter remains the preserve of a few, despite the hype surrounding it, according to research.

Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of 300,000 users found.

Estimates suggest it now has more than 10 million users and is growing faster than any other social network.

However, the Harvard team found that more than half of all people using Twitter update their page less than once every 74 days.

And most people only ever “tweet” once during their lifetime, the researchers found.

“Based on the numbers, Twitter is certainly not a service where everyone has seen it has instantly loved it,” said Bill Heil, a graduate from Harvard Business School who carried out the work.

On a typical online social network, he said, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production.

“This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network,” the team wrote in a blog post.

Silent crowds

Twitter is a social networking website where people can post messages of 140 up to characters - known as “tweets” - that can be seen by other users who subscribe to their feed.

Its growth has been described as “explosive” and has become the poster child of social networking sites, particularly amongst media companies.

Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than an intimate conversation with friends.

Recent figures from research firm Nielsen Online show that visitors to the site increased by 1,382%, from 475,000 to seven million, between February 2008 and February 2009. It is thought to have grown beyond 10 million in the last 4 months.

By comparison, Facebook - one of the most popular social networking sites by number of visitors - has 200 million active users and grew by 228% during the same period.

Research by Nielsen also suggests that many people give the service a try, but rarely or never return.

Earlier this year, the firm found that more than 60% of US Twitter users fail to return the following month.

“The Harvard data says very, very few people tweet and the Nielsen data says very, very few people listen consistently,” Mr Heil told BBC News.

‘Super user’

The Harvard study took a snapshot of 300,542 users in May 2009. As well as usage patterns it looked in detail at gender differences.

For example, it found that men have 15% more followers than women despite there being slightly more females users of Twitter than males.

It also showed that an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman, despite the reverse being true on other social networks.

“The sort of content that drives men to look at women on other social networks does not exist on Twitter,” said Mr Heil. “By that I mean pictures, extended articles and biographical information.”

However, said Mr Heil, the most striking result was that so few people used the service to publish information, preferring instead to be passive consumers.

For example, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one.

“Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than an intimate conversation with friends,” he said. “It looks like a few people are creating content for a few people to read and share.”

Some “super users” can have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers.

Currently, the most popular person to follow on Twitter is the movie star Ashton Kutcher who has over two million followers.

However, the service bills itself as a way to “communicate and stay connected” with “friends, family and co-workers”.

“The Twitter management need to decide if this is a problem,” said Mr Heil. “And if they decide it is, how they will tweak Twitter to become more acceptable to the average user?”

Very interesting!!

Thanks to BBC News.

Jonathan Farrington is a globally recognized business coach, mentor, author, and consultant, who has guided hundreds of companies and tens of thousands of individuals around the world towards optimum performance levels.  He has authored in excess of three hundred skills development programmes, designed a range of unique and innovative process tools and has been published extensively on a wide range of business topics including organizational and sales team development, leadership and the customer imperative.  Jonathan’s first book, “Tougher At The Top” will be published early in 2009.  Visit his website @ www.jonathanfarrington.com

In the News

Here is a second very interesting post from Jonathan called “Dear Customer, Meet Me On Twitter. Dear Vendor, Why Should I Do That? “

“We all know that a vitally important sales activity is that of managing existing customer accounts, to consolidate and grow the relationship. Yet unfortunately, when compared over time, the customers’ interest levels increase while salespeople’s interest levels tend to decrease. This creates a “relationship gap” and is due entirely to complacency. I happen to believe that “complacency levels” are increasing alarmingly, and this goes some way to explaining declining levels of sales achievement”

Jonathan highlights why increasing dependence on Sales 2.0 tools may end up decreasing the levels of time and activities spent managing existing accounts and relationships. I think he makes a very strong case why salespeople should proceed with caution.

Staying with the Twitter theme, Jordan McCollum tells us that to”Breathe into a paper bag. Put your head between your knees” because Twitter traffic is now at best flat or maybe even declining.I guess I may have to start looking for another replacement addiction

Over at TSE

TSE Masterclass Schedule

Today @ 6pm

“Engage More…Sell More” presented by Skip Anderson

Thursday @ 6pm

“Cold Calling in the 21st Century: The New Rules” presented by Wendy Weiss

Thursday June 25th

“Mom Was Right! Honesty is the best policy and, in today’s tough selling market, a very profitable one” presented by Colleen Francis

Tuesday June 30th

“The Incredible Value Of Sales Team Audits” presented by Kendra Lee and Jonathan Farrington

Remember each masterclass is $59.50 on it’s own, but if you join through my blog as a VIP member - you get all this and more, much MORE for $25 so why not:

Take the tour

Download a FREE copy of our summer eBook (normally $19.95)

Just click through on the two banners above.

Btb Guest Author

Miriam Ahern

Face-to-face business networking is a much cheaper way to promote your business than advertising or PR. It is a low-cost activity where the pressure is on your time rather than on your pocket. It’s more effective than on-line networking as you build important personal relationships more quickly.

Nevertheless, meeting someone just once is unlikely to bring you new business. The key lies in repeat-encounters. However, the old maxim still holds – time is money. Here’s how to spend that time wisely:

Step # 1 - Determine why you need to network and set clear networking objectives for yourself

Action - List the main (important and urgent) objectives for your networking activities for the next twelve months. These objectives might be aligned to a personal or business plan that you have developed. Be very specific in terms of what you need to

do and why and when you need to do it. Use the SMART principle so that your networking objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound.

Step # 2 - Audit your existing networks

Action - Make a ‘master list’ of your existing networks on one sheet of paper. Then, for each of those networks, take a blank sheet of paper and brain-storm that network. What you want to end up with is a set of individual lists of all of your active contacts within in each of your current networks. An active contact is someone with whom you have interacted during the last three months or so. If you are used to ‘mind-mapping’, that method makes this step really easy.

Step # 3 – Align your ‘master list’ to your new networking objectives

Action – Ask yourself this question. Are there other relevant groups of people that I need to network with to achieve my current networking objectives? If the answer is yes, your immediate mission is to identify, locate and engage with these new groups or individuals. Different networking objectives may require you to interact within different networking groups.

Step # 4 – Galvanise your existing networks into action

Action – In the context of your new networking objectives, review the names on each of the sheets that you have prepared for each of your networks. Are there other people available to you through those existing networks that you have not included in your list? For example, are there wider family members, ex-colleagues, or co-professionals with whom it would benefit you to acquaint yourself? Plan to connect with these additional people at your earliest opportunity.

Step # 5 –Re-educate your existing contacts

Action – Make sure that your introduction, or ‘elevator pitch’, is up to date. For many of us, the way in which we introduce ourselves may depend on which network we are interacting within. Make sure that if you have a ‘set’ of introductions that they are all freshly aligned to your networking goals. Do this in advance of any networking activities. Don’t get caught on the spot at events or meetings where you might get tangled in a long explanation about how or why you have changed your slant.

Step # 6 – Encourage your contacts to be your ambassadors and your sales reps!

Action – Make yourself memorable. One extremely good networker that I know carries a stunningly beautiful pair of diamond earrings in his pocket. Not so strange, really. He’s a master jeweller and a diamond grader. You should see people flocking around him when he’s in action. No-one ever forgets having met him either!

Use every available opportunity when you are networking to become involved in the event itself. Here are some suggestions:

Get to know your network organisers or facilitators

Volunteer to ‘buddy-up’ with newcomers at formal networking events

Become a connector, introduce your acquaintances to each-other

Offer to present a short talk on your subject(s) of expertise

Extend a special discount to fellow-networkers

Offer to be a table facilitator or host during round-table networking activities or exercises

Follow up a promising chance encounter with a one-to-one meeting over coffee or lunch

Relationships + Reputation = Referrals

Miriam Ahern is the founder and managing partner of Align Management Solutions – a consultancy specialising in organisational change and development. She also manages LINK! - Dublin City Enterprise Board’s Network for Start-up Businesses. Miriam is a regular contributor in the national media on issues relating to business management and human resources. She is a Certified Management Consultant and a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants and Advisers.

Mobile: + 353 86 234 2789

Office:  + 353 1 412 5890

www.twitter.com/MiriamAhern

www.linkedIn.com/in/miriamahern

Over at TSE

I am really looking forward to tomorrow’s roundtable “Harness the Power of Referrals”

Do you know what it takes to build a referral business?

Join five Top Sales Experts share their techniques that turn up the heat in prospecting by harnessing the power of referrals.

Joanne Black, Jonathan Farrington, Paul McCord, Steve Martinez and Nancy D. Solomon present this 60-minute roundtable on Tuesday May 26th.

Your current clients are your most under-leveraged referral source. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Learn where traditional referral training falls short, why it is so essential to understand your ideal client profile and recognize your ideal referral source, how to overcome referral roadblocks and how to develop a process that does “what it takes” to build a referral business.

The investment? $25.00  or $99.50.

HUH? You can become a VIP member of Top Sales Experts (at $25.00 for the entire year) and the Roundtables are FREE. If you’re not ready to become a VIP member then they are $99.50.

This is a three-part post. Parts 2 and 3 are directly related.

Part 1 - Listen To

Last Thursday, after rushed home from a meeting and grabbing a quick cuppa, I settled down in front of my PC and signed into a TSE webinar called “The Sales Leadership Imperative”

I knew that this webinar was going to be good, because of the quality of the presenters.

Jonathan Farrington is Chairman of The Sales Corporation, based in London & Paris, and is a globally recognized business coach, mentor, author, and consultant.

Keith Rosen is the president of Profit Builders and is the Executive Sales Coach™ that top salespeople and managers call first to attract more prospects, close more sales and develop a team of top-performing sales champions.

Just over an hour later, I took off my head-set. My own knowledge bank had increased substantially. That wasn’t good, I thought – That was great.

Now, this is what self-directed learning is all about. As an established sales trainer, I consider myself to know a lot about selling, sales management and sales leadership. Yet, during this hour, I had learnt so much – there were simply some stunning insights.

The guys dealt with a range of sales leadership issues including:

• Identifying and leveraging the uniqueness of each member of the sales team.
• Connecting with and motivating your team during each interaction
• Recruit, retain and motivate top salespeople and turnaround under-performers inside 30 days

I would like to take this opportunity to recommend this webinar to you, in the strongest possible terms - it is simply TOP CLASS.

To join TSE, click here

To register for upcoming webinars, or to hear achieved webinars - simply click on the link below.

On Thursday April 30th 2009 at 6pm GMT, join TSE expert Christian Maurer for “Where is Your Revenue Growth to Come From?”

Part 2 – Join Up

Sales Leadership Ireland is a new LinkedIn group set up especially for Irish sales community. The focus of this new group is simple, to help sales professionals and sales leaders sell more.

We intend to network both off and on-line, we now have 124 members, and we want more; so if you are involved in sales and business development - please join us.

Part 3 – And Contribute

We have just put up our suggestions for our first SLI meet-up, The Changing World in Sales - “Buyers are not buying”

A practical look at how companies and sales people might respond to the current challenges and opportunities in the market.

SECTION 1: Interactive sessions with Speakers (1 hour)

Structure: 2 to 3 speakers on Key Topics providing practical information that can be applied quickly. 15 minutes each, generating interaction with the group with questions and discussion.

Some Suggested Key Topics:

- Removing the New Bottlenecks in today’s Sales Processes

- Bigger Pipelines, More Prospects, Better Qualification, Meeting Customer Needs

- Building New Channels to the Customer

- Engaging with Customers through New Media

SECTION 2: Key Challenges Roundtables (1 hour)

Structure:

A chaired session to identify the key challenges in today’s markets, assigning selected challenges to groups and to respond with potential solutions.

Steps:

a) Whiteboard / FlipChart suggestions from the entire group

b) Select top 4 or 5– allocate to groups, depending on numbers in attendance

c) 4/5 Roundtables/Groups decide on chairs/spokesperson

d) Discuss and FlipChart the suggested actions to meet the challenges

e) Spokesperson shares with the whole group

A session report could then be issued to the Linked Group Discussion.

So again, please join us on Linkedin, we would love to have you. Get stuck in and come along to our first meet up

Btb Guest Author

Frances Neeson

As a daily DART commuter I’m an avid reader of the Metro that is handed out every morning. Reading it last Wednesday on the way into work I came across an article reporting on the results of a survey done by Monster.ie about flexi-time. Monster found that just 1 in 5 employees in Ireland have full access to flexi-time with 62 % of respondents claiming they have no access to flexi-time at all.

I’ve been working in my present job since September and one of the things I enjoy most is the relaxed atmosphere in the office and the flexi-time policy in place. I’m an early bird so I prefer to come into the office early in the morning and leave early in the afternoon. The majority of the staff come in later and work later. There are core hours when we all have to be in the office which are between 11 and 3, but we can work our other hours however we like around this.

The main reason that I appreciate this arrangement is that in my previous job even coming in 5 minutes late or leaving 5 minutes early was a huge no in the eyes of management. Asking to work flexi-time most likely would have resulted with a resounding shout of laughter and two words which I won’t write here! From the results of the survey mentioned earlier it seems that this is the case for many employees in Ireland, despite all the benefits a flexi-time policy can bring to the workplace.

Personally I think the option to work flexi-time is a huge incentive and motivation for employees and a great morale booster. I believe the benefits of flexi-time far outweigh any negatives, the most common of which are the organization and logistics needed for it to work properly and the fear that staff members may abuse the privilege or could falsify records of hours worked if they are not supervised properly. However my own feeling is that employees are usually grateful for a flexi-time policy and will not engage in behaviour that could result in a return to “normal” working hours.

Here are a few of my favourite things about flexi-time:

• I actually get a seat on the train both coming and going to work and no longer have to spend 30 minutes squashed up against a complete stranger while people fight for any available space in the carriage.
• Coming in early in the morning allows me a couple of hours to do any needed work on my client accounts or prospect for new leads without feeling guilty that I’m sacrificing phone time.
• If I need to go to the doctor or run an errand I don’t have to ask my boss for time off or worry about squeezing it in after work.
• I have plenty of time to see my friends, my family and do all the hobbies I love.

There are also many benefits for employers and companies such as:

• Improved staff morale and job satisfaction. Most companies that offer flexitime report improvements in recruitment, absenteeism and productivity.
• Decreased levels of stress and tiredness in staff members.
• Increased staff retention and reduced turnover rates.

Having worked in both a company with no flexi-time policy and one that does offer flexi-time; I can whole heartedly say that for me flexi-time gets big thumbs up. Although I do see that for some companies, larger ones especially, it might be more difficult to implement, once managed and overseen correctly the benefits will very quickly become apparent. My experiences are all from the employees’ side and it would be interesting to know if employers and senior managers view it in the same way or if they have a completely different opinion on the topic. But for me, my answer to the question of flexi-time is a resounding yay!

Frances Neeson is a sales consultant with OfficeMetrics, leaders in office productivity. OfficeMetrics provides companies with the tools to increase productivity and performance and enable flexi-time and home-working. For more information go to the website: www.officemetrics.com or email frances.neeson@officemetrics.com

Over at TSE

Our Webinar series are well and truly rocking and rolling, and the response so far has been incredible. The great thing is that if time constraints mean you can’t listen in live, you can of course listen to the recording over and over.

Up next, “The Sales Leadership Imperative” with Jonathan Farrington and Keith Rosen

When it comes to these two gents - You know you really can’t afford to miss it!

Remember, readers of this blog qualify for discounted membership to TSE - Just click here.

Now for something different…….Door-to-door selling is where I started my sales career - Fellow TSE Skip Anderson recently published this advice for all you door knockers……. Local election hopefuls should also pay attention

Btb Guest Author

Skip Anderson

Spring is finally upon us here in Minnesota (at least I think spring is here; sometimes it’s hard to know for sure in Minnesota). I saw one sign of spring earlier this week: I had a door-to-door canvasser ring our doorbell at our home.

I admire door-to-door canvassers; they experience massive amounts of rejection, and yet they still get out there, walking the streets and by-ways of the community, to identify prospects to whom they can sell. For most, it’s not an easy job, but it can pay big dividends, especially if you know what you’re doing.

So I admire the guy who came to our home the other night. He had a pleasant and sincere smile, and he was working hard. But he could have done a much more effective job.

Here’s what he said when I answered the door: “Hi, I’m with _____________ Painting, and I’m wondering if you have any painting projects planned in the next year.”

I said, “No.”

He then gave me a door-hanger and asked him to call him if I decided we needed any interior or exterior painting. The was the end of the interaction.

What follows are some suggestions that, if implemented, would improve this salesperson’s success rate.

1. Stand back from the door 6-8 feet after you ring the doorbell. Many people feel a twinge of uneasiness when somebody they don’t know is at their door. That feeling of uneasiness is magnified when the unknown person at the door has their mug mere inches from it. Give the homeowner some breathing room.

2. Wear a large ID badge attached to your clothing or hang it around your neck. It should show your company’s name and your name in large letters, and it should have a picture of you on it. When you introduce yourself to the prospect, left up the id badge to call attention to it. This helps the suspect feel at ease.

3. Rarely, if ever, should a door-to-door salesperson start with a closed question (one that can be answered with yes or no, or a multiple choice question. Start with an open-ended question. A perfect open-ended question for the gentleman who visited us the other night would have been, “I couldn’t help but noticing the patch of rotting siding on the side of your house. It made me curious; What happened?”

It’s a long story about why we have a patch of rotting wood siding on the side of our house, so I won’t go there, but we certainly need to have some siding replaced, and after it’s replaced, it will need to be repainted. So why did I tell the salesperson that I didn’t have any painting projects planned in the next year?

Like a lot of customers, I took the easy route. His closed question made it too easy for me to say “no.” But if he would have engaged me in a more effective manner, I probably would have shared this information with him. I’ve also been avoiding thinking about the rotting siding; so my psyche is in denial mode. He question let me continue in denial mode.

The key is customer engagement. Closed questions are notoriously poor engagement instruments. Open-ended questions, on the other hand, are fabulous for this purpose.

4. Ask for referrals after a suspect shuts you down.

“You know the people in your neighborhood much better than I do. Who would be the 2 or 3 people that you think it would be most important for me to talk to?” Some people will refuse to answer your question, but some people will give you some neighborhood intelligence that may be helpful in finding viable prospects to talk to.

Even if they shut you down again, follow up with another question: “I would love it if you would give me the names of two or three people you know who might possibly want to talk to me about painting…even if they don’t live in your neighborhood.”

Hand the prospect a referral sheet and a pen and see what happens. You’ll definitely get some referrals if you utilize this approach consistently.

Happy canvassing!

Skip Anderson is a recognized authority on consumer selling, and is Founder and President of Selling to Consumers, a sales training and consulting company. Skip is a frequent speaker on sales topics to companies and individuals who are passionate about maximizing their sales effectiveness.

Great New E-Book

TSE captain Jonathan Farrington’s latest e-book ” How Sucessful Organisations Evolve” can be downloaded here