Do You Agree
With Christine's
Business Development Philosophy?
Below is information on Christine Corelli's philosophy
for developing business. To learn more, be sure to review her articles
on topics related to business growth, profitability, communication
skills, leadership and personal success.
On Sales Excellence Forget tough!
Today, competition is fierce! Whether you sell to consumers or business-to-business,
your customer has more choices, is better informed, more cost-conscious, and more
demanding than ever. Much more is required to win them over. You need exceptional
"people skills," communication skills, effective time and territory management,
discipline, high-energy, creativity and more if you want to earn their business. Below
are ten keys to help you achieve sales success. - Take
every aspect of SALES 101 seriously. You remember them--Reject rejection.
ASK for the order. Know your "batting average." Be a problem solver. Be prepared.
Be DISCIPLINED. Overcome "call reluctance." Be persistent-- professional, determined,
diligent and all those critical success factors you learned in your first sales
seminar.
- Technology changes, psychology does
not. Your ability to build relationships is crucial to your success.
People skills, professionalism, ethics, and integrity all come into play. Remember:
"It's your people skills that make all your product and technical knowledge pay
off." Strive to build strong and lasting relationships to help you win new customers,
retain existing customers, establish customer loyalty and get referrals. Quality
relationships breed long-term profitability.
- Internalize
the customers' goals as your own. Your customer needs to feel you truly CARE.
You can demonstrate this by learning as much about their business as you can,
putting yourself in their position, and then communicating from their perspective.
Ask yourself "How would I feel if I were in my customer's position? What
would be my concerns? What would I want? What would be the most important
thing to me if I were making this purchasing decision?"
- Become
a master of your industry and your products/services. Apply a consultative
approach to selling and become a trusted ally and advisor. Then, you will position
yourself as an ongoing valuable resource to your customer, which is a good place
to be if you want to meet and exceed your sales goals in today's tough business
climate!
- LISTEN - and ASK the right questions.
Ask questions first. Memorize a matrix of the best questions to ask. Make sure
they are open-ended questions--Who? How? What? When?
- Memorize
words and phrases that help overcome objections. Push the right buttons and
influence the customer to BUY. Learn to internalize and articulate the benefits
of your products and why they can rely on you and your company when they do business
with you.
- Apply a more professional and creative
approach to sales. Think about it--If you say and do the same things as every
other sales person, how will you ever stand out in the customer's mind?
What new approach can you take to sales? What reason can you find to call
them, other than trying to sell your product.
- Recognize
"buying signals" ("What's the price?" "How fast can you deliver?" "What's
the minimum order?") and ASK for their business. Failure to ask can cause
you to lose business.
- Hone your sales and negotiation
skills on a consistent basis. (Don't stunt your growth. Learn to love
to learn! ) and last,
- Recognize that. . . "There
is No Mystical Magical Secret to Sales Success." It Comes From Your Enthusiasm
and Belief in Your Company, Its Products; Its People and Yourself. Then, Making
the Customer Feel That Same Enthusiasm and Belief"
Related Published Articles. . . "The
Like Factor"
"How to Overcome a Selling
Slump"
"Selling Through Tough Times
- Be a Chameleon"
"Building Quality
Relationships"
On Business Growth Regardless
of the size of your company, or whether you sell through dealers, distributors,
or are in direct sales, your competition is vying for the business of your customers
every minute. They are strategizing to create a new advertising and marketing
campaign, find that new twist to an existing product, or bring a new product or
design to market to gain market-share. To survive in this
climate, you need to make smart decisions and take action to gain a competitive
edge. - Your company must have has a reputation
for quality, service excellence, and ethical business practices. If you don't,
your odds of winning and keeping customers will not be in your favor. You
must be positioned to compete.
- Outdistance
your current and future competitors with innovation in every aspect of business.
Be willing to take calculated risks to bring new products to market and promote
your products and services in creative new ways. Consider diversifying what you
already offer.
- Use "change" to drive the creative
tension to keep your company moving forward. Make sure your company culture
is one that stimulates, encourages, and rewards creative ideas. Seek and find
ways to simplify systems and procedures.
- Differentiate
you company from your competitors. Outshine them in every imaginable way.
Be focused on the voice of the customer. Listen to their wants and needs and do
your best to deliver. If you don't, your competitors will! Make sure it's easy
to do business with you.
- Leverage vendor expertise.
Form strategic alliances to achieve mutually beneficial business goals.
- Learn faster than your competitors. Your company
must be constantly learning new skills and continuously strive for continuous
improvement.
- Create a Sales/Service Excellence
Accountability culture--where you have an involved workforce, systems and
procedures that allow for flawless customer service. Regardless of
the size of your business, make sure you have an effective tool for CRM. Seek
cutting-edge solutions to any customer service problems that may exist. Create
a written service policy and guiding principals on how you will treat customers
and each other, and make sure your people adhere to it.
- Create
a Sales/Service Excellence/Accountability Culture. (See below)
- Hire people who will fit into your culture.
- Gather intelligence, study changing trends and
be FAST to respond to changing markets.
- Develop
an obsession for producing the best product with the best performance on
every order, on every project, with every customer every day. Remember, you
and your sales force need the full cooperation and support of everyone
in your company.
Related Published Articles. . . "Drive
to Win the Race for Business Growth"
"Survival
Through a Tough Economy"
"Steps to
Create Service Excellence"
On Customer Service
The Customer Rules!-an all-too familiar mantra these days!
But you can never hear too much about its importance. Whether you have direct
contact with the customer, are a manager, work the warehouse, or sweep the floors,
you are responsible for developing the reputation of your company. - Come
to work each day ready, willing, and anxious to service customers and sound like
it. Without their business, your company and your paycheck can't exist. You
need to display behaviors that help your company obtain new customers, retain
existing customers, and establish customer loyalty.
- Treat
each person within your company as importantly as an external customer. If
it doesn't happen within, it won't happen externally.
- You've
heard this a thousand times, but you can never hear it enough: Exceed customer
expectations. Sit down and work together to uncover ways you have exceeded
expectations in the past, and new ways you can exceed them in the future.
- Ask questions to uncover product or service problems,
obtain ideas, and learn what more you can do for customers. Then, report
that important information to your company.
- Remember
that. . ."The Customer is the Judge, the Jury, and Can Be--The
Executioner."
Related Articles.
. . "Make Like Harley-ASK Already"
"You Can Be an Ambassador or An Assassin"
"How to Treat Customers So You Can Keep
Them"
"The Customer of the Future
- Will Tomorrow's Customer Be Yours?"
On Leadership... If
you are in a leadership position, you need your company or department to operate
like a well-oiled machine. Why? So you can focus on areas most critical
to business growth-creating, strategizing, improving operations, and making
smart decisions. These are the things that will carry you and your company into
a more successful future. To get there, you need to display
dynamic leadership skills, and establish an environment for high-performance-one
which stimulates creativity, encourages, recognizes, and rewards people for their
contribution to your company. Then, you can rely on them to perform.
- Display dynamic leadership throughout your company - from
the "Top Banana" on down. Communicate, and demonstrate that you CARE about
your employees as much as your profits. Take ownership for developing your people
and bringing out the best in them. Recognize that leadership is a privilege, and
you must earn the respect of those you lead. Make sure you set the tone,
and be the example for others to follow. Remember: When experiencing tough times,
people look to their leaders and observe how they perform.
- Surround
yourself with excellence. Be a great person to work "with", but demand
excellence. Never settle for mediocrity. performance-not in today's world.
"Good enough" cannot exist."
- Recognize that
it's your people who will or will not help you carry your company into a more
successful future.
- Involve your people.
(Call and Ask About our Employee Involvement Program that saved
one Fortune 100 company $3,000,000 in just six months!)
- Be
able to institute and lead your people through change. The most challenging
task of the leader is to communicate, institute, and maintain high morale through
change.
- Learn to see things through the eyes
of your people, not always your own.
- Realize
that "Businesses don't Do Business- People Do. Your people are a reflection of
you.
- Recognize that it's always up to the
leader to keep their people motivated. Be accountable to your people for YOUR
performance as a leader. And, most important, be a great person to work WITH.
- Do all you can to give employees what they want,
and remember that. . .
"The key
to employee motivation is to make people feel they are working with you,
and
not for you. If they feel they are working for you, they'll resemble robots who
go
through the motions of their job and never put their hearts and souls into
their work."
(Christine Corelli) Related Articles. .
. "Employee
Motivation-Whose Job IS it Anyway?"
"Zero Tolerance
for Bad Bosses"
"What Employees Want"
"Creating High Performance and Avoiding
Burn-Out Through Change"
"Make Like Harley-Ask Already"
On Entrepeneurship Entrepreneurs
have the ultimate commitment. As entrepreneurs, they put a great deal on the line.
Often they operate on blind faith--moving forward even though they don't know
where their next buck is coming from. They have accepted responsibility for the
livelihood of their employees, often worry about their employees' families. Indeed,
they are in a class by themselves.
On Teamwork To
be able to drive business growth through a tough economy, your company needs teams
of creative and skilled people who can work together effectively to deliver results.
Teamwork is crucial in today's environment. Without it, - People
tend to go through motions of their job, and not put their heart into their work.
- They focus on internal politics instead of the
most important person in the company : the customer!
- Walls
exist and territorialism builds.
- People
won't understand each other's pressure, problems, and responsibilities.
- The company needs to tap into their greatest asset-the
combined brainpower of their people to survive and stay in the competitive
game. Teams can generate more ideas than individuals.
On Personal Success The
keys to success are quite simplistic. - Be willing
to work harder than others.
- Learn to love
to learn. Be hungry for information.
- Learn
to love what you do. You may not be in a job position that you love, but if
you can learn to love what you do, you'll be more creative, and simply make life
better for yourself and everyone in your life.
- Remember
the "Like Factor." It's not luck that makes you successful; It's likeability!
- Keep your life in balance so you can survive on
the competitive treadmill. Without balance, life can pass you by before you
know it.
- Put meaning and purpose into your
life. Help others become successful. Do more, give more, be more. Never settle
for mediocrity.
- Put energy and enthusiasm into
your work and your life.
- Keep things in
proper perspective. Accept what you can't change and don't sweat the small
stuff.
- Learn how to tap into your creativity.
Block out time for it.
- Take it one day
at a time. And...
"Success doesn't
buy you happiness. Happiness buys you success."
(Christine Corelli)
| Christine
is best known as The "Sales-Service Excellence" Expert,
and the author of the popular books,
Wake
Up and Smell the Competition and The
ART of Influencing Customers to BUY From YOU.
As a keynote speaker,
conference speaker, and sales trainer she is superlative in her field. Her
impressive client list includes Fortune 100 corporations, prominent national associations
and
literally hundreds of mid-sized and small businesses.
To learn
more about Christine's books, keynotes, seminars or consulting, please contact:
Gene Leigh, Director of Marketing: gene@christinespeaks.com
or call us toll-free:
(800) 417-9968 or (847) 581-9968 |
|
