Let us create a 3d Digital eBook for you! DigyCat.com
|
||
|
||
|
Sales Information | Let us create a 3d Digital eBook for you! DigyCat.com |
|
|
|
Save Your Breath: How To Sell In Trade Shows Without Pitching
You stand there, in front of your great presentation material, wearing just the right suit or logo shirt, handing out some gimmick with your company name on it, wearing just the right smile or look of professionalism. You might even have a fishbowl at the table - or some type of contest material - to collect business cards of passers by for later use in your sales process. But the worst part of doing a trade show is losing your voice. Each visitor that stops by your booth gets your pitch. You feel compelled to tell each person why your product is great, why it's different from the competition (which might be located directly across from your booth and getting a lot more attention than you're getting). You've learned the elevator spiel and how to do a pitch in 30 seconds, so the person passing by will 1. be captivated by your information, 2. stop, and 3. make a purchase.And you do this for each and every person passing by. Why? WHAT IS YOUR OBJECTIVE? Let's start with figuring out why you're even at the trade show. You're probably there to get some brand recognition (sales are usually not completed at trade shows) and get your material and pitch into the hands of buyers. The visitors are, after all, self-selected hot prospects. Or are they? In reality, you have no idea why a person is walking by your booth. I've walked around trade shows just to see how people are selling. And each time I've come within a few feet of the booth, I get barraged with a pitch, data, and more information than I know what to do with. Do the sales folks know why I'm there? Nope. Do they ask? Nope. They just pitch and pitch and pitch. And are they cheery! If your objective is to brand your product, just being there with a great presence is carrying your visual brand forward. For that you don't need anything more than to stand there and look professional. Why else might you be there? To sell product? OK. Let's take a look at this. Odds are that you're not going to make a sale at the show itself. You might walk away with business cards, but that doesn't mean people are buyers. HOW TO SELL AT A TRADE SHOW If you want to sell, pitching to people as they come to your booth is not the way to do it. Here's a truth: people do not make purchasing decisions based on information. I know this comes as a shock to those of you who regularly stand at booths at trade shows and pitch your hearts (and lungs) out. I'll say it again: pitching product, making data about your product available, will not make a sale. Oh, it will help close the sale once the buyer is at that point in the sales cycle that s/he needs data to complete his/her picture. But it will not make a sale. A sale gets made when a buyer decides to make a purchase. Selling and buying are two different activities. For some reason, sellers believe that if they sell, buyers should know how and why to buy. But that's not true. Sellers concentrate on finding buyers who probably have a need, and creating some means to present their product in a way that well-chosen buyers might understand or recognize a need. In other words, it's a crap shoot. Buyers focus on finding solutions that will optimize their status quo. To do this they must recognize any outstanding issues that are getting in the way of an optimized work space, seek to easily correct what might be lacking, and to manage whatever changes will occur once a corrective solution is discovered. Pitching a product will address none of the above - unless the buyer has already completed all of the above actions and is seeking out a solution with parameters that will match their unique dynamics. In other words, when you focus your sale on product information, you're playing a numbers game. Why are people at trade shows? Let's see if I can count a few of the reasons: 1. they are in town for the day and had nothing better to do; 2. they are in your field and want to see what the competition is doing; 3. they are deciding to buy a new company and want to garner promotion ideas; 4. they think they might have a problem that a product similar to yours might solve, but aren't sure what a solution would look like and are running around the trade show to collect possible solutions. None of the above reasons would close a sale for you. HOW TO USE YOUR PRESENCE EFFECTIVELY Trade shows are wonderful opportunities to ferret out prospective buyers (usually in category #4 above) and teach them how to decide what a solution would look like. As a visitor approaches your booth, as a facilitative question that gets them to determine what's missing from their status quo that, if corrected, would create an optimal solution for them. For #1-3 above, they will shift the conversation to something more personal, and you'll have saved your breath since you won't have to pitch. When someone comes by that actually is seeking a solution, use facilitative questions to lead them through their solution-discovery process. Help them discover what's missing in their current environment, how they can fix the problem with familiar resources, and how to make sense of all of the systems issues that need to be managed before they can allow a solution into their culture. Then, you are only asking questions while they are doing the talking - and you make pitches to those people who understand that they need you, specifically, to solve their problem. You then not only create a customer, but you save your voice. Sharon Drew Morgen is the author of NY Times Best Seller - Selling with Integrity. She speaks, teaches and consults globally around her new sales model, Buying Facilitation. She can be reached at: 512-457-0246
MORE RESOURCES: Sales - Google News What Nintendo's 2011 sales mean for Wii U, third parties - Gamasutra
Orchids Paper Products Company Reports Record Quarterly Converted Product ... - Sacramento Bee
Apotex pays Bristol, Sanofi damages over Plavix - Wall Street Journal
Beer sales could be boon for Arizona's universities - AZ Central.com
Fed Sells $6.2 Billion of Bonds From AIG Rescue to Goldman - San Francisco Chronicle
iPhone on Sprint: Great for sales, terrible for profits - Christian Science Monitor
Wells Fargo's Carroll eyes cross-selling by brokers - Reuters
Las Vegas Still Selling More Homes in January, Yet Prices Still Declining - World Property Channel
Newsstand Report: Sales Down Across the Board, Elle Plumets 18%, and ... - Fashionista
Average Salespeople “Fly By The Seat Of Their Pants” - Utah Pulse
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
How To Write A Riveting Sales Letter That Closes Sales How do you get people's attention and build their interest to take the time to read your sales letter? Let's face it. If you can't get the attention of prospects and keep their interest your sales letter will just fall flat on it's face and thus not make you much money. Ten Top Tips for Terminating Telephone Terror 1. Make telephone callsFew things are more terrifying than the unknown. 12 Handy Tips for Generating Leads through Cold-Calling Cold calling can be a great way to generate quality leads. You get to speak to the gatekeepers and stakeholders, and you get a great insight into their requirements and influences. Diverting the Flow of Customers to Your Business I was a lucky kid when I grew up. Lucky, because I had a big back yard for playing. Marketing Conversations, And Conversation Stoppers Where many marketing conversations get off-track are the ones you have with yourself, before you even pick up the phone or initiate the handshake. As independent professionals, usually at the helm of solo businesses, we sometimes find ourselves facing daunting internal obstacles as we try to begin our day's marketing activity. Dead Silence From Your Prospect: The Worst Sound Of All Could this be the worst moment in your selling cycle?You've done all the right things with your prospect:? You've identified a real need and developed a reasonably solid relationship.? You've determined that your prospect is interested in your solution. Three Big Ol Tips for Better Sales Letters Growing up in the South, I used the phrase "big ol'" a lot. Big ol' truck. A Little Something Special Goes a Long Way Keeping the 80/20 rule in mind; that is that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your client base, there are a lot of missed opportunities to keep your clients coming back again and again and yet again. Having worked six years in the hospitality industry, particularly the hotel business, I have found the key to success and I would like to share it with you. Consumer Effort And The Purchase Decision It is a basic tenet of behavioral psychology that people engage in behavior that takes the least effort and provide the highest payoff. If someone see's a product as being very valuable but the effort to purchase that product is large it will decrease the value of the product and they will probably not engage in the behavior required to acquire the product. The Relationship Between Colour & Sales Make no mistake that emotions are the driving force behind sales, and customers making buying decisions can be influenced through visual elements towards a particular behaviour or emotion that will encourage more sales.Not convinced? Have you noticed that a lot of restaurants are decorated in/heavily feature reds and/or oranges? Still not convinced?Pizza HutFrankie & BennysBurger KingLittle ChefTGI FridayBella Pasta (one of the few to focus on Orange rather than red)These major players understand the psychology behind colour and its relationship to marketing which dictates that red and orange specifically encourage restaurant patrons to eat faster; thus yes you guessed it - increasing sales within the same period of time. The Power of Thank-You When was the last time you thanked your customers?This often neglected gesture is a very powerful sales tool. As a small business owner, I want to know that the companies I chose to work with appreciate my business. Leveraging Yourself Up To Executives When Selling The fastest way to get a decision made is to speak directly with the decision-maker, right? OK, so you knew that. Often times, the decision-makers are not easy to get to. Packaging Maketh the Person The multi million pound cosmetics industry is acutely awareof the value of packaging. You'll know this if you've everbought anything from those glamorous ladies whose countersare always just inside the front door of Department stores. How To Take The Right Steps To Increase Your Selling Results Steps - it is unrealistic for most salespeople to expect to make a sale in a single step. Most sales don't end after a single phone call. Mindset Over Materials: The Secret Weapon of Sustainable Sales Success Long-term sales success has less to do with skills or knowledgethan you might think. Nor are stunning brochures or excellentproducts guaranteed to make one iota of impact over time. How Sellers Can Take Control For centuries - at least since the serpent convinced Eve to eat the apple - sellers have assumed that getting the right information about a product into the right hands would offer a good chance of a sale.But if you look at the numbers over the years, the success rate from prospecting to close has remained the same: in general, you close approximately 7% of your identified buyer population. The Benefits of Buying Used Store Fixtures The difference between antique or vintage store fixtures and used store fixtures is simple: antique fixtures have a classic look and style. In many cases they are brand new but manufactured in a style of the past such as deco or minimalist. Schedule Telemarketing Time For More Success Telephone canvassing, or cold calling, is the practice of sitting down with a long list of potential prospects you've never met and telephoning them, one at a time, to learn which of them needs what you sell and then arranging to sell it to them.Believe me, nobody likes telephone cold calling. Success Reloaded: The Matrix So the other day I'm watching the movie The Matrix, again. For some reason I can't get enough of the great special effects. 9 Ways to Keep Clients Coming Back For More A lot of effort is put into getting new clients. We all know our client base will change.
|
|
Looking For Royalty Free Photos for your Website, Business or Advertising?
List4Sale Domain Is For Sale - $10,000 For Enquiries eMail Us © www.List4Sale.biz 2011 |
|
