Sales Advice I Wish I Knew When I Was 25

Pretend You Charge By The Hour Or, If You're Good, You Can Get Taken Advantage Of

Many sales people fail to understand just how valuable their time is and because of this, many lack even average time management skills.

Even when some sales people feel that there is a 90% chance that they are not going to make the sale, they maintain a skewed glimmer of hope and still spend hours upon hours filling out long, complex RFP's that will never see the light of a printer. Further, the sales professional combines the empty work hours with having hour long conversations about nothing with the decision maker's assistant thinking that they are slowly breaking into the organization from the ground-up.

As a sales professional, right off the bat, you must gauge as to whether or not the client's company has the money. Forget about who you think that the decision-maker is and forgot about your current contact within the company. First focus on their ability to write checks, then worry about who the main players are and whether you're speaking to them. Typically, there is an inverse relationship between how much the potential client discusses cutting a check and the odds of them doing so. This is a trap that many young sales professionals fall into and that sales managers should be cognizant of.

Listen to the individual and also as a sales person since you have to get to know your clients asked them their past history if they spent years and it's huge corporate structure and hi top management you can almost always bet that that individual is in an enormous decision maker with in their organization.

When You Have A Shot At Making The Sale and When You're Doing Free Consulting:

Another rule that sales people want to implement and constantly hold themselves is to only give consideration to RFPs from decision-makers. Sales professionals need to start realizing that they are a free knowledge base in their industry if their teaching every inbound caller the intricacies of their industry and giving out insider information as to the inner-workings that only people who work in the vertical would know.

Every e-mail that leaves your inbox has knowledge that the buyer wants and can leverage with other vendors in order to better understand your industry and how you work your time is money. However, as a sales person. If you know what you're doing, your e-mails are worth a lot more than you think. Business intelligence is a big industry as good knowledge is hard to come by. As a sales professional, don't be the one that gives the information out gratis.

Some Mental Exercises To Help You Determine Who Is A Real Decision Maker Without Asking:

A great way to tell whether you are speaking to the decision maker in any selling situation is to simply listen to the individual speak, then gauge his or her knowledge about their industry and business, in general.

Then ask yourself as to whether they are confident in themselves. They say the meek shall inherent the earth, however they will fight for 2nd place with the over-arrogant. Beware that people who hype themselves up too much do so because their accomplishments cannot do it for them.

If you find someone that has very high knowledge and is confident (not arrogant) in their knowledge as a business professional, you can rest assure that they are a decision-maker. Every now and again, there are exceptions and they usually come in the form of a disgruntled business expert who is stuck in a bureaucracy and, despite his or her expertise, they can't get ahead. Then, you might know so little that you can't tell your own kind.

Listen to the individual and, also since you should get to know the people whom you call clients, ask them their past history or simply look it up on LinkedIn. If they spent years in a huge corporate structure as top management you can almost always bet that that individual is in an enormous decision maker with in their organization because people leave big companies many times for the increase in responsibility.