Cheryl A. Clausen's Articles in Business - Inpop - SEO friendly Article Directory

Search:

Cheryl A. Clausen's Articles in Business

Show All\|Display Category\|Title\|Newest\|Oldest
Insurance Sales: Discovery or Interrogation Questions are a critical part of the sales process. Do you find that the questions you ask aren't producing the results you want? The way you structure the questions you ask, and the intent behind them have a dramatic impact on the prospect. Questions help you to establish rapport with the prospect. Questions help you to put the prospect at ease, gets them to open up to you, and makes them feel comfortable with you. Your questions must demonstrate your sincere interest in the prospect. Sales Coaching for Prospecting Even members of the MDRT will tell you they don't really like prospecting, but they know it's something they have to do. Prospecting should be something you look forward to with excited anticipation because you can't sell anyone anything until you have someone to talk to, but you don't. And you don't because you don't like being told "no". You need a system for prospecting to be good at it. But a system is worthless if you won't consistently implement it. So, let's talk about why you don't like prospecting now, and how you could like prospecting. What does Strategic Planning have to do with Insurance Sales? Strategic planning has nothing to do with sales if you enjoy working hard, and struggling day in and day out to hit your sales targets. If you'd rather make more and work less then strategic planning has everything to do with sales. There are two distinct approaches to sales, and the choice is yours to make. Most sales people follow an approach that focuses on high levels of activity hoping that all that activity will result in sales. Both you and I know people who tried that approach, worked nearly night and day yet they still failed. That contradicts what you're constantly being told by sales managers, broker dealers, underwriters, and others. Sales Techniques to Prevent the Canceled Sale The prospect told you they wanted to buy, but then they changed their mind. They may have excitedly bought and then almost immediately backed out of the deal, wanted a refund, or canceled their premium. You were left wondering how that could happen. Almost every salesperson has had this experience. But you may not understand why it happens. Unfortunately you have yourself to thank for the result you got, but there is a simple explanation for why it happens. Get Customers Who'll Get You the Greatest ROI on Your Time Increasing the value of your time is as easy as 1-2-3. Identify who your ideal customers are. Don't guess know what they're actively looking for. Develop a message and the right bait to get their attention and interest. Your target market is the customers with the greatest potential for you. Be specific enough about this group of potential customers that you know their names. List the top 10-100 prospects that you want to focus on converting into customers. Sales Coaching to Make Your Sales Hot If your sales aren't hot you may be frustrated and confused. You know the sales and marketing systems you're using are working for others, but they aren't working for you. How or why can that be? Because you're reading this article I'm pretty confident that you have at least some experience and knowledge with eating. And that's why I think you'll be able to relate to the examples I'm going to use to convey my point even if you've never personally eaten chili. In case you don't know what chili is, it's a hot spicy soup. Sales Coaching to Make Your Training Stick You've read, studied, even trained on the sales systems of the best salespeople yet they just don't seem to work for you. You're frustrated and confused about why or how that could happen. You've studied Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jeffrey Gitomer, Neil Rackham, or any other of the big names in sales training and there is one thing you know beyond a doubt, and that is that there is clear evidence that what they're saying works; but it isn't working for you. The fact that it isn't working for you has you panicked because you need sales sales now. Rest assured it isn't your fault and it isn't their fault that it isn't working for you. There is a perfectly logical reason this is happening to you, and there is a way for you to succeed in sales. Insurance Sales: Closing Anxiety? Why do perfectly normal people break out in a sweat when it comes time to close the deal? Normal people have closing anxiety because they haven't properly handled the earlier steps in the sales process. Closing should be nothing more than a natural conclusion to a selling conversation. If you're suffering from closing anxiety it's due to one of four reasons. The prospect didn't agree to a selling conversation in the first place. You confused the buyer by presenting too many options. You didn't take the buyer through a thought process that helped them to buy. Or you didn't stir up the emotional reason the prospect should act and act now. Time Management Skills for Sales Professionals You lose financially if you aren't focused on doing the right things at the right time. Or you have to work yourself to death to hit your targets. A little planning before you take action you can help you to get the financial rewards you want without working so hard. You want the majority of your actions to take you closer to a closed transaction. Even though prospecting is how you fill your sales funnel, most sales people have a haphazard inefficient approach to prospecting. You can improve your prospecting efforts and get better results by developing a list of your most ideal future customers. Knowing who you're focused on makes it easier to develop effective ways to approach them. You Can't Sell Insurance to People Who Don't Want to be Sold to You waste valuable time and energy trying to do just that. Instead you could be selling a whole lot more insurance with a lot lot less work if you just knew how. Rather than trying to convince a suspect, focus your efforts on people who've already decided they want what you have. When someone doesn't want what you have they aren't rejecting you personally they'd reject anyone because they aren't interested in what you're offering. It's foolish and self-defeating to try to sell to people who don't want to buy. You do it because you're focusing on trying to fill your appointment book when your should be focused on only meeting with people who want to talk to you about what you have. Sales Coaching if You have to Cold Call Even though cold calling would never be my first recommendation for success, there are times when you may have to do it. Why not learn how to do it well if you have to do it anyway. Keep in mind there are a few simple things you can do to make it easier for yourself and get greater success. Sales managers will force you to do it if you're fairly new in the industry, but there are people who've in the industry a long time that still have to do it because they've never learned how to market themselves effectively. Over 84% of all sales people you have call reluctance because they hate doing it, they get poor results, and it damages their self-confidence. Sales Techniques to Make You Recession Proof If the forecasted recession becomes a reality you have three choices. You can watch it happen and do nothing to prevent its impact on you, you can tighten your belt hoping to survive it, or you can develop a plan to thrive because of the recession. The choice and the result you'll get is all yours. Allowing external circumstances to determine your future is never a good idea and certainly not something a top producer will do. Start formulating your plan by identifying how you'll be impacted by a recession if you do nothing and what you can do to protect yourself. Identify how a recession will impact your customers and potential customers if they do nothing to protect themselves, and what you can do to help them to avoid that impact. Law of Success Requires Speedy Implementation One thing you'll immediately notice about successful people is that they tend to take action to implement their plans and ideas at once. You'll also notice that unsuccessful people are just the opposite rarely taking action on anything. They spend huge amounts of their resources studying and analyzing things, but when it comes time to actually do something they just can't bring themselves to do it. And they don't get much help from the people around them because the people around them aren't successful either, but they have all kinds of opinions. Yet unsuccessful people continue to seek the thoughts and opinions of those around them when they should be making their own decisions. Law of Success Requires Speedy Implementation Successful people immediately take action to implement their plans and ideas. In contrast, unsuccessful people rarely ever implement anything they learn. They get caught in the learning and analysis trap and can't move forward and take action. Plus unsuccessful people don't take action because they have to ask everyone around them for their opinion. And usually the people around unsuccessful aren't successful people. So, why would you ask someone who can't succeed themselves if you should do something that would help you to succeed? Time Management Techniques to Stop Chasing Customers If you're a sales professional/business owner this time management tip will help you to be more time effective and increase your sales. It's no secret sales people like you like lots of activity. You think lots of activity means more sales but your thinking is actually counter productive. Your greatest potential for immediate sales is in your current customers. Customers are more likely to buy from you again and again and again than most prospects. Some of your customers are responsive in that they buy from you occasionally and some of your customers are highly responsive and will buy nearly everything you show them. Use these Sales Techniques to Make Getting Referrals Easy You've been trained to ask for referrals in a pushy, obnoxious, and downright embarrassing manner. When you use the tactics you've been trained to use it's very harmful to your relationship with your customer. Don't try asking ever so clever questions like, who do you golf with. Choke, puke, gag. These tactics are manipulative and you should stop using them right now. Don't stoop to using these high pressure approaches to get the referrals you need. Sales Coaching to Get Referrals without being Pushy The way you're trained to ask for referrals is pushy, obnoxious, and downright embarrassing. You hate it and your clients hate it, and it does nothing to further you're relationship. You ask clever questions like, who are the three people who speak most highly of you. Choke, puke, gag. Stop it and stop it right now if you're using these horrendous highly manipulative tactics. You don't have to stoop to these high pressure approaches to get the referrals you want and need. Sales Coaching to Wn the Sale before the Sale Isn't it true that before you can ever sell anyone anything you have to sell them on having an appointment? Do you find it challenging to fill your appointment book? Wouldn't you like to hold appointments each week with people who are genuinely interested in doing business with you? You can. You just have to realize that selling starts way before the appointment. That means you have to set yourself up to attract the people you want to work with. Sales Techniques for Translating Concepts into Actions When you're first exposed to a sales idea you learn at the conceptual level. This idea may sound pretty good. You know it has worked for other people so you presume it should work for you. Then when you try it you may find that what has worked for other people doesn't work the same way for you. That's because you aren't other people you're you and what worked so well for someone else may not match up with who you are and your strengths and motivators. Sales Skills to Stop Doing what Isn't Working Persistence is good, but not if you're persistently doing the wrong things. That's just being pig headed and stupid. But you do it because you allow yourself to be mislead into thinking that sales is a numbers game and that if you just keeping doing it you'll eventually get what you want. Sales is a numbers game for sales people who haven't taken the time to set themselves up for success. If you don't want to keep getting rejected and walking away without the money it's time to learn how to set yourself up for sales success. That means you need to think about sales as a scientific process revolving around your skill set that you can develop for consistent success. Law of Success Requires Plans Turning into Actions If you can't turn your plans into reality you're just a dreamer. Stop being a dreamer and start being an achiever. To do that you will need a plan, and you will need to turn that plan into actions. You have to develop the power to turn plans into actions. You have to develop the ability, strength, and capacity to achieve the success you want. You develop this ability through your own actions and the help you get from others. Law of Success is Easy Success is hard for you because you tell yourself it's hard. On top of that you make it hard for yourself because you avoid taking action. This deadly combination of your thoughts and your inaction are ruining any chance you have for success. Successful people think and act differently than unsuccessful people. But you can adopt that thinking and commitment to action and you can succeed too. Yet you probably won't. Increase Your Insurance Sales through Questions Maybe you aren't asking the right questions in the right order for the right reason? Asking the right questions is definitely a skill and the best sales people are very adept at it. Most sales people ask the easy questions that don't promote their sales success. Are you asking questions that you could easily already know the answer to? If you are that's a big and annoying mistake. Contrary to popular belief not all people just love talking about themselves, and business owners and upper executives have no patience for educating you. Thinking Before You Act will Improve Your Time Management Skills You start your day running to your first appointment. When you get there you find that you don't have what you need. It's time for you to slow down, and plan what you're going to do before you take action. It seems counter intuitive, but you'll get more done faster with less stress if you set aside proper planning time. You love action and you would rather be doing than thinking. You're confusing activity with progress. Goals are a Great Time Management Technique Goals help you to make the most effective use of your time and they help you to reduce your stress. You understand that goals are important but you probably aren't very good at setting and getting them. Without the clarity that goals provide you lack focus and that lack of focus causes you to make poor time related decisions. Trying to set up too many goals at once sets yourself up for goal failure. You can't focus on or track too many goals so you're better off setting a few goals and really concentrating on getting those than trying to do everything at once. When you only have a few goals it's much easier to plan the next actions you need to take. Blaming and Complaining are Success Killers Unless you accept full responsibility for your current conditions you'll use excuses, blame others, and complain about your lack of success. These habits and behaviors move you away from success. And they take you away from success rapidly. You only have yourself to thank for your current current situation whether you like it or hate it. As you begin to realize that you created whatever your experiencing take responsibility for changing it. The future success you want can only happen through your plans and actions. Time Management Techniques for Results Sales people are energetic people who would rather be out shaking the bushes for business rather than sitting in the office. Actions are exactly what you need as long as you're taking action on the right things. You're responsible for your own results and you're getting pulled in multiple directions. Because time is money for you it's important for you to master your time. In spite of having customers, staff, and sometimes sales managers all making demands on your time you have to allocate your time in the best way. Insurance Sales: If You're in the Commodity Business Get Out! There's plenty of competition for the price shoppers, and you don't want to play that game. Price shoppers are the worst clients you could ever ask for, so why would you ever want to attract them? But that's exactly what you're doing when you offer to quote someone insurance. Let the price shoppers search the internet or bother your competition for quotes, but don't let them bother you. There is a very good reason for both you and the customer for not simply quoting a price. Isn't it true that when you quote a price you're making a quote based on the assumption that the customer knows exactly what they need and why? And how often is that really true? Time Management Tips: It's Not about Doing More Are you trying to cram more into your day? If you are you're probably stressed out, exhausted, and irritable because you're working too hard. If this sounds like you take a time out. You've got to stop focusing on the wrong things before you burn out. You probably think you just need to figure out how to cram more into your day, but that's the wrong approach. You're only focusing on efficiency. Time Management Slills help You to know What to Do Next When you look at everything you need to do are you feeling overwhelmed, and you don't know where to start? Are you even sure if you know everything you have to do? There are a few time management techniques you can use to get unstuck and going again. Begin by taking stock. Get out a blank piece of paper and list all the actions you've committed to taking. Don't make the mistake of listing things that involve more than one action or ideas. Risk Reduction is a Necessary Sales Technique There is a clear and simple reason prospects don't buy. They don't and won't buy when they feel buying is risky. Risk is a very real and valid concern. A wrong decision can leave them locked into a product that's completely wrong for them and too costly to walk away from. Your job is to help them to identify their risks and use the facts to make a good decision that's in their best interest. Many of their concerns are based on perceived risks and information rather than facts. They worry that the dollars they're spending today are less valuable than the investment they're making. Follow the Law of Success and Care Enough to Keep Trying Most people are looking for the instant path to success. They want success and they want it now and they don't want any challenges or obstacles along the way. Yet common sense tells you there's no such thing as a free lunch, so how can you expect to have an idea and then have that idea instantly materialize into success? We both know that's about as likely as winning a lottery or getting struck by lightning. To succeed you do need a valuable idea. Beyond that you have to have persistence. Strategic Sales Action Plan can Increase Your Insurance Sales How about shaking up your sales results? Now is the time to rethink you're approach and develop a plan that gets results. If your strategic sales action plan isn't implementable and quantifiable path it won't produce results. The key elements of a strategic sales action plan include: value, unique market position, marketing plan, sales plan, and a follow-up plan. It's best to approach these critical elements in a specific order. Law of Success Requires Continuous Action Your dreams will remain dreams until you transform your dreams into actions. Each and every day you must take those actions if you want to achieve success. Most people never succeed because they won't take action. They lack the persistence to take action each and every day. Success starts from a clear plan for what success means to you and how you'll get it. Taking at least one action each and every day will move you closer to what you want. Make the Complicated Simple a Winning Sales Technique Most people don't understand insurance and they don't want to. Use that fact to your advantage by making the complicated simple so people will buy and buy from you. There are two very good reasons this will improve your sales results. When you make it simple you remove a lot of the risk involved in a buying decision for the prospect. When people a risk in making a decision they worry about looking stupid, feeling foolish, wasting their money on the wrong thing, spending more than they need to, or buying things that don't get them what they want. Plus when they're confused and overwhelmed all their fears about the risks involved prevent them from saying yes. Insurance Sales:Are You Getting Leads from Your Business Cards? You already carry a business card, why not start using it to actually generate leads? You know you should always have your business cards with you, but they probably aren't doing you much good at this point. That's because you aren't getting the maximum value from this little low cost marketing tool. What's the purpose of a business card anyway? You give out your business card so people can contact you and remember you, right? But that's presuming they want to contact or remember you, and it isn't creating an incentive to do so. Sales Coaching to help You Sell Money at a Discount You should be selling your services rather than a product. So why do you market your products? You can almost immediately increase your sales if you'll just stop doing that. Dan Kennedy talks about the technique of selling money at a discount. That's exactly what you you need to be doing. Yet you're approaching it all wrong. Most of you use the approach of asking to quote your prospects insurance. There isn't a lot of interest in that approach and it's a low value approach. You would be much better served using the approach of selling money at a discount. Keys to Success: Wear Your Courage on Your Sleeve Do you have the courage to succeed? Success can't be had unless you have the courage to succeed. Courage is the ability to deal with difficulty, uncertainty, and pain without getting side tracked from your chosen course of action. Success requires heavy investment of your time, treasures, and emotion. The emotion is often the hardest part to deal with. When you want to succeed you put so much effort, so much time, and so much of yourself into the quest that it's nearly impossible to have an impartial view of your experience on this journey. Time Management Techniques to Improve What, When & How You struggle with time management each day because you aren't sure what you need to do, when to do it, or how to do it. You know how to focus, you write things down so you don't forget, and you understand the outcomes or results of your actions. You've reviewed your options yet you struggle to make choices. These stressful struggles come about because of the internal struggles you have going on. You don't know why it's so hard to manage your time or why you're so stressed and you can't begin to figure it out until you understand your natural behaviors and motivators. It's not uncommon to find a miss match between your natural behavioral styles and the environment you're trying to function in. Time Management Techniques to Improve What, When & How The reason you struggle with time management each day is because you don't know what to do, when to do it, or how to do it when it comes to the actions you need to take. You can focus when you want to. Each day you write things down to prevent forgetting and overlooking things. You know the outcomes or results of your actions. You know how to review your options and make choices. Yet good time management skills seem to elude you. These struggles reflect your internal struggles. Until you understand your drivers for taking action or avoiding action your struggles will continue. These internal struggles stem from your natural behaviors and motivators. When you're really overwhelmed and stressed out doing what you're doing it's because there's a miss match between your natural behavioral styles and the environment you're working in. Time Management Techniques: 15 Minutes to Less Stress If you invest just 15 minutes each week you can reduce your stress and get more value from your time. This 15 minute time management technique will help you to increase the effectiveness of your time management skills. When you end your week without closure there are two negative things that happen. Time Management Tips: Use the Power of Positive Change within You The way you handle time is based on your mindset. Dave Kahle defines a mindset as a group of beliefs that are so deep and firmly held that they are the source of many of your thoughts. So how do your thoughts relate to how you handle your time? Your thoughts determine your actions and your actions determine your results. If you're content with the way you handle your time now you aren't very likely to make any real changes. But if the pain of how you deal with time now is great enough you'll commit to making positive changes to get what you want. Insurance Sales: You aren't Born Creative You Become Creative Creativity isn't just something those artsy aesthetics types have. Creativity is a learned skill and you can develop it. Creativity can be a skill that leads to improved sales techniques and increased sales for you. It's really just a thought process that produces ideas that you use to achieve desired outcomes. You have to have a positive attitude to become creative. And you to allow yourself to be creative. Sales Coaching: The Secret Weapon for Influencing People The secret to influence probably isn't what you're expecting. Powerful influence is a result of the way you listen. You can be a master of influence if you know how to listen to unlock this powerful influencing force. Your current listening behaviors make it unnecessarily hard for yourself. The listening behaviors that reduce your effectiveness include: allowing other thoughts to clutter your mind, thinking about what you're going to say next while the other person is still talking, trying to rush the prospect, and you losing focus. These bad listening behaviors eliminate your persuasion potential. Time Management Skills: Improving through Actions Your time management skills are directly proportional to your ability to take the right actions at the right time for the right reasons. Are your in boxes overflowing: physical "in" stack tray, email, and voice mail? Success: My Revenue has Doulbled Do I Need to Hire More People? If you were able to double your revenue with your existing people resources why would you think you need to add more people? Wrongly hiring additional people can be a big mistake. Employees cost your business far more than the salary you pay them. Sales Techniques: The Solution to Turning Objections into Sales Are you tired of hearing "no" and "not now" when the answer should be "yes"? Accept responsibility and start getting "yes". There are three reasons you're being told "no" and "not now" when the answer should be "yes". The first reason is you fail to prepare. It isn't like you don't know the possible objections you'll hear. Make a list of every question, concern, or objection the prospect could possibly throw at you. Keys to Success: Don't Let Fear Drive Your Decisions If at some point you worked for others there was always someone else you could either blame or count on to bail you out, but now there's no one but you. Does it feel like the world is crumbling around you and that failure is one heartbeat away? You're trapped in the grips of fear and your fear will keep you from mastering success. Keys to Success: You Can't Succeed if You Can't Make a Decision Do you procrastinate? Does it seem like everything you try ends in failure? There's a simple explanation for this. You can't make a decision. And because you can't make a decision you can't succeed. Develop the habit of making decisions quickly. You think it's hard to make decisions. The reason you find it so hard to make decisions is because you place too much focus on information over the facts, and you don't have a clear plan for what you want and how you're going to get there. Time Management Techniques: Are You a Time Strategy Victim? Do you find yourself complaining that you never have enough time? Are other people and things keeping you from getting things done? Perhaps you are a time management strategy victim. Perhaps your own negativity and passiveness are the real source of your time management issues. Blaming others and responding to every distraction or crisis that hits your radar screen are the easy things to do. But when you choose to respond that way you're allowing other people and other things to control your time and your destiny. You're allowing hap-in-stance to determine how you will invest your time, and keeping yourself from the achievements that would make you successful. The only way to stop being a victim is to take control of your time by taking responsibility for how you will use your time at every moment of every day. Sales Coaching: Increase Your Sales through Better Tracking The way you track your sales funnel and sales cycle can significantly impact your insurance sales success. Is the way you track now complicated and cumbersome? Could a simple system be more efficient and effective? Yes. You need to know at a glance exactly who is in your sales funnel, where they are in your sales process, their preferred contact information, the outcome and commitment from your last contact, and the next action you need to take to keep your prospect on track for closing. Sales Coaching: You are Responsible If you don't take full responsibility for your own actions you can't expect to obtain the sales success you want? As a sales coach I strongly urge you to always take full responsibility for your outcomes. Your actions and your decisions produce the outcomes you experience. Blaming yourself or anyone else, using excuses, and denial are all futile. Yes, you may have people who are supposed to support you who just make things more difficult, and they may not do what they say they will; but if you know this to be true you have to devise a plan to keep these people from inhibiting your success. Even if that means taking the action to get it done yourself. Sales Technique: Be a Trade Show Attendee not a Booth Owner Identify the trade shows that your best prospects attend and make sure that'll you'll be there and have a clear plan to use this opportunity to increase your insurance sales. You don't have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars renting a space at the event, in fact that's one of the last things you want to do. You can get numerous great leads without having to rent a booth. Renting a booth actually inhibits your potential for the event because when you have to man a booth you can't mingle and meet with the other vendors. It's no secret that most trade shows are annual events so it's easy for you to plan and prepare for the event. Don't go unless you have your sales strategy developed for increasing your insurance sales success. In most cases the event will be held at a hotel or a convention center connected to a hotel. In addition to walking the trade show you may also want to rent a meeting room during the event and use a pre-event direct mail campaign to invite prospects to visit you and get a special valuable gift. You may also want to host an invitation only cocktail hour at the end of the day just for your best prospects. Sales Techniques: Are You Responsible? No one but you is responsible for your actions. But are you taking responsibility for what happens to you? You decide the actions you will or won't take. You make your own decisions. And the things that happens to you are a direct result of those actions or inactions and decisions. Placing blame, making excuses, and denying the facts hurts you and keeps you from the sales success you want. Yet, you may find that the people who are supposed to support you just make things more difficult, and they don't do what they say they will. When you know this to be true it just means that you have to take on the responsibility and take action to get it done. Sales Techniques: Are You Accidentally Successful? You've said it, I know you have. At one point or another you've looked at the results achieved by another sales person, and you thought to yourself that person sure is lucky. Those who have tremendous success in their sales careers are never lucky. They're never accidentally successful long-term. Sales Techniques: Are You Tracking for Increased Sales? When you struggle to track where prospects are in your sales funnel and how likely they are to do business with you it's easy to drop the ball and miss prime opportunities. Many tracking systems are complicated and unwieldy. You need a simple tracking system. You need to know at a glance exactly who your prospects and leads are, how likely they are to do business with you, their contact information, the commitments agreed upon during your last contact, and the next action you must take to close the business. Sales Coaching: Increase Your Sales through Better Tracking When you struggle to track where prospects are in your sales funnel and how likely they are to do business with you it's easy to drop the ball and miss prime opportunities. Many tracking systems are complicated and unwieldy. You need a simple tracking system. You need to know at a glance exactly who your prospects and leads are, how likely they are to do business with you, their contact information, the commitments agreed upon during your last contact, and the next action you must take to close the business. Insurance Sales: Don't be Accidentally Successful Are those top performers just lucky? Haven't you ever thought to yourself that salesperson sure is lucky? To you it just seems like they can't help but tripping into more business than you can beat the bushes tracking down each day. In reality top performers aren't lucky, but they sure know how to set up systems that produce their luck. You don't accidentally stumble into long-term sales success you develop systems that produce long-term sales success. Sales Techniques: Are You Accidentally Successful? You've said it, I know you have. At one point or another you've looked at the results achieved by another sales person, and you thought to yourself that person sure is lucky. Those who have tremendous success in their sales careers are never lucky. They're never accidentally successful long-term. Sales Techniques: Are You Responsible? As a sales professional, do you take full responsibility for your actions? Do you take full responsibility for what happens to you? You are responsible for your actions, your decisions, and what happens to you. Blaming yourself or anyone else, using excuses, and denial only hurt you and keep you from being able to succeed. But the people who are supposed to support you just make things more difficult, and they don't do what they say they will. Ok, so you know this to be true. That just means you're responsible and as a responsible person you take action to get it done yourself. Sales Coaching: Are You Quitting too Soon Your sales are down, your self-confidence is gone, you feel like you're beating your head against a brick wall maybe you should just quit. Maybe you should and maybe you're on the verge of a major breakthrough, but if you quit now you'll never know. How will you feel when you find out that the next call, the next appointment, the next referral, or the next chunk of repeat business would have been life changing for you? What exactly are you quitting? Are you quitting a company because it doesn't match your values? Are you quitting a boss because they lack integrity? Are you quitting a product or service because it just doesn't meet expectations? If you're quitting these things you should and you should feel good about it and hold your head high as you move on to the next thing that does support your values, standards, and integrity. Sales Coaching: Be Intentionally Successful Have you ever looked at the results of another sales person, and thought to yourself that person sure is lucky? I'll bet you have. The fact is that top producers are never lucky. Top producers don't fall into long-term success they earn it. Insurance Sales: Turn Trade Shows into Premium Lead Events Trade shows for your best prospects are a great way to generate leads if you know how to take advantage of the opportunity. You can reap the benefits without having to rent a booth. The down side to renting a booth in addition to the cost is the fact that you're tied to the booth unless you have enough help to man your booth so that you can be free to roam the event. Most trade shows are recurring and you can know the date of the next one a year in advance, so you have plenty of time to plan your strategy for using this sales technique. When the event is held at a hotel or a convention center connected to a hotel you could rent a room during the event and send post cards to prospects inviting them to visit you to get something they would value. You could also host an after the event cocktail hour in your own private room. Insurance Sales: Could You be Responsible No one but you is responsible for your actions. But are you taking responsibility for what happens to you? You decide the actions you will or won't take. You make your own decisions. And the things that happens to you are a direct result of those actions or inactions and decisions. Placing blame, making excuses, and denying the facts hurts you and keeps you from the sales success you want. Yet, you may find that the people who are supposed to support you just make things more difficult, and they don't do what they say they will. When you know this to be true it just means that you have to take on the responsibility and take action to get it done. Sales Techniques: Do You have a Selling Attitude? A positive attitude is not the same thing as a selling attitude. You need a selling attitude for insurance sales success. A positive attitude doesn't produce results. A selling attitude does. Rather than trying to talk yourself into a positive attitude get a positive attitude based on your selling attitude.

Sign Up for a free account!

Submit Articles
Member Login
Top Authors
Most Popular Articles
Submission Guidelines
Ezine Notifications
Article RSS Feeds

Recommended Sites & Resources:

NetSweets
Wordtracker
Keyword Elite!
SEO Elite
Email Marketing

Contact Us | About Us | News | Link to Us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service

Powered by Article Dashboard