The Savvy Selling Sales Newsletter

For Sales Professionals Who Want to Make More Money and Enjoy Selling More Issue 102 - December 7, 2005 Publisher: Michelle Nichols email: michelle.nichols@savvyselling.com www.savvyselling.com © 2005 Savvy Selling International To stop receiving this: optout@savvyselling.com => Please help me spread the word about this newsletter to your friends, family members and co- workers who want to sell more products, services or ideas to their customers, employees, managers or community. The more you grow the Savvy Selling community, the more selling power you will have! To get your own copy: subscribe@savvyselling.com

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. Are you dreading receiving another dry fruitcake, ugly sweater or useless gadget as a Holiday gift?
2. Learn Some Fresh Ideas on How to Close More Sales
3. Advice Needed for Overcoming "I don't want to offend my other vendors" Objection
4. Most Recent Savvy Selling Column - Pull Together -- Or Fall Apart
5. Motivational Quotes to Inspire You
6. How You Can Help Us Help More People and Distribution Details

ISSUE 102:

1. Are you dreading receiving another dry fruitcake, ugly sweater or useless gadget as a Holiday gift?

Do you need ideas that dear ones can afford and order easily? Or you are a sales manager and do you need to buy a good gift for your sales reps? We can help you and your business increase your sales too.

That's right:
* Savvy Selling 101 - one-hour CD covering 6 basic sales lessons. With 45-page transcript
* What Your Customers DON'T Want You to Know: 72 Ways to Overcome the Price Objection - one-hour CD of suggestions from my readers worldwide representing many industries. With 37-page transcript
* One Big Idea to Rocket Your Sales - one-hour CD recorded live.
For more information and to order, click here

In the four years I've been writing the Savvy Selling columns and newsletters, I have NEVER had a sale of any kind. It's my gift to you!

These 5 products bought separately sell on my website for: $104.95
These 5 products bought as a package normally sell on my website for: $89.95

From Thanksgiving week (today) to Christmas (12/ 25/05), the package of all 5 products is:
only $49.95 ( that's 52% off! )

AND the first 20 to order will get my newest product for FREE - Savvy Selling's Idea Generation Guide to Find New Customers and Close More Sales ($39.95, 130 pages.)

As always, shipping is a flat $3.95 no matter how much you buy!

Order a package today for yourself or send the link to your relative.
Click here for more information and to order.

P.S. Sales managers, why don't you order a set for each of your reps? That way they can improve their sales skills and start selling better in January! Click here for more information and to order.

2. Learn Some Fresh Ideas on How to Close More Sales

My previous column, Getting Prospects to Say "I Do," , gave ideas on how to close more sales. If you missed it, read it at: www.savvyselling.com/free-sales-articles-111805.htm

3. Advice Needed for Overcoming "I don't want to offend my other vendors" Objection

A reader has a flower business attached to their family funeral home. He wants to offer their floral services for a 20% commission to other local funeral homes but the objection they are getting is that the other funeral homes don't want to offend the other local florists.

Any advice? Write to me at michelle.nichols@savvyselling.com I'll share the best of your suggestions in a future newsletter or maybe even a column.

To read this on BusinessWeek's site, go to:
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2005/sb20051201_610567.htm

SAVVY SELLING - DECEMBER 7, 2005

Pull Together -- Or Fall Apart

By Michelle Nichols

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW
Companies can increase their bottom lines by promoting a spirit of teamwork among their employees because customers like to buy from connected vendors and good employees like to work where there is a spirit of camraderie.

Team spirit does more than keep your salesforce working for the common goal -- it also makes a heck of a good impression on clients

The Lone Ranger would make a lousy salesperson. Today, no salesperson working alone could do everything that's required to produce a terrific buying experience. If you want to achieve great selling results, no matter how fantastic your product or service is, you need great teamwork.

When all the employees of an outfit are connected and work like a team, profits increase for two reasons. First, customers want to buy from vendors whose employees have a teamwork-oriented culture. Second, good employees want to work at companies where there is a spirit of teamwork. Simple math proves that the resulting increased sales and decreased turnover expenses lead directly to increased profits.

If you're not convinced that customers care if employees are well-connected, imagine you're hungry for a fast-food meal. You're driving down Main Street and can pick from half a dozen such establishments. As you drive past Freddie's Fast Food, you recall your last visit there. The gal at the cash register looked like she enjoyed working there. She asked the fries guy nicely for some. She asked the chili-dog gal pleasantly for one with extra onions, just like you ordered. She had a small laugh with her manager as she bagged your food. You felt like you were visiting your friend's home.

DISMAL DINING. Contrast that with your last buying experience at Horrible Harold's Hamburgers. When you walked in, the guy at the cash register was complaining how the machine was difficult to use and it took a long time to get a repairman out to fix it. He was rude to the French-fry gal, who probably gave you old, cold fries. He was surly to the hamburger guy, complaining how he was always late and talked funny. When his manager walked by, they glared at each other in silence. You could cut the tension with a knife. You felt as if you had walked into a family feud.

I'm betting you buy your next meal at Freddie's. This lesson applies to all sales outfits, whether the product is shoes, cars, computers, or accounting services.

Buying from customers whose employees display teamwork has other benefits. For instance, if buyers need special financing terms or custom colors or staggered shipping, they're more likely to get exactly what they want from salespeople who are on good terms with their boss and all the other departments in their company, too. In a word, they have "pull."

FLEX ADVANTAGE. The financial savings from teamwork due to decreased turnover is considerable. When experienced, customer-oriented employees leave to go to a more cohesive organization, it's expensive in terms of lost training time, lost business momentum, and lost customer connections. That affects employee expenses, marketing, and sales -- a triple whammy. So keeping good employees is worth the effort and expense of building a culture of teamwork.

When salespeople face tough competition, they need all the advantages they can muster. If their rivals have great teamwork and they feel like they're selling all alone, they're operating from a weak position right from the start. Imagine facing a professional boxer in the ring -- would you rather go in there alone or with a solid team behind you? Selling is no different.

One leading trend in abating turnover is offering schedule flexibility. When co-workers approach their work as a team, they can provide some of this valued commodity to each other without management having to step in. Fred can cover for Irma when she needs to take her son to the dentist, and Cheryl can stay late while Omar comes early to offer extended hours for special customers.

TEAMWORK TIPS. I realize that salespeople, who are usually independent contributors by nature, can find it a tough request to work together as a team. I remember the charged atmosphere in our weekly sales meetings when I sold technical-consulting services long ago. We salespeople were all competing to sell from the same pool of talent. On the other hand, we also worked together as a team to try to place all the consultants available so the fewest number possible were left "on the bench," that is, not working.

If you're a sales manager, here are three suggestions to increase teamwork:

Time Out. If your salespeople fight among each other, make it stop. Encourage them to focus 100% of their competitive drive on their competition. They must not use even 1% to compete with each other.

Building Respect. If your team members don't particularly like each other, have each member find one thing they respect about every member on their team. Maybe it's their timeliness, their good sense of design, or their natural sense of humor. Everyone has one quality you can respect and admire. Then focus on that one good quality. If everyone in a group can admire one thing about everyone else in that group, you've got the foundation for a good team.

Sharing Experience. If there is a significant disparity in the number of years of experience on your team, consider starting a mentoring program. This transfer of knowledge helps to shorten the training curve. Trial-and-error is the slowest path to success. These programs also help retain your more experienced employees. Shorter training time and lower employee turnover both add to profits.

Teamwork doesn't happen by accident. However, if the members of the sales staff work together as a sales team, which in turn is well connected to accounting, production, shipping, and administration, everyone wins. Customers get a more pleasant, harmonious buying experience, and employees are less likely to be lured away by competitors.

"Many hands make light work" applies perfectly to selling. Take the idea of teamwork beyond "Group hug!" The bottom line is that building connections between your employees doesn't cost, it pays.

5. Motivational Quotes to Inspire You

From reader Pam Johnson:
Keep a dream in your pocket and faith in your heart. Anything is possible!

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity. General Douglas MacArthur

TV is passive; computers are active. TV is just a really, really good screensaver.
Bill Machrone Editor, PC Week

In honor of my reader's letter:
A truth that disheartens because it is true is of more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods. Belgian writer Count Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

A person on hold tends to remain on hold.
John Maguire, author of "The Law of Social Inertia"

If you have a sales joke or motivational quote that helps you sell more or live better, send it to: :michelle.nichols@savvyselling.com

6. How You Can Help Us Help More People and Distribution Details

Please refer:

A. Meeting Planners that need to hire a great sales speaker
B. Frustrated sales folks who need some sales tools with fresh ideas
C. Sales VPs or Business Owners that need to hire a sales consultant
D. Editors that need a steady stream of high quality, reliable sales columns to reprint

..to my website or have them call me. Let's connect!
or mailto:michelle.nichols@savvyselling.com

Where, When and How to See Michelle Nichols speak

Atlanta (Cobb County), GA December 14, 2005
NGWA. Available to speak December 13 or 15.

St.Louis, MO January 4, 2006
Private event. Private event. Available to speak January 3 or 5.

Houston, TX April 11, 2006
Private event. Available to speak April 10 or 12.

Overland Park, KS Sept. 8, 2006
Private event. Sept.7 or 9, 2006.

**If you're in a business, sales, or networking group--and you want details on how to bring in Michelle Nichols to do a fund- raiser for your chapter, or you want me to host a teleseminar customized just for your group, contact me at michelle.nichols@savvyselling.com or call toll-free (877) 352-9684.

***Attention Meeting Planners: If you're booking speakers for spring or summer conferences or events, keep me in mind--even if you have a last-minute cancellation. I deliver high-content, interactive programs that are lots of fun. I give away great, savvy door prizes. And, most importantly, I'll make you look good.
Call toll-free (877)352-9684 or michelle.nichols@savvyselling.com

Permission to reprint:
You may reprint any items from "The Savvy Selling Sales Newsletter" in your own print or electronic newsletter. But please include the following paragraph:

Reprinted from "The Savvy Selling Sales Newsletter," a free newsletter featuring ideas and strategies for generating more sales in less time. Subscribe at www.Savvyselling.com .

If you like this newsletter, please send it to your friends, clients and colleagues.

You are receiving this because you signed up for it at The Savvy Selling website at www.SavvySelling.com or you told me you wanted to receive it.

To get your own copy: subscribe@savvyselling.com
To stop receiving this newsletter: mailto: optout@savvyselling.com

Privacy Statement:
Savvy Selling International will not give, or sell your Email address. The only exception to this is if we sell our email business. In that case, you will be given at least four week's notice and two notices so that you can opt out before the sale. For more information. read our privacy details.

Thanks for joining us! Have a great day. Now go sell something!

Michelle Nichols, Savvy Selling columnist, BusinessWeek Online
Sales Speaker and Consultant www.savvyselling.com

Toll-free: (877) 352-9684 or Direct: (281) 610-6307 Houston, TX

michelle.nichols@savvyselling.com

PO Box 34432, Reno, NV 89533-4432

If you want to sell more, connect more!