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3 Things You Can Do That Will Make Your Customers Surprised and Glad

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Daniel M. Wood

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The most important part of sales (whether you are in marketing or in sales) is creating loyal customers.
Loyal customers will make you a lot of money as they keep returning to buy your product, without you having to prompt them to do so.
Two weird looking people
In creating loyal customers you have to make them “happy” making them satisfied is not enough.
When doing this some things are completely in your control and some that are not.
For example you cannot change the quality of your product, but you can change the promise.

Here are 3 things you can do:

1.Send a thank you note after a purchase.
People love to get letters and if you send one (without any sales message at all!) thanking them for their time and the nice conversations (don’t thank them for the deal, selling is helping!) they will be surprised and feel a lot more positive towards you and your company.

2.Spend a lot of time on helping the customer make the best possible use of your product or service.
Make sure they know exactly how to use it so that it delivers as much value as possible to your customer.

3.Offer statistics.
Once the customer has used your product, try to offer them as much numbers as possible proving what a difference the product has made to their lives.
This can be hard to get, but anything will do, just try to get some “proof” that your product has made a positive difference.

Action Exercise
1.Start experimenting with your promises and see if you can’t lower the expectations of your customers.
2.Start caring for your customers even after the sale is made.
3.Give them opportunities to buy again.

Your thoughts
Do you have any advice on how to create more loyal customers?
Please share your comments below.

Photo Credit: twak

Posted in How To Sell - Sales Techniques And How To Close Sales, Sales Process - Having a Sales Plan | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

We are up and running!

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Daniel M. Wood

The new design is now up and running.
The transition has so far gone very well (I think!).

Let me please know if you find any glitches or if you have any thoughts on things you would like changed.
I am in the mood for updating so here is your chance, I want the site to be as user friendly as possible, that means you should like it, not me! :)

And cheers the comment box now works!

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below

Posted in Regular Mistakes | Leave a comment

The Power of the 30 Minute Jog

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Daniel M. Wood

I really had no intention of writing a post today.
This was just one of those days, I had twice as much as usual to do at work, lots of extra errands to run, and on top of that be creative, I didn’t really feel up to the task.
Jogging for fitness
What happened though when I got home was the last thing I wanted to hear.
My wife works at a gym, which has gotten me a free membership.

Yesterday I had promised her that I would try it out today.

So, when I opened the door, had thrown off my jacket and was taking off my shoes she reminded me… and off we went.

When we got to the gym I decided that I would just take it easy and jog, as I was pretty tired and jogging is always good and relaxing.

Now about 1 hour later, I am writing this post!

The difference 30 minutes can make
Like my good friend Marcus Sheridan always raves about on his blog Thesaleslion.com working out gets your body going and wakes you up.

I now feel awake, alert, creative and capable of writing, of doing the laundry (again a promise to my wife) and then I am going to read a book.

Why it works
When you work out your body releases adrenaline into your system, waking you up and giving you energy. Once the practice is finished it instead releases endorphins which relaxes you and calms you down.

This combination is a powerful duo, known as “nature’s drug”, after a good workout you out to feel rejuvenated and have the energy to get things down.

How to tap into this power
Try it for yourself all it takes is that you work hard enough to break a sweat. Take a 20-30 minute jog and you will be much more productive.
Do this every day and you will be in better shape, be able to focus better and for a longer period of time.

Action Exercise
1. Start working out regularly, at least twice a week for 20-30 minutes-
2. Reward yourself after every workout by doing (or eating) something you love.
This will help building the habit and getting you hooked on working out, from there you can increase if you need to or just keep on going if like are where you are.

What is your experience with working out?
How has it made a difference in your life?

Photo Credit: kodomut

Posted in Stamina,Fitness and Exercise - Work on Setting Goal and Work Hard Every Day | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Ask For The Contract and You Will Get It!

Posted on August 28, 2010 by Daniel M. Wood

Making a sale is frankly quite easy and if you have read the rest of this series “selling in steps” (you’ll get the links in a minute) you will see that all you have to do is follow the steps one after another and you will have your deal.

But, for some reason we all get hung up on the closing instance.
We get to the moment where we should just take out the contract and have the customer sign it and instead we freeze, we wait, we don’t know for what but we hope the customer will tell us…

Take Action
The reason we are at the meeting is to make a sale, nothing else matters if the contract isn’t signed.
Contracts waiting to be signed
If you have followed the earlier steps, especially the one in the last part “trial closes” you will know that the customer is already ready to sign the contract meaning of course that this step of getting the “handshake” shouldn’t be that big a deal.

The Rest of The Series
To get more background before moving on you should read the rest of the series.
The parts are as follows:
Activity
Cold Calling
Referrals
The First Contact, Needs Analysis
Product Presentations
Trial Closes

Following up the rest of the meeting
If you have done the rest of the sales process well – meaning you found a qualified customer, booked a meeting, did a thorough needs analysis, presented your product as a solution to their problems using their arguments to give weight to your offer, answer their questions and objections and using trial closes to make sure you and the customer agree and that you are on the same page – you will find that all you have to do is ask for their signature.

If it turns out they have any further questions just step back, answer them and go back to the close again.

But I Want to Think About it First
Once you have proved to the customer that they really need your product and come to an agreement on what they need in order to solve their problems “I want to wait a bit first” is all they can say to not sign the contract now.

You job is to make them.
They know it is the right decision, but just like all of us they want to procrastinate.

I had a situation where after discussing all aspects of our offer, and I mean all aspects this customer asked every question in the book, he said to me “Well, thanks for the meeting I am just going to think it over and get back to you”.

My answer was simply, “Why wait? We have already agreed that this is the right product for you. There is no reason to wait. Here is the contract and lets get started”

It was enough.

Ask For The Contract and You Will Get It!
Often that is all you need to do.
But like I said, if the customer has any more objections make sure to answer them and move swiftly back to the process of signing the contract.

You thoughts
Most salesmen have problems asking for the order.
What are your reasons for being nervous?

Photo Credit: NobMouse

Posted in How To Sell - Sales Techniques And How To Close Sales, Sales Process - Having a Sales Plan | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

New Design

Posted on August 28, 2010 by Daniel M. Wood

Hello,

In a few days time I will be launching a new design to my blog.
It has a lot of problems that need adressing, like the comment box for example.

The new design will be a little less crowded and will hopefully make reading easier, also the comment box should be fine :)

This is a bit of a warning but also a request to hear your thoughts.
What do you want from the new design that will make your experience better?
This is what it looks for at the moment (Screen shot below, I just had room for the top but maybe that is enough :) ) it is not the final draft but will give you a feel for it.

The new disgn for http://lookingtobusiness.com

Posted in Regular Mistakes | Tagged | Leave a comment

Here is a Method That is Helping Successful People to be Much More Efficient

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Daniel M. Wood

Bunching tasks saves lots and lots of time.
For example; Instead of calling 5 new prospects per day, take one day a week and call 25 prospects.
(More about cold calling)
Time is running away
Cut away the warm up time
What is so good about bunching tasks is that you don’t have to “start” and “stop” again all the time.
Like in the example above, calling 5 prospects can take anything from 20 minutes to 2 hours depending on the length of the calls but also on the time it takes you to mentally warm up to the task.

Often when we decide to start a task it takes us between 5 and 10 minutes to actually get started, once we are done we have to put everything away which takes another 5 minutes.

If you look at the above example again, that means we take 5 minutes a day for warm up and 5 minutes a day putting everything away. That is 50 minutes per week.

If you instead do all the calling in one day it will just take 10 minutes (5 minute warm up + 5 minute put away) gaining you about 40 minutes of work time per week.

Think what would happen if you did this with all your tasks.
40 minutes/week/task, all of a sudden you might have found 5 hours of extra work time per week.

Finding the “flow”
What is also great about bunching tasks is that once you have started a task and got into it, it is easy to continue and you get on a role.
That means that you can do the job faster and better.

In the cold calling example above that might mean that the time between calls gets shortened, the quality of the calls gets better and your results improve.
This could mean that instead of making 25 calls all you need to do is 20 for the same results and those 20 calls, because of your improved efficiency only take as long time as 15 calls used to take.

To make it short, you just gained another 20 minutes!

The problems
It isn’t all good though bunching tasks, some tasks are just not good to bunch.
Some things have to be done every day and some things cannot afford to wait, that’s just something we will have to live with.

Procrastination
One danger though in bunching tasks is that we might be inclined to procrastinate.
As the small tasks invariably become bigger, 25 calls is a lot more than 5 calls, it might become more daunting to start.

Just remember that once you are done, you are done and don’t have to think about it again for a whole week!

Conclusion
In my experience the positive by out ways the negative and bunching my tasks have saved me hours and hours of unnecessary work that I know spend with my family.

Action Exercise
1. List all the activities you do in a month.
2. Right down all the activities that you do continuously either daily, weekly or monthly.
3. Try to bunch the tasks, for example with email, decide to just check your email once or twice a day instead of every 5 minutes. You will probably be able to find many other examples when going over the list.

Photo Credit: psd

Posted in Personal Growth and Self Development, Stamina,Fitness and Exercise - Work on Setting Goal and Work Hard Every Day | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

How to Know Exactly When and How to go For the Close

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Daniel M. Wood

One of the biggest troubles for salesmen is knowing when to ask for the order and because of this lack of knowledge many find their courage lacking and instead hope that the customer will ask to buy.

This very seldom works. Customers won’t often ask to buy, people want to procrastinate (read Back to Work! Back to Work! Back to Work!).

Therefore it is up to you to ask for the order.
But the lack of knowledge will still be there even if you do work up the courage to ask…
Ladder to success
What is a Trial Close?
This is an often used technique by sales professionals.
Its sole purpose is to see if the customer is on the same page as we are and if they are prepared to take the next step.

As we have seen so far in this series “selling in steps” – Activity, Cold Calling, Referrals, The First Contact, Needs Analysis, Product Presentations – that selling is just a matter of steps, take the first, move on to the second and so on.

What trial closes help you do is see if the customer is at the same step as you and if they are prepared to move to the next step.

How do you test the customer?
As to the testing, it is just a simple question.
For example, if you are at the needs analysis and you wish to move on, feed everything back to the customer:
“So I think we have a good grasp of the situation, these are your problems, this is what you want improved, this is what you are hoping for and this is what you want to see me bring to the table, am I right or did I miss something?”

The answer to this question will be most telling.
I have in many sales instances been so surprised by the answers to this question that they changed my whole presentation.

In one situation it turned out that all we had said up to that point was completely incorrect.
It turned out that my customer was hoping for something completely different.
But once we had cleared the misunderstandings I asked the customer again and got the answer; “Yes, that sounds about right.”

Moving on to the next step
After getting a positive answer to the trial close you know both of you are ready to move on to the next step.
You can ask this question many times, as you saw in my example above, so that you don’t spend too long or too short a time at each step of the process.

Trial closes at the end of the sales process
Just before you are going to ask for the order making a trial close is perfect.
All you need to do is ask;
“So, now that we have discussed these problems and I have presented these solutions that you thought sounded good (you already trial closed after your product presentation, making sure the customer thought the advice you gave was sound) is there anything else you would like to add?”

If the answer is “Yes” you know there are more questions to be answered, but if they answer “No, I think that is all” all you have to do is ask for the order and more often than not, you will get it.

Action Exercise
1. Add trial closes to your sales process; make sure to test the client at every step so you make sure you are on the same page.
2. Trial closes are meant to be used often, don’t wait too long before asking, less the customer gets bored.

What do you think?
What is your experience with trial closes? Have they helped you? Have you used them as I use them or do you have a different technique?
Please share your views below.

Thank you for reading and good luck to you.

Photo Credit: Robert Couse-Baker

Posted in How To Sell - Sales Techniques And How To Close Sales, Sales Process - Having a Sales Plan | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Book Review: Churchill by Paul Johnson

Posted on August 22, 2010 by Daniel M. Wood

Churchill was an extraordinary individual.
The difference he made to the world was astounding, but not only did he do that, he was also a well published author and a renowned painter among many other things.
Churchill
The book
Churchill, By Paul Johnson gives a great insight into the life of the great man.
Through his successes and his failures we follow him, through his heroic deeds and through the times of embarrassment.

Churchill’s life is full of lessons many we should endeavor to learn just as he did.

Always aim high
He always aimed high, always looking to succeed with things others felt was impossible.
For instance at the beginning of his life, he turned out to be a poor scholar which earned him no support from his father and yet he pressed on and aimed to become a very successful individual, and succeeded.

There is no substitute for hard work
One thing Churchill did more than all others was that he worked harder.
He worked 16 hour days and would go through any pain to do the job well and right.

Never bow to failure
Churchill failed many times; he was laughed at in public dozens of times, he failed politically, he wasted his finances on the stock market, not once but twice and that is only the tip of the iceberg.

But he never gave up. He always picked himself up and went at it again and as it turns out, he did well.

Never hold a grudge
He never wasted any of his precious energy on hatred, grudges or vendettas.
Not even to his political enemies and not even to the Germans.

This really allowed him to use his strength on the next problem, hatred is such a emotional drain that he would never have been so successful if he hadn’t loved making up and becoming friends.

An astounding person
He in a sense saved the world all by himself and did more than any of us ever dream to do or even want to do.
It all comes down to what made him such an extraordinary individual.

He was courageous beyond belief, he was in 15 battles and won 14 medals, and still a smart tactician that succeeded in saving Britain from the point of defeat.

My only regret
The only thing I miss in this book by Paul Johnson is that it is only about 200 pages long.
The life of Churchill could be written in over 10 000 pages, but still I found it very interesting and if you are looking for the lessons from the man it is most definitely enough.

My Recommendation
If you are looking to really go in-depth there are many books which you might read, but I really must recommend this one.

As usual I tend to recommend Amazon.com as I find it a most useful service.
You can order the book Here

I hope you like it!
If you have read it or any other book about Churchill please leave your comment below and let me know what you think.
If you have a recommendation about another book we should read, about Churchill or another person leave a comment with the recommendation and I will make sure to look into it.

Posted in Personal Growth and Self Development, Product Reviews, Stamina,Fitness and Exercise - Work on Setting Goal and Work Hard Every Day | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

How to Use Motivation to Accomplish Your Goals and Start Living Your Dream Life

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Daniel M. Wood

To all of us wishing to succeed, motivation is the bread and butter in which we will forge our success.
If we don’t have the motivation to work hard, day in and day out towards our goals we will fail (or at least not succeed as quickly or well as we otherwise would have).

What is motivation?
Motivation comes from within, it is the drive that lets us push ourselves past our limits and keep working in the face of obstacles.
Fire
I usually describe it as a flame that burns, you feel it in your heart and it drives you to levels that you didn’t believe possible.

Where does it come from?
How motivated you are stands in direct relation to how clear your goals are.
The clearer the goals, the more motivation you will have to accomplish them.

The reason for this is that the flame that burns needs to be directed, you need to know why you are pushing yourself and putting yourself through misery, if you don’t have a target you might as well take a day off… and so goes your motivation away.

Setting goals is the key to motivation
The clearer your goals are the more powerful your motivation.
You need to be able to shut your eyes and picture your life just as you want it as your dream of it.

In my article Learn to set goals you can read about how to best set goals.

What is important is that you write down your goals and that you set deadlines for them.
You need to know by what date you want to have accomplished your goals and you need to be able to read them to boost your motivation in times of need.

Parkinson’s Law
Parkinson’s Law states that whatever task you undertake it will fill the time allotted to its completion.
If you undertake a project for example when writing an article, it will take the time you give it.

As you have noticed when just before a deadline, if you are far from done all of a sudden you will become stressed and work REALLY hard getting a whole project done in a matter of hours or even minutes.

But all the time up to that fateful moment, everything went very slowly.
What would have happened if you didn’t have the deadline? Maybe you would never have been finished.

This is why deadlines are so important.
If you set a deadline for each task, you will make sure to complete it before the deadline expires.

You will find ways to complete the goals, either by working harder, longer, more or coming up with ideas so that you can work smarter.

Don’t let your goals take forever
By setting deadlines you will push yourself to complete them. Instead of letting it take time and slowly, slowly moving forwards you will instead start rushing towards your goals and before you know it you will have completed them.

Using motivation to complete your goals
Once you know what you want let yourself be excited, start thinking about how great it will be once you have completed your goals.

Use this energy and get to work on it directly.
Start working on plans for their success, start taking action and making things happen.

The trip you are about to begin is amazing.

Photo Credit: Stacirl

Posted in Personal Growth and Self Development, Stamina,Fitness and Exercise - Work on Setting Goal and Work Hard Every Day | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Back To Work! Back To Work! Back To Work!

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Daniel M. Wood

You will not find any more important words to your career than; “Back To Work! Back To Work! Back To Work!”

As a race, human beings tend to procrastinate, we tend to put of doing things as long as possible and then when it is imperative that it is done we all of a sudden conjure up an immense productivity and produce great results.
Hard at work
Learning to be efficient before the deadline
What you want to learn is to become efficient before the deadline approaches, to always be efficient and be able to do more at a higher pace than all of your peers.

By repeating the words; “Back To Work! Back To Work! Back To Work!” every time you start stalling, talking to colleagues, taking a long lunch or just reading the newspaper instead of working, you will learn to focus more of your time on your job.

By getting things done now you can relax later
What is so great with this technique is that you get everything you need to get done, done. Leaving lots of time for you to relax and have fun.

It gives you the free time to spend with your family instead of having to work overtime.
The decision you have to make is to spend your free time with your family instead of talking to your coworkers, or talking to your coworkers after work in a more relaxed atmosphere than at work.

Action Exercise
1. Every time you feel like you are putting things of or doing something other than working while at the office, repeat the words;” Back To Work! Back To Work! Back To Work!” and get back to work!
2. Use the free time you earn by working hard, on yourself and on your family.

Photo Credit: totalAldo

Posted in Personal Growth and Self Development, Stamina,Fitness and Exercise - Work on Setting Goal and Work Hard Every Day | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments