Can he buy? Can the person who you are talking to make the buying decision? Lesson learned from Value Selling. You want to find out if the person you are dealing with in a sale has the authority, research and courage to buy? That person can be harder to find these days. approval levels have risen two positions in the past few years in order to protect people from making mistakes, and to protect the company from ill-advised spending. So you can not expect that the mid level person who bought from you two years ago, does not need approval today. So now you have two more folks to educate than before. One way to quickly find out is to ask, “Is there anyone who can say No to this ? (This tactic from Masters of Sales).

Successful sales people today are understanding that to maintain the sales they are used to having they need to talk to more people, cover more bases and increase their professionalism. So what will happen when the executives you want to contact outsource to a virtual assiatant in India the reading of their email and the answering of their voice mail? Its happenin. Read this blog posting from Tim Ferris.
You better have real zingers in your messages to get through. See also the Metaphorically Selling review

Metaphorically Selling – Anne Miller -2007- ISBN 0-9762794-0-1

By Chris Jordan. Good friend and great sales guy!

Clearly most sales people use the technique of creating rapport by understanding which of the four types of individuals they are dealing with and then mirror it to sell successfully. The theory here is that people like to deal with people they like. In my opinion in today’s B2B world this is redundant and so we need an alternative approach otherwise it is akin to trying to drive a car along a road in the fog without a yellow line to guide us.

Enter Anne Miller and her book Metaphorically Speaking. Anne helps us understand that we all have two parts to our brains and while we may use one side more then the other in our decision making process we still do use both sides. Most of us, as decision makers, look at the facts and figures and then decide and this is a function of the left side. However, this leaves the right side unattended so if we can bind a visual image of our product or service to some of the memories of the right hand side of the brain then it becomes much more powerful.

The book carefully lays the ground work and slowly peels back the layers of understanding as it introduces the key elements of making story telling an effective sales tool through the use of Metaphors.

In today’s world of buying, not selling, where we are helping move the customer-to-be from one habit (old solution or product) to a new habit (our offering), we need to paint images in their minds to anchor them to us via the mind map so our solution will stand out from the “me-too” types; a process similar to what Google earth and maps have done to our understanding of travel and geography.

A short book and well worth the read.

Masters of Sales. Secrets from top sales professionals that will transform you into a world class salesman. Ivan R. Misner & Don Morgan. 2007. ISBN 1599181290. This book needs to be on every sales persons shelf beside the phone. Its been quite a while since I have found so many great sales ideas form so many to notch sales people in one volume. There is knowledge here that will benefit newbies right through to old sales dogs. Of course if you are content to not be among the top 10 % of producers among sales people who also are the most voracious readers, then you lose nothing by ignoring this book. Your loss is your competitors gain. Buy it, read it, use the advice and read it again. Yes I liked this book. Its everything that Google library says it is below:

Sold! The magic word. The holy grail. Why are some salespeople remarkably successful, while others make call after call with no results? How do some turn any no into a yes, while others can’t even get their foot in the door? For the first time, more than 80 of the most successful salespeople in the world have come together to reveal their secrets to success. You’ll learn what makes these outstanding sellers true masters of their craft-and how you can adapt the masters’ tactics for your own. Learn Martha Stewart’s secrets to promoting yourself as an expert. Discover the 11 key questions to ask from Harvey McKay. Get Anthony Parinello’s advice on selling to CEOs. Be trained in guerrilla tactics for direct selling from Jay Conrad Levinson. Find out Brian Tracy’s secrets on the psychology of selling. Bursting with valuable advice from Jack Canfield, Anthony Robbins, Keith Ferrazzi, Tom Hopkins, Al Lautenslager and more than 70 other masters of the art of selling, this exclusive compilation of the best sales strategies ever known puts you on the fast track to sales success.