Small Business | Right Mind Marketing

10 Reasons You Don’t Need A Business Coach, and What You’re Missing.

March 12, 2012 By Betsy Leave a Comment

A Business Coach Gives Perspective

“Oh come on, I don’t need a business coach. I’ll figure it out…. Plenty of ‘How To’ business books out there if I need them. Running a business isn’t rocket science, it’s just something your learn to do. I don’t need someone to hold my hand… Besides, once my business takes off, I’ll find a partner who can do the stuff I’m not good at.”

If that’s the way you plan to build your business you probably don’t need a business coach, and even if you did, you would never admit it. Assuming you can “do this thing” until it’s so big it spins out of control is a very poor business strategy. [Read more...]

Break through “Fear of Selling” With Four Simple Steps That Make Selling Faster, Easier, and Less Stressful, Even if You Hate Sales

August 17, 2011 By Betsy Leave a Comment

awan+putih+berubah+jadi+hitam 1 Break through Fear of Selling With Four Simple Steps That Make Selling Faster, Easier, and Less Stressful, Even if You Hate Sales

Find the "Silver Lining" behind Your Selling Fears

Why do most people generally hate selling?
Well, let’s find out if the word “SALES” conjures up any of these images in your mind:

Experiencing rejection over and over
Making endless calls to total strangers
Feeling like a pest when you interrupt the people you call
Connecting with an enthusiastic client, but they don’t buy
Getting tongue-tied when a client does call you back

Any one of these is enough to make a normal, self-respecting person feel uncomfortable about sales. After all, they suggest that you have to develop a tough skin and that rejection is part of doing business. Plus everyone knows selling is a numbers game and that’s simply the way it is, so you’d better get used to it!!

Wrong, wrong, and wrong. NONE of that is what selling needs to be, and it’s not what I mean by “sales” or “selling.” Aren’t you relieved? Wouldn’t it feel wonderful to take all of that garbage, stuff it in a bag and throw it out the window? So let’s do it!

Ahhh…. Doesn’t that feel great!? Now, let’s start over.

To be honest, traditional sales tactics really puzzle me. I know there’s a lot of psychology behind it, yet it seems to ignore the fact that people buy from people they know, and until they’re ready, they are not really customers. Hey, would you buy from someone you don’t know?

So let’s start there: The best thing you can do is to get to know your customers. All customers have a buying pattern. It starts with discovery, then recognition, and then several more steps before they actually make the purchase, when they are ready.

The purpose of selling is to actually prepare the customer to buy. In it’s purest form, selling is simply education for the consumer, plus a few choice words to influence them to buy the product that solves their problem the best, the fastest, or the most easily. This rarely happens the first time around, so to get results, it helps to see that selling has a pattern too, and it’s all about building relationships.

Here’s how it goes:

1. Date with a purpose. Find out why people show interest in your products. Ask questions until you have a clear picture of what attracted them, what they need and how you can best help them. If you don’t know, you’ll waste a ton of time and money trying to sell your products to the wrong group of people – Kinda like dating the wrong person.

Tip – Targeting your market saves you time, money and rejection.

2. Be helpful. You won’t sell much if your business isn’t solving anyone’s problems. You may think your product is awesome, but if it’s not useful to your customers it’s a dead end. What you sell has to help the buyer. They might be “cutting edge,” but if your products don’t solve your customer’s problems, they won’t hang around to buy from you. What you sell has to be valuable to them.

Tip – This is the essence of Value Marketing. Your products must have value for the customer.

3. Make them feel welcome. Let your customers get familiar with your products before they buy. Consider a car showroom where people admire and touch cars and then take them on a test drive. Provide a freebee, or a week trial. This builds trust, helps them to feel connected to what you’re selling, and deepens your relationship with the consumer.

Tip – Offer your product to customers in a way that makes buying interactive or fun.

4. Give customers the chance to “start out small” before committing to a larger purchase. Selling is a process of wooing customers by letting them get to know you and your products, and then negotiating a purchase price. You close the sale when you agree on a cost for value (price) that makes both sides happy. The more ways you can arrive at this agreement, the more sales you will make.

Tip – Multiple price points lead to more sales.

As you fine-tune these four steps, you’ll discover which products are the best fit for your clients and they’ll return to buy from you again and again. If you don’t, they will find someone else, and buy from them instead.

These steps are all about communicating. They will dramatically increase your sales and remove that little black cloud hovering over your head. Won’t that be nice? I’d love to show you how to put all four steps in place, exactly as they apply to your business products and services, so you can make more sales quickly and easily and bring out the silver lining in your business!

If you’ve read this far, you could probably use some help. So why don’t we connect for a free 20-30 minute consultation, and discuss what’s not working with your business and how I can help you to increase your sales.

You can visit this link http://bit.ly/nyTn18 that takes you to my personal coaching schedule where you can put your name in a time slot, and then I’ll give you a call so we can talk about your business and get things rolling. Remember, this is free advice, so take advantage of it!

I look forward to talking to you soon!
Betsy

Betsy Shulman
646 306 4721
www.RightMindMarketing.com

Filed Under: defining your niche market, Selling Conversations Tagged With: selling made easy, Small Business, Target market

How Simple Selling Conversations can Increase Your Sales Instantly

May 25, 2011 By Betsy Leave a Comment

Increase your sales now!

If you own a small business, like it or not, you’re in sales — even if you hire someone else to do it for you. Ignoring sales is like cutting off your business’s blood supply. Yet, few business owners enjoy selling, and even fewer do it well… If you’re one of them, keep reading.

Does the word “selling” makes you uncomfortable? if so, you may need to shift your view of what selling is meant to do. With a slight change of perspective, a selling conversation can be a friendly exchange of information that allows the buyer to identify their real need. So “pitching” or coercing immediately goes out the door. Instead, think of your initial contact contact or conversation as a way to connect. Let go of “making the sale,” and focus on creating a relationship.

Here’s how it works:

Selling becomes easier when you think of it as a conversation. Getting started is as simple as asking, “Do you live in the neighborhood?” Or, “What are your plans for the holidays?” or “Did you see the game last night?” If you own a brick and mortar business, try “Can I help you find what you need more quickly?” In other words, just ask normal questions and get to know what makes people tick, then remember what you learn.

When you ask questions people open up and talk about themselves. They also ask YOU questions about what you do. Give-and-take is a normal way to converse, but very often, selling as we know it, feels awkward and insincere because it’s “pushy.” The natural course of a selling conversation should be authentic and comfortable. I’ll tell you how that happens in just a second.

But first, I’d like to ask YOU a question –Are you 100 % behind the product or service your business offers to the customers your serve? Seriously, do you feel you have something really valuable to offer your customers? If not, your problem may not be selling, it may be the product, or it could be that you haven’t done these two things:

1. Defined the true value of what you’re selling. (Your market position)

2. Decided who, exactly, needs what you have to sell (Your niche market.)

Without a clear sense of how your product helps your customers, selling can become a very unpleasant task.

Here’s why: Before you can have an authentic selling conversation with anyone about anything, your reasons for selling need to be clear in your own mind and heart. Believe it or not, good selling conversations come from the heart. That may sound corny, but it’s true.

When you know the unique value your product offers your customers — like how your Zippy Car Wash gets cars shiny using environmentally safe detergents — then you can focus on finding the group of people who want a clean, “green” car. The best way to make selling easy is to find the customers who want what you have to sell.

It seems reasonable that if you only sell to people who want what you have for sale, then selling would be easy! You see, selling is about satisfying the customer’s needs, and that means knowing your customers. And that takes us back to selling conversations. The better you know them, the better you can serve them.

So if you don’t know whose problem your products solve (your ideal customer) or how your products help them, you need to get that straight before you try to sell anything. If you need some help doing this, check out my Free Sales Action Guide: Three Steps to Selling Conversations that Close (Almost) Every time” by filling out the form up there in the right column of this website =>

You see, the problem isn’t with selling, the real problem is that most businesses don’t take the time to find out what their customers really need. After all, discovering problems and solving them is the only way to deliver true value to your clientele. A selling conversation allows you to collect information, identify the problem, and offer the solution… at an agreed price, and then the sale is complete.

See how easy that was? All it takes is a simple shift of focus that places the customer’s needs first. You become the giver and you can bet your customers will come back for more!

If you want to learn 3 things you can do to increase your sales immediately, I offer Free, 20-30 minute phone consultations that I call “Selling Makeovers.” Visit this link http://bit.ly/nyTn18 and fill in a time slot that works for you, and I’ll call you back. In that 20 minutes, we’ll find out what’s not working in your business, how you can fix it, and what I can do to help you kick your business into gear.

Make your next sale valuable!

Betsy

Betsy Shulman
646 306 4721 EST
www.RightMindMarketing.com