Honing Your Face to Face Selling Skills

One way to realise your goal is to make sure that you sharpen your face to face selling skills. This is helpful if you have to do door-to-door selling, service sales, or customer service. I will go into a lot more detail on selling skills later, but briefly, here are good tips you have to follow:

Make sure you have all the sales material at hand.

If you are not prepared for everything, don’t expect to make big sales. Always have the order forms, purchase orders, sales slips, selling materials, and specification sheets handy. Bring them wherever you go. Make sure you have extra copies of each in your car, your briefcase, desk, and counter. If you are always ready, you won’t give your customer any room for second thoughts.

Be well organised

Being organised does not only mean you have all your selling materials when and where you need it. It also means you have everything all taken cared of – including the possible questions your customer may throw at you. You have to make sure that for the simplest and the most common of questions, you have the answers handy, either in the back of your mind or on a brochure. Fumbling around for papers and answers won’t do you any good. Your customer might get impatient and change his mind about buying.

Take advantage of the power of good testimonials.

Good customer service will tell you that you don’t forget a customer right after every sale. Instead, you follow up their purchase with the offer of support to help them with anything about the product or to answer questions about its use and functionality. It is also a good time to ask for feedbacks as to whether they are satisfied with the sale, both regarding the commodity and the quality of support or customer service they received. You can even ask some of your all-too-pleased customers for good testimonials. More often than not, they will be very willing to vouch a good word or two about you, the product they bought, and the company that made it.

Update your sales materials regularly.

If you are indeed using catalogs, visual aids, brochures, and leaflets, you have to make sure that they are all up-to-date and accurate. You customers are going to use the information contained in them to guide them with their purchase. They may even use the data you gave and compare it with your competitor’s products. Now if you give them inaccurate data, you can expect either one of two results. The first result: your customer will choose other product over yours because what you have doesn’t fair well when compared to others. This will likely happen if you haven’t updated your materials with the innovations and improvements the manufacturer has made with the product you are offering. And the second result: your customer will buy your product, thinking yours is better than the others, only to find out they are fooled because of the inaccurate facts and figures placed on the brochure they took home with them. Either case, you will end up losing. On both counts, you lose a sale because the second customer is very likely to request for a refund.

Talk to your customer and involve them in every moment of the pre-sale, but stop talking when he has

Again, don’t give your customer any second to reconsider buying. Before he makes up his mind about buying a certain product, continue talking to the customer. Good conversation skill is what every good salesperson possesses. Don’t put it into waste. Use it all the time. Besides, customers can assess right there and then if you are genuinely willing to help them make a good purchase or if you just there to get their money. After they have made the decision to buy, stop talking about that particular product. Remember, they can always change their mind, walk out the store, and leave you dumbfounded. The smart thing to do is ask them if they would be interested in an “advanced” version of the product (if any) or if they would like a complimentary product to go with the sale (Example: Would you like fries or sundae with that meal?).

Provide your customer only with the best possible product and sales deal.

A good salesperson does not think of what he can get out of each sale he makes. He also thinks about the person on the other end of the bargain. A salesperson should strive to understand fully what his customer wants. He has to help him make an informed decision among his legitimate options. Selling is also about caring and trust. This is the primary reason why customers keep coming back.

Motivate your customer to act.

Well, don’t just stand there talking to your customer about the product’s benefit like a broken record. Your constant pitch will just irritate your customer. Instead, drive them to buy. Make them understand that it is a lot better to own the product’s benefits rather than just to hear about it. Goad them to act. Have them complete the sale.

Attempt to sell related products or services to satisfied customers.

A happy customer may be all too willing to buy other products. For example, if you are selling designer clothes to prospects and at the end, they did buy one of your products, try to sell them designer shoes and bags to match. They may not buy right away, but it is such a great opportunity to present them other products that complement the item they’ve purchased. You will then have an active list of customers in the near future.

Reach out to your most likely clients and get referrals.

After understanding your target market, you should know exactly the type of people that will buy what you are selling. Get to meet them and sell to them aggressively. However the meeting goes, either you got a sale or not, get referrals. They will surely have other friends in the same field that may be willing to buy. Always make every meeting worth it, even if you did not strike a deal at all.

Give your customers subsequent sales support.Sales support comes in various forms.

It could be as simple as a telephone enquiry or as complex as a home service. In either case, whether it is your job or not, offer assistance when your customer asks. The least you can do is to direct them to the right support group to handle their concerns. If there is no such group, provide them help as much as your company policies can allow. Always keep in mind that one unhappy customer can create more damage than ten happy customers can repair.