There is so much competition out there, and you really need to stand out or you will be lost in the noise. Instead of recounting the usual ways to stand out from your competition, which reflect your solution and your unique value, I am going to focus on five great ways that revolve around the experience of dealing with you. These ways will make your prospect want to choose you as they will like the experience and the feeling of being around you.

#1 Deliver a hard copy of your proposal – not just an email version. Wrap it in a BIG box with bright paper and put a BIG bow on it and attach balloons to it. Not only will it bring a smile to your prospect’s face, but the delivery itself will become a talking point. If your competition just delivers theirs by email or in an envelope, they will be remembered for how bland and unexciting their proposal delivery was. You have immediately and cleverly put your competition at a disadvantage.

#2 When you give a presentation, bring some chocolates or cakes and sweets and put them on a big plate in the center of the table. This is simple, effective, fun and memorable. You will find it relaxes people and they switch into their “real” vs. their business roles, especially if you just happen to bring their favorite items. Even if some or all of them don’t choose to eat, they will remember and appreciate that you made the effort and the competition didn’t.

#3 When you give a presentation, limit any PowerPoint slides to ten in one hour. Also have most of the slides include pictures. Remember the saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Choose fun pictures that convey the essence of what you want to convey. There will be a huge sigh of relief when you say at the beginning you only have 10 slides, and then there will be smiles when they see your pictures. They’ll enjoy it more and they’ll thank you at the end. When your competition comes and does “death by Powerpoint”, they will be thinking back about you.

#4 Regularly ask your prospects to meetings outside their offices. Invite them to a local coffee shop or a nearby hotel cafe. Even if they say “no” the first time, keep trying. People really appreciate getting out of their office some of the time and they’ll actually start to look forward to meetings with you. You’ll find that outside meeting places will accelerate building your relationships and your prospects will open up more. If your competition always has formal office meetings, imagine the difference in conversation and the relationship and who the prospects will prefer to meet with.

#5 Send a huge “Thank You” card to them for considering your offer. Include photos in the card – photos of them and photos of your proposal in the BIG box with the bow and balloons. When your competition sends a brief “thank you” email (and some won’t even do that), it will get deleted in a second while they all talk about your card and photos and displayed on their desk or notice board.

Do not underestimate the positive impact of doing these things. I recently advised someone to do number #1 and he reluctantly delivered his proposal wrapped with a bow and balloons. He told me afterwards that he thought beforehand that it was a little cheesy, but then he saw the big smile and excitement it generated. The prospect made a big point then of saying that the other firms had only delivered their offers in an envelope and a plastic bag! I wonder who the psychological favorite is!

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If you’d like a resource for quickly, easily and cost effectively implementing #5, watch this 3 minute and 20 second video.

I was on a sales forum panel the other day and someone asked “What is the most important step in the sales process?” There were a variety of answers given with qualification and with “asking for the order” being the most common.

As I read through the answers, it hit me about what was wrong. They were missing the most important sales step, the one that most salespeople miss. If I was to ask you to describe your sales process, what would you say? Think about it for a moment before you read on.

Have you thought about it?

If you are like most salespeople, you have described the process up until you make the sale. Maybe it’s something along the lines of “qualify, present, and close”. If you have, then you have also missed the most important step, and it’s the step that occurs after you make the sale.

The sale does not end when you close (and that’s why I don’t like that word). It has really only begun at that point. When someone agrees to buy from you, you have the potential to double, or triple – in fact exponentially increase that initial sale. You can only do this if you add APPRECIATION to your sales process.

This is where you turn your customers into raving, loyal fans so they want to buy more from you and will tell others about you. This is the golden step where you will get the greatest leverage from your sales efforts. This is how your customers will become your unpaid sales force. So how do you use appreciation to turn customers into raving, loyal fans?

You must connect with each of them individually. You need to show that you appreciate and care about them, personally and professionally. You need to do this regularly and consistently. It’s so easy to do, and unfortunately easy not to do, and most salespeople don’t do it.

In my entire corporate sales career, I’ve never worked for a company that had a customer appreciation plan or system in place. They just left it up to each salesperson to do, and most did not do it. They were too busy chasing the next sale because they had neglected this step and had not developed their customers as an unpaid sales force.

What have you been doing up until now – regularly and consistently -to show appreciation for your customers? What is your customer appreciation plan? Do you even have one? Make it a top priority to put a systematic appreciation process in place.

I suggest that you determine the top 20% of your customers that probably give you 80% of your revenue and put them on an “A” list appreciation plan. Split the rest between “B” and “C” list plans. Look for systems that can automate a lot of this for you. They are readily available so it is not a good excuse that appreciation plans take up too much time.

In fact, if you are thinking you don’t have time, it is probably because you are too busy chasing new customers yourself and you have not developed your unpaid sales force!

Remember when you appreciate your customers, they will appreciate you. Begin showing consistent appreciation and watch your sales grow as if by magic!

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Include sending physical cards in the post to your clients in your Customer Appreciation Plan. Cards to say thank you, happy birthday and to say “I appreciate you” even.

If you decide to send physical cards manually this is fine but make sure you do it. Most have the intention of sending cards and don’t as manually sending cards is time consuming and inconvenient.

If you want to use a system, the system I use and highly recommend is SendOutCards. They’ve recently removed the upfront fee for retail customers and you can now either pay as you go or have a monthly subscription if you want the lowest retail price.

To test drive sending a card, click here and click on “2: Send a free card”.

If you want to generate an income stream from sharing SendOutCards, click here and click on “1: Watch the video” and then “2: Send a free card.” Then send me an email at tessa@salesconversation.com and we can set up a time to have a chat about it. I’ll personally work with you to help you be as successful as you want to be.

WARNING: Sending cards will transform YOU and your business.

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“THANK YOU is one of the easiest things to say & is more powerful than all the marketing material you can buy!!”

-Chris Rollins

Suppose that you are about to give a sales presentation and you desparately need the sale. You are totally focused on getting this sale closed.

Now put yourself in the shoes of the person hearing your presentation. As you listen to the words and the conversation progresses, you intuitively pick up that he or she desperately wants this sale and is completely focused on getting the sale.

What are you thinking? They really don’t care about me. They just want my money. It’s all about them. Can I really trust what they are saying as they are probably just saying things to get my money? In fact, I can probably get a big discount if I ask for it. But do I really want to deal with someone who doesn’t care about me? How can I escape this conversation – fast?

Now suppose you are about to give a sales presentation, and you would certainly like to get the sale just as you’d like to really help this person if you can. But if this sale doesn’t happen, there are plenty of other prospects to talk to and help.

Now put yourself back in the shoes of the person hearing your presentation. As you listen this time, you feel that they really care about helping you and that is what they are focused on. I feel I can trust them. I should keep listening so I can find out more.

The difference in these two scenarios is what you actually care about. If it is making the sale, you’ll make less sales. If it is about helping the other person, you’ll make more sales. The first repels your prospect; the second attracts your prospect.

So in every sales conversation, try never spending a single moment worrying about whether they will say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. That is up to them. What you must do is give them all the information they need to make the best decision. This is what you must be fully committed to and care about the most. Don’t be concerned about whether they want your help or not. As counter intuitive as it seems, you’ll sell more faster.

How about starting off a prospect conversation with: “I am committed to making sure you have enough information so you can make the best decision for you. During this process, I might even tell you that my offer is not the best fit for you and I’ll recommend something else. If I do feel that I have the best fit for you, I’ll tell you that and I’ll explain why. The final decision on whether you choose to buy from me or not is obviously up to you, and I’ll respect whatever decision you make knowing that I’ve done my best to help you.”

How do you think saying this would make your prospect feel? How would it make you feel as well? With this approach, you forget about ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and you focus on having great conversations to see if you can really help people. This simplifies the whole sales process, as you don’t need a lot of techniques to persuade them to say ‘yes’ as you are not focused on that. A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision will just come naturally.

So from now, try caring more about helping your prospect and caring less about making a sale, and you’ll make more sales.

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A Caring Resource

In this article I talked about caring about helping your prospects and customers. You want to take your caring one step further and also show you really care about them as a person. Do this and you’ll have loyal customers who will not only buy more from you but they’ll rave about you to others.

There is no better way to show you care about your customers and prospects than to regularly send them real greeting cards in the post. Cards purely to give appreciation with no expectation of anything in return. When you do this, you’ll be amazed at what comes back.

Sending very personalized, high quality, real cards can be easily done from your computer – at a fraction of the cost of what you pay for cards in a store. Plus there is no need to go to the shops or the post office. The system for doing this is SendOutCards.

To test drive the system, and send a card with my compliments, click here.

If you are interested in making a difference by spreading the word about SendOutCards, click here and watch the video. Alternatively if you prefer to read instead of listen, click here.

If you would like to chat further about this, just email me at tessa@salesconversation.com. I’ll personally work with you to help you be as successful as you want to be.

One user of SendOutCards increased his sales by 14% last year and the only thing he did differently was send cards of appreciation to his clients. Sending cards works.

When you talk to your potential prospects, do you feel they are not telling you the whole truth, and are even holding out on you? They seem to be giving superficial answers to your probing questions and leaving out a lot. You often feel that your conversations just skim the surface of what is really going on.

Instead, wouldn’t it be great if your prospects really opened up and gave you really in-depth answers to your questions? How much would it help you if they told you what they really thought and what they really felt? Just think how much easier that would be, and imagine the positive impact on the speed and volume of your sales.

So how do you get a prospect to open up and tell you the whole truth? You have to change yourself! You must realize that you set yourself up for how your prospects respond to you. It’s all the result of knowing how you present yourself and interact with them.

Suppose your intention is to make a sale when you have a conversation. So you ask your questions to get something – a sale. Your prospects will easily pick up that you are trying to get something, and they’ll automatically try to protect themselves. So they’ll withhold information from you, and that will make it much harder for you to get a sale.

Now suppose you ask questions and you are not really listening. Instead, you are already thinking about what to say next. Your prospect will quickly know that you are not listening. They’ll conclude that there is no point in talking or explaining – so they won’t. They’ll say as little as possible – or maybe throw in some curve balls – so you can soon be on your way, and hopefully will not return.

Get the point? Perhaps you think that to sell, you need to act in a different way than the person you really are. For some reason, you believe you have to act like a “salesperson.” Your prospect will pick up intuitively that you are not being authentic. As a result, they won’t trust you, and they won’t want to do business with you.

Instead of setting yourself up for failure in this way, just imagine the opposite. Now your intention is to find out if you can help someone. Now you are sincerely interested in both the answers to your questions and in really understanding them. Leave all the chatter in your head behind and be fully present in the conversation. Just be your authentic self.

What happens? How does that make you feel about having a sales conversation? How do you think it will make your prospects feel when they pick up on your changes? You’ll both feel more relaxed. They’ll feel you are authentic and that you really do care about giving them help instead of just getting a sale. In return, they will give you the kind of answers you need to really help them.

So before your next sales conversation, set yourself up to find out the whole truth. Change your sales approach, and watch how your prospects respond to the authentic you!

When I interviewed David Frey on How To Master Referral Marketing he shared the following 3-1-3 Referral Strategy which has given his clients exponential results.

Most people do not like asking for referrals but you don’t have to even ask – in person. You can implement David’s 3-1-3 Referral Strategy and use cards to do the asking. Here is how it works.

You send a relationship-building card every month for three months. You don’t promote anything or ask for any business. The cards sole purpose is to build the relationship. Make sure you are sending fun, personalized, unique cards that they’ll want to keep on their desk.

Then on the fourth month, you send a referral card that reminds them that referrals are important to your business. You could send a referral card that on the front says “Who do you know?” Those are the four most important words in referral marketing. On the inside of the card you might write a personal message that says something like, “Hi Tessa. This is Dave. You may or may not know that I’m trying to expand my business. I really need your help. Would you do me a favor? Would you refer me to two or three people who you feel would benefit from my services?” It’s a very simple message.

Then you repeat the process. The fifth, sixth and seventh months are relationship-building cards. The eight month is a referral card. The ninth, tenth and eleventh months are relationship-building cards. The twelfth month is a referral card.

So if you are sending a referral card once every four months that’s three times a year you are asking for referrals.

Let’s just say that you had 200 clients. If you send out that referral card three times a year to 200 people, that’s 600 times that you have reminded people that referrals are important to your business.

Ask yourself how many times did you actually ask someone for a referral last year? Was it once, twice, or maybe three times?

It was probably none at all. Imagine if you ask 600 times. Do you think you could double the amount of referrals that you’re getting right now?

If you could just double the amount of referrals you’re getting right now, and your referral business is currently around $50,000 then doubling it would bring in an extra $50,000 and all you’ve done is send a few cards.

That is the 3-1-3 Referral Strategy. David Frey said he had implemented this with a group of pool builders in the pool industry and with hot tub retailers. They didn’t experience double. In most cases, their referrals have quintupled!

If you could quadruple (or even double) the number of referrals you get, what would that be worth to you?

Don’t wait. Make it your top priority to implement the 3-1-3 Referral Strategy today.

You can implement it manually or you can use a system to automate the process. The system I recommend is SendOutCards. SendOutCards allows you to create and send custom cards with your photos in your handwriting and with your signature.

You can test drive it now and send a card with my compliments.

Let me know your results from implementing David’s 3-1-3 Referral Strategy.

When I interviewed David Frey on How to Master Referral Marketing he talked about several referral strategies that are easy to implement and which really work.

One referral strategy he talked about is pinging.

There’s a guy named Keith Ferrazzi. He wrote a book called Never Eat Alone. There’s a quote from that book that says, “If 80% of success is, as Woody Allen once said, just showing up, then 80% of building and maintaining relationships is just staying in touch. I call it pinging. It’s a quick, casual greeting, and it can be done in any number of creative ways.”

That’s what pinging is. Pinging is reaching out to people on a consistent basis. It’s following up on a consistent basis and letting people know that you’re there to care about them.

Let me give you a very good real-life example of the power of pinging. I like to call this guy the “king of ping.” That’s how he created a crazily-successful business. His name is Joe Girard.

Joe Girard was nothing more than a car salesman out in Detroit. The Guinness Book of World Records heralded him as the world’s greatest salesman 12 years in a row because he would sell six to seven cars a day. If you’re in the automobile industry, you know that that is an insane amount of cars.

He said his secret to success was, “Getting people to remember me always.” The way he did it is he had a mailing program. He would send out a greeting card every single month. That was his mailing program.

His motto was, “I like you.” In every greeting card he would say, “I like you. Happy Easter. Joe Girard,” or “I like you. Happy Fourth of July. Joe Girard.” That’s what brought him great success.

In fact, at the height of his popularity he was sending out 14,000 handwritten greeting cards each and every month. He actually had to outsource that service. Do you think he would send out 14,000 handwritten greeting cards if it wasn’t working for him? That’s what made him the world’s greatest salesman.

Like Tony Robbins says, “Success leaves clues.” Just follow the successful people. If you want to become the world’s greatest salesman in whatever niche you’re in, do what Joe Girard did. Just start sending cards to people each and every month.

Let me put a caveat on that. The worst thing that you can do is send a boring greeting card. If you send a boring greeting card, they’re going to throw it straight into the trash.

I recommend that you need to send cards with interesting, different photos in them. I’ve found they don’t throw them away. When you put a photo on the front of or inside a card, they won’t throw the card away. If you put a photo of them inside the card, they certainly won’t throw that away. You can’t send boring greeting cards. You need to send heartfelt greeting cards that are unique and different.

If you want a system for easily creating and sending highly personalized WOW cards, I recommend SendOutCards. Click here to test drive it now and send a real card with my compliments.

If you are interested in also spreading the word about SendOutCards, click here and watch the video or read this document. Both will give you an overview of this incredible opportunity. If you’d like to chat further, just email me at tessa@salesconversation.com.

What are you waiting for? Start pinging and sending cards. It really works.

At the beginning of each year, I come up with an annual theme that encompasses what I want to achieve. This year, my theme was MM – Massive Momentum. I want to grow my business exponentially versus incrementally. I posted this on one of the LinkedIn forums, and someone suggested that I add the word “Magic” to it, so now it is MMM – Magic Massive Momentum.

When I added the extra “M”, light bulbs went off in my head. MM by itself felt heavy and tiring. It felt as if I had to do everything myself or it would not happen. As soon as the Magic was added, suddenly MMM was so much lighter. It felt like it wasn’t just me having to do everything to create Massive Momentum. I knew that I’d have a lot of help from others, and I had tapped into that leverage. It made my goal of exponential growth become realistic for me.

What has this to do with your own sales and sales growth? Everything. if you want exponential sales versus incremental sales. Everything, if you want to make more sales faster with less effort.

You see if you just focus on the sale in front of you, and once that sale is made, you rush off to the next one and so on, you will make sales and you may even get an incremental increase in your total. You might even achieve MM but – and this is a big one – you’ll soon be exhausted as you are doing everything. It all revolves around you. There is zero leverage with this sales approach. If you go on holidays, nothing will happen. If you are sick, nothing will be happening. You may have gained MM, but it’s only incremental and you have personally paid a big price.

Now suppose that instead of just focusing on the sale in front of you, you focus on gaining a “Customer for Life”. When you gain a “Customers for Life”, they will buy more from you like magic. With very little extra effort on your part, the initial sale will have doubled, tripled, or more. What also happens like magic is that your “Customer for Life” starts raving about you to others. Then some of them also become your “Customers for Life”, and then like magic, they rave about you to others as well.

Now instead of you having to do everything, your customers are doing a lot of the selling activities for you. You’ve got free leverage. You could even go on holiday and some sales may come in without your usual effort. Your sales growth takes off as the sales are now starting to come in exponentially.

So the choice is yours. MM or MMM?

So what do you need to do to create a “Customer for Life”?

First, you need a sales process and philosophy that supports the “Customer for Life” approach. Most sales processes do not. Most are essentially a “hit and run” method and may even destroy the potential of future sales with a customer.

Second, you need to have a very important system in place or it will not work. If you don’t have this system in place, it’s very unlikely you will tap into exponential sales. It effectively adds fuel to your ‘Customer for Life’ fire. This system is one that builds your personal relationship with your customers and shows that you appreciate them.

When you consistently and sincerely give appreciation to your customers, it will ignite their desire to give back. It simply follows the natural law of giving and receiving. Your customers will give back in a number of ways: they will give you more business, they will become raving fans, and they will tell others about you and recommend you. All this starts with giving appreciation consistently.

Put in place an appreciation plan and system that touches your clients at least 4 times a year, if not more. It can be as simple as sending cards – physical cards in the mail. It’s not hard and it’s not expensive. Yet together with a “Customer for Life” approach, the sales results can be exponential.

Try it and watch the MMM happen in your sales!

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As I mentioned in the article above, if you want an exponential increase in sales, you must put in place an appreciation plan and system that touches your clients at least 4 times a year, if not more. It can be as simple as sending cards – physical cards in the mail.Sending very personalized, high quality, real cards can be easily done from your computer – at a fraction of the cost of what you pay for cards in a store. Plus there is no need to go to the shops or the post office. The system for doing this is SendOutCards.

To test drive the system, and send a card with my compliments, click here.

If you are interested in also spreading the word about SendOutCards, click here and watch the video. It will give you an overview of this incredible opportunity. If you like what you see in the video, and would like to chat further, just email me at tessa@salesconversation.com .

Have you got the cart before the horse when selling? Many people do, so you are not alone. It’s also why many people struggle with selling. In this analogy, the cart is your sales process, and the horse is your sales philosophy.

Most people when selling focus on their cart – their sales process, their sales skills. They focus on learning how to present and persuade, how to overcome objections, how to close. In fact, this is how a lot of sales trainers and coaches teach them. So even the “experts” are leading you to the cart before the horse approach.

Actually, most people consciously forget about the horse. Most don’t even think about their sales philosophy. They simply focus on their sales process and sales skills, and they end up with a sales philosophy as a byproduct of the process they have chosen.

What’s wrong with focusing on your sales process first and your sales philosophy second, or just ignoring the whole thing? It’s all about the results you want vs. the results you will get.

Suppose you don’t want to persuade and manipulate people because it’s not your true nature. You don’t want people thinking of you as being like that. But suppose you are using a sales process that is based on persuading and manipulating people. What sort of reaction will you get from prospects?

What will happen to your sales as a result? If you use a persuading/manipulating sales process by default, people will think you are all about getting the sale – even though that’s not really “you”. Why wouldn’t they?

Assume that your customers can give you lots of additional business and referrals. Suppose your sales process is focused on getting that initial sale no matter what. If that is true, you may forget to mention some things to your prospect or you may be tempted to sell them the wrong solution. What will be the impact on future sales and referrals?

Will you end up with a “Customer for Life”? I doubt it – do you get the point? So how can you avoid a sales process that is not aligned with who you are and what your intent is?

You avoid using such a sales process by consciously deciding on your sales philosophy before you lock in on a sales process. You put the horse before the cart. You consciously decide who you want to be (and not be) when selling, what your longer term intent is, and then you choose and use a sales process that is aligned with that.

For example, if your intent when selling is to gain a “Customer for Life” instead of just making a sale, you discard sales processes that are all about persuading, manipulating, and pressuring people. You’ll ignore processes that are focused on making the sale and stop after the sale is made.

Once you have adopted your sales philosophy, you want to proactively convey it to your sales prospects and customers, as it can be a huge differentiator. If you have a sales philosophy that is all about helping people and gaining “Customers for Life”, you will stand out above your competition that is only focused on making a sale.

Stop now and consciously decide on your sales philosophy. Then look to see if your current sales process is in alignment. If not, quickly find one that is in sync and begin to use it. You will soon be making more sales and you will also have a lot more fun selling.

It’s that time of the year when you start thinking about what you want to achieve over the next twelve months. As they say, be careful what you wish for.

Just suppose that you are a consultant or a coach and your wish is to be booked solid in 2011.

Let’s suppose your wish is granted and you are booked solid. What does a day, a week, a year in your life look like? Take a few minutes to really imagine it and feel it.

What words come to mind to describe how you feel? Exhausted? Drained? In need of a holiday?

What words come to mind to describe your personal relationships?

Don’t underestimate the power of this exercise. It could change your life. I only wish I’d had someone ask me to do this exercise before I started my sales coaching business.

You see being booked solid, rushing from client to client, is exhausting. Yes, you may be making lots of money but you have no time freedom. You stop working, the money stops. You go on holiday, the money stops. Sound familiar?

So maybe you really don’t want success in your current business.

Two years ago I had a big AHA moment. I realized that with my sales coaching business I had created a noose around my neck. I always had to “turn up” or the money would stop. I love to travel and spend time with Mike (my husband) but with my coaching business, when I do the money stops.

Two years ago, when I woke up to the fact that my business model was not going to give me the time/money freedom I wanted, I “found” and joined SendOutCards.

To me SendOutCards is perfect as it:

- offers a vehicle for financial/time freedom;

- makes a difference in people’s lives;

- has the McDonald’s Factor. Anyone can succeed as there is a simple system to follow and you are trained on it.

Although I continue to write sales articles and run TeleForums, I no longer actively look for coaching clients. Instead I focus on building my SendOutCards team and on helping my team achieve the financial and time freedom they want. I’m having so much fun and it’s far more rewarding than I could ever have imagined.

So in 2011 if you want more time/money freedom, seriously consider changing your business model so it will give you the time/money freedom you want.

SendOutCards may or may not be for you but spend 10 minutes and click here to watch a video. It could change your life like it did mine.

Once you’ve watched the video, send an email to me at tessa@salesconversation.com and we can set up a time to chat further to see if this a fit for you – or not. I’ll also send you the first call of the Bootcamp I ran this year for my team. This call covers the three Success Principles for building your SendOutCards business. The other calls in the BootCamp covered the five Action Steps for building your SendOutCards business.

My wish for you is that you achieve time/money freedom in 2011 so you can do the things you really want to do and you can spend more time with those you really care about.