Going into a new year, it is always a good idea to address the techniques you are using to hit your sales targets.  Many sales people return from the Christmas break full of good intentions but after a few days, momentum is lost and they fall into the same old routine.  Now is the time to assess your existing tactics, be honest and make changes! The following tips are designed to help you rethink your approach and make solid changes and not try to do too much too soon.  At this time of year people try to lose weight, the sensible ones will take it steadily and gradually lose weight , the foolish will try to lose two stone a week and get fed up when it doesn’t happen.

Tip number one: always be prepared to adapt your approach to suit the client and the selling environment.  A sales person must be flexible.  When selling you must try to match not only the client’s needs but also their buying style and manner.

The second tip is “remember sales structure and technique”.  After the first tip this might sound a little bit of a contradiction.  Sales people worry that by using a solid structure they might become robotic in their selling style.  Actually a solid sales structure enables a sales person to be more flexible.  In sport, top performers all have fantastic technique, they have a core of solid skills that enable them to adapt and flex, when necessary.  Golf is a good example of this.  Golfers have all manner of different scenarios to battle with; it is the top technicians that can play effectively out of bunkers, water, trees!  As a sales person’s experience grows they tend to drop their structure and technique and this leads to problems, normally in the form of objections.

The third tip for the New Year is; through questioning, find needs not information.  Information does not help a sales person as much as needs.  Too many sales people question a potential client but do not create or establish needs.  This means that there is no urgency created and the potential client only sees what is being sold as an option not a necessity.  Be brave, focus on problems and needs.

Tip four; after questioning the client, gain agreement that you have indeed not only created but understood their needs.  This agreement is vital because the buyer is accepting that that they have a need that needs a solution.  Too often a sales person will assume what the client needs and sell against that assumption.  Assumptions are created by a sales person thinking that this client will be like the last one they spoke to.  Tip four (b) treat all clients as individuals.

Tip five: use what you find.  Once needs have been created and agreed, sell against them.  Too often sales people present a lot of information about their products or services but do not relate it to the client’s needs.  Always explain how the product will help the client.

Tip six: Revise or update your product knowledge. I am always staggered by how little even experienced sales people seem to know about their products or services.  Test yourself, think of as many features of your product or service that you can.  I think that you should be able to come up with at least fifty.  Too often sales people use only a handful of features and this makes it hard to create a tailored presentation that matches exactly the needs of the client.  If it is too general it will probably only match some of the clients needs and this will lead to objections.

Tip seven: set yourself activity targets.  Financial targets tell you how much revenue you need to bring in, activity targets tell you how to get there.  Activity targets could be number of calls to make in a day, how many meetings to attend in a month, how many new clients need to contacted in a month.  I would be confident that if a sales person was hitting their “activity targets” they would almost certainly hit their financial targets.