How To Take A Slow Sales Season Head On

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Slow sales seasons occur in virtually every industry, whether its during the summer when everyone heads to the beach, or during the holidays when everyone spends time with family. To keep the momentum going, you can utilize these proven tactics to ensure that your sales team makes the most of this downtime.

Sales Incentives

There are a few tactics you can employ to increase your sales sales incentives being chief among them. If youre trying to grow during a slow sales cycle, consider offering sales incentives to representatives for meeting their quota during slow months, or for bringing in the most sales. This will increase their motivation levels and will help point your sales in a positive direction.

Seasonal Sales

One method that helps draw in clients and prospects during these times is to offer seasonal sales. Promote certain products that are either relevant to the season, or that are known to be slow movers during that time of year and you just need to get rid of overhead.

Prospecting

Summer months are a wonderful time to prospect. Get creative and use your prospects out of office notifications to setup future meetings and connections with them. Save the dates on your calendar to contact them upon their return.

Get Experienced

Slow seasons are great times to attend events and conferences. Find conferences and events specifically related to your industry or your clients industry and send your sales staff. You can make these events exciting by selecting those that take place in more popular destinations.

Review Your Tools and Strategies

Down times are also a great time to review the tools and strategies your sales staff currently uses to prospect and close sales, and to research new tools and strategies that you can incorporate for greater tracking and communicating.

Slow seasons are stressful for you and your teams. Make sure that you lay out realistic expectations to keep everyone from becoming discouraged and to keep everyone motivated.

How To Get Plr Ebook Sales Pages Onto Your Website

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For the sake of this article I will assume that you have just purchased a plr ebook publishing package and want to know how to prepare the sales pages for your plr ebooks and upload them to your website. I am also assuming that you have a basic knowledge of HTML code and are also familiar with Paypal (http://www.paypal.com).

When you download a basic plr ebook package to your hard-drive and open the folder, you will usually find several more folders inside that contain the ebook, graphics, webpages, information documents about distribution rights.

Before you upload everything to your website you will need to modify the sales page.

Modifying The Sales Page

Open the sales page in your browser and read through it to find out what needs to be changed. The parts you need to modify will probably be in bold text and in a different color from the main sales copy. They will most likely be placed in square brackets. For example:

From the desk of [Your Name]

[List Bonuses Here, If Any]

You can easily modify the sales page by clicking on the “view source” option on your browser. Copy and paste the source text to a new file in your html editor. Now, simply delete the square brackets and everything between them and type in your own information.

With a plr package you can probably change the sales text, the product price and the bonus offers to suit your own requirements, but check the terms and conditions first to make sure.

The next big thing to deal with is the payment button. I am assuming that you want your customers to pay through Paypal.

Log in to your Paypal account, click on the “Merchant Services” tab and make a “Buy Now” button. You will need to set the price and give the product a name. Make sure it is a name that you will understand so that you know what is being sold once purchases start to come in!

Next, if the product designer has made a nice “Buy Now” button graphic that you would like to use, click on the “Use your own button image” radio button in the “customize button” section. Now enter the url of the graphic. (You can do this even if you have not yet uploaded the graphic – just type in the intended url!) It might look something like this:

http://www.myaffiliatewebsite/ebooksales/graphics/buynowgraphic1.jpg

Now click on “Step 3 Customize advanced features (optional)” and set the first three radio buttons to “no” and then check the two boxes that read “Take customer to a specific page (URL) after checkout cancellation”, and “Take customer to a specific page (URL) after successful checkout”. Now enter the url of these two pages on your website, for example:

http://www.myaffiliatewebsite/ebooksales/cancel.html

and

http://www.myaffiliatewebsite/ebooksales/thankyou.html

Don’t worry if you have not yet made those pages! I’ll talk about them in my next article. All we are doing right now is setting up an plr ebook sales page.

When everything is set, press the “Create button” button and copy the code. Now go back to your HTML editor, find the place where the “Buy now” button should be located in the sales page and paste the code into the page.

One other thing you will need to do is to make sure that all the graphics will appear on the sales page when you upload them and it to your website. Go through the HTML code and locate all the images. If necessary, change the url of each image to the url where the images will be located on your website. It is a good idea to make a separate directory on your website for the graphics and place them all in there.

All you have to do now is to save the page and upload the sales page and the graphics to the appropriate directories on your website. Once that is done, type the sales page url into your web browser and see how it looks. If all the graphics are there, you have done a good job! Check the “Buy Now” button. If it looks good, click on it and make sure that you are taken through to the Paypal purchase page and that the details on that page are all correct.

Now that you know how to upload a plr ebook sales page to your website, the next stage is to get the product and the “thank you” page uploaded, and also the “order cancellation” page. Let’s deal with all that in the next article.

Important Tactics For Reaching Your Sales Goals With Innovative Sales And Factoring Strategies

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Many businesses under $10 million are focused on the traditional sales channels like major retailers. For many. this is the Mother load, but when there are more competitors all the time and major retailers with flat to negative growth after factoring for inflation, there must be other tactics employed while also making sure you have financing strategies in place to handle growth when you find (i.e. factoring invoices, a/r financing, ABL, credit insurance and more).

It might be tough to grow sales but NOT IMPOSSIBLE!
Like any goal, there must first be a plan. In this case, there must be a business plan with action steps and obtainable goals. So, what tools can be used today to assist in driving sales that most others in the small to medium market are not using. My business school marketing professor always told me to pick a niche and own itmy add on to this, is to at least be very good at niche so your company stands out.

When selling products, the following are tools you must consider:
1. A sales strategy that takes the road less traveledgoing where your competitors are not comfortable will be a major asset. Consider selling to distributors that are solid in foreign countriestake small steps in this direction to open new markets. Selling directly to Carrefour or BenQ is not likely and unwise. If you have experience selling to the US retailers, then selling as a foreign company to a large foreign retailer requires stepping your game up to a whole new level which most small to substantial medium sized businesses are not ready for.

2. Factoring invoices can provide cash quickly to a business that needs to turn around and buy inventory or make payroll, and cannot wait for a traditional banks decision making process that takes months.

3. Make products unique and try to stay away from seasonality if possible so if a sales cycle is missed then the product(s) can be sold at later dates and to others in different regions as well

4. Promote your product were your competition is not heavy this can take the form of non-traditional retail channels, trade magazines that only distributors read, corporate sales, , etc. Picking a Google Ad word is great but if all your competition is fighting for the same word, there will be little response because there will be too much noise for real prospects to see your ad. Select sites that are important to your business but off the typical path that your competitors are following.

5. Make sure you have at least 6 months of working capital in case there is a dry spell in sales finding banks and alternative lenders that specialize in providing working capital for your business model is mission critical. Often, smaller businesses dont qualify for traditional business loans. Additionally, SBA loans are not practical because they offer amounts that are too small for real growth and they usually require pledging everything you own so no other financing can be done.

6. Factoring programs that incorporate a trade finance platform are also valuable as many of the current US businesses are purchasing abroad and having a lender that can issue Letters of Credit (LCs) directly will save you money and brain matter in trying to coordinate the logistics, docs, and terms that protect you correctly when issuing an LC.

7. Supply chain financing is often a term tossed around as a catch phrase, but understanding that a lender that has this type of expertise and program will be an added value in making sure your company produces the right goods at the right time so that appropriate Quality Control (QC) measures are in place, the assets or people on the ground are appropriate for monitoring your efforts, logistics are being monitored, a continual process and system for reviewing the foreign factorys credit to perform accordingly, and many other important features for importing from or selling to foreign firms are in place. PMF Bancorps Supply Chain Financing Plus Program is an example of lender program that incorporates these kind of services.

8. Lastly, remember to get the money when you dont need it because when you do, it wont be around.

Are Introverts Suited To A Career In Sales

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It is common for many people to believe that only loud extroverts are suited to a career in sales. However this is not necessarily the case. Certainly a sales person needs to be able to voice his or her opinion when necessary, but even introverts are capable of doing this.

Sometimes introverts dismiss a career in sales because they mistakenly believe that sales is not suited to a more reserved and reflective personality type. This type of thinking can unfortunately cause them to miss out on a lucrative career choice.

Industry experts agree that the stereotype of the back slapping, loud and extroverted sales person still pervades. This could not be further from the truth. In reality, sales is based on mutual trust, mutual respect, mutual agreement and mutual commitment.

The typical ‘introvert’ in fact has many strengths and qualities which lend themselves well to a career in sales:

* Composure – most introverts exude a sense of calm, composure and control. From a customer’s point of view, this means that the sales person does not come across as pushy, overly excitable or obnoxious. These traits can be useful in putting customers at ease.

* Listening ability – introverts typically have good listening skills and these are great skills for sales people to have. It is very important for a sales person to listen to a customer’s needs. Customers prefer sales people who take the time to hear them out, as apposed to sales people who push their own agenda.

* Relationship building – introverts are actually very good at building and maintaining long term relationships, and this is one of the most critical traits for a sales person to have. Introverts are good listeners who are in touch with their customer’s underlying messages, and so they tend to do a good job of satisfying what their customers really want. This means that introverts excel at building long term relationships and maintaining a reliable customer base and / or territory.

* Introverts are typically uncomfortable with putting on a false front or false show, which can actually be a strength in sales. It means that introverts are highly effective sales people when they have a strong belief in the product or service that they are selling. A genuine conviction in the product or service they are selling is key to any sales person’s success.

So the answer to the above question is yes, introverts can be effective sales people. It takes all personality types to lead a productive and successful sales career, not just extroverts!

What Can I Expect From Sales Training

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Whether you are a seasoned Professional sales person or a rookie, trying to find your way around this industry, sales training should be an integral part of your career. As with any other profession, to get better, you must constantly be learning new and better ways to succeed.

However, there are different challenges to be considered in the selling profession. As you do some research you may find hundreds of people that claim they can improve your sales performance… For a price, of course. A major problem exists because there are many people that will tell you what you need to do to be a success, but few that are willing to actually teach you how to get better.

Considering this, it is imperative that you are as well prepared as you can be, heading out, to go to work. Every piece of the sales presentation is a step. Not just the selling part! First of all, there are specific techniques to use to befriend the proverbial gatekeeper. By not getting past this intentional blocker, you will not get many sales. So, setting appointments is crucial to your success.

What do you do if you meet with the decision maker? Have you prepared? Do you know what his and your competition is doing in the market? How much time do you have and knowing that in advance, have you prepared your presentation to work within those guidelines? Understand that the buyer sees bad sales people all day, every day. When you walk in, their first thought is already tainted. Your preparation will make you the sale more often than the presentation itself. That seems important, does it not?

Are you proficient in maximizing buying signals or do you just throw up on a prospect until they cave in and give you an order? Selling is supposed to be interactive. You have 2 ears and 1 mouth, which means that you should listen twice as much as you speak! You will find many more ways to sell your potential customer if you just listen. It is necessary to be passively aggressive with most decision makers and if you are not prepared to do that, you are not leaving with an order. The same applies to your regular customers. Stopping in to see them, other than to kill time, do you have a plan to sell them something? If not, you should.

When you do have sales training, put your time into it. You can teach an old dog new tricks! Mostly because the old ways of selling have evolved. Your customer wants you to have an interactive interest in their success. When you are not prepared to do this, they can tell and again, no sale.

Learn various closing techniques. There are thousands and in certain instances, any one will work. Throughout your presentation, you should be using trial closes to see where you stand. Asking questions will help you with this. The sales process is just that, a process. Take it one step at a time and there will be improvement. If there is no plan or preparation, your success ratio will dramatically drop.

Sales Training should be ongoing. There are some great sales books and you should read them. Most are simply written and contain some great tips and tricks, so read them often and over again. Your improvement has more impact on your finances than with most other professions, and those who maximize every selling opportunity are the ones that are always winning the awards that you think you deserve! So, work hard and get better.