7 advanced sales tips to get more revenue in a recession

Sales people who need to beat targets to help their business perform better in the recession are being offered seven free high level sales tips.They’ve been identified by sales and management development expert Mark Jacobs of The Mdina Partnership

And he’s convinced that using them properly can make a significant difference to businesses.

“The recession isn’t a time for doom and gloom. It’s actually a fantastic time for businesses that are fully focused on sales and marketing to take market share from their competitors.“We’ve worked with clients such as Taylor Wimpey and McDonalds, and know that these high level tips work extremely well when used properly."

Mark’s seven tips are:

1.  Use a consultative approach:

Change from Push to Pull; Push - “look what we have and look what we can do for you...”  Pull - “this is broadly what we have, how would something like this help you?”

2.  Offer options:

Once you have learned what they actually want, give them different options. They will feel like you are helping them make an informed purchase, rather than trying to sell them something. It will also reduce the request for better pricing.

3.  Reducing prices should only happen in two parts of the process:

To generate interest from your clients eg: “SALE” and secondly to close the deal where you get something in return. Nothing in between.

4.  Test the situation without committing:

“If I could offer that, would you be in a position to go ahead?”

5.  Sell on benefits not features:

Don’t worry about the features of a product. Instead focus on what benefits it brings for your customers (it will prompt the question “how does that help you?”).

6.  Get your head straight:

Sales people must approach buyers as equals and not feel subservient as this creates a poor image and is a poor negotiation position. Buyers need suppliers and suppliers need buyers. If there was only one supplier in a market, the pricing would go up so a buyer needs you even if they don’t currently buy from you.

7.  Approach new clients to find out how their existing supplier is doing:

When your competition offers very low prices to your biggest clients to change suppliers, the clients often remain with you for all sorts of reasons (they may ask you for a keener price though!).So when you approach new clients, they will generally be interested in your approach only if your product or service is a better fit than the current solution or (more importantly) if the current supplier has done a bad job recently. Now the client is open to other offers.Mdina was set up in 1980 and is famous for ensuring its learning is actually implemented in the business once the training has finished.The company is also behind DART, a web-based management software that allows senior managers to see at a glance how their people are performing. 11,000 people are currently managed using this software.

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