On a recent trip to Nelson in New Zealand I decided I wanted to buy a present for my grand daughter. It was a Saturday and from all accounts the busiest shopping day of the week.

The day was sunny and lots of people were out and about in town. I had lunch at the local Turkish restaurant where the Coffee is excellent and the mezza even better.

Opposite I spied the colorful sign of a children’s store by the name of Crackerjacks. It was 2.30pm and I quickly finished my coffee and headed over to Crackerjacks with the purpose of finding a suitable present for the adorable Poppy.

Well, what a surprise, the door was ajar but when I entered a woman looked at me and shouted “We are closed.”

“What” I replied, in this economy how on earth can you be closed at 2.30pm on the busiest day of the week!

All I got was a smile and “Sorry”.

Now looking back at this I am still in shock, and disappointed I was turned away from what was going to become a certain sale. Maybe a toy store only makes simple sales but it is also possible they carry high end costly toys that require a little more thought before a prospective buyer makes a purchase.

Regardless it was obvious that Crackerjacks was prepared to pass up business of any kind and without doubt in a current economy where most retailers are moaning and bleating.

If you own a retail business I strongly urge you to look at your trading hours, make certain you are open as advertised and make sure you have capable staff employed to secure any type of sale, whether a major sale or a simple sale.

Take a look at when the public actually do their shopping and open accordingly.

If you are making major sales, IE: A sale that normally requires more than one interview with a prospect, make certain your staff are well skilled in the process.

If you are in business and making any kind of sales how serious are you?

When you first visit a customer or prospect you are probably bursting with enthusiasm and just cannot wait to start talking about your product.
What can go wrong?

Well it is very simple really, if you start talking about your product (like most sales people do) it is quite possible your client may just say they are not interested.

This means you may walk away not only without an order but also without understanding a thing about the persons business.

This issue is one of the biggest problems many sales people have. It is absolutely vital you find out who your customer is? Where they come from? Where are they are going?
Who is the decision maker? Are you speaking with the right person? How many branches do they have? How many people do they employ? What do those people do?
What motivates them?

All of these questions are ONLY questions about the customer’s situation. They are not questions about any other issues. These questions must be asked for two reasons.
To give you a clear and concise understanding about your prospects business and how it works.
To give you a solid base and platform to ask questions that may possibly uncover potential problems, which in turn will give you a further platform to ask more questions to find out what those problems mean and what solutions may be available for solving them.

Without the correct answers you may miss the opportunity for any business at all, and even if you do by some sheer chance secure some business there may be other orders left sitting on the table.
Get it right from the start when making major sales.
If you are a professional salesperson ask your regional sales manager if he or she understands the difference between making simple sales and making major sales.

<The threat of recession is an excellent excuse for retailers to blame someone else for their poor performance. Things are certainly getting tougher out there, but retailers whose sales are falling faster than average are losing market share. Simple as that.

Monthly retail sales are are widly volitile, but look at it this way-in the second quarter, UK sales were still 2.2 per cent higher than the previous year.

Marks and Spencer became the poster child for the struggling retailers with lasts months profit warning and a 5.3 per cent drop in UK same store sales for the quarter.

Sir Stuart Rose CEO of Marks and Spencer shrugged off the declines as a symptom of the fact that Marks and Spencer is a “smoke detector” for the rest of the sector.>

Well my take on all this is “I wonder what these people are smoking”?

I am certain the majority of CEO, Regional Sales Manager, Sales Managers etc world wide just do not understand there is a difference between making simple sales and making major sales.

If these people bothered to invest a few dollars in the fantastic books written by Neil Rackham they would soon understand that the lowest price is not the issue here. It simply is correct Sales Training and knowing the serious differences between making a simple sale and making major sales.

Companies around the world devote huge resources and spend vast sums of money trying to recruit and develop leaders at all levels. There is lots of talk about exciting concepts such as “transformational leadership” “emotional intelligence” and the “servant leader”.

Some even advise us that in today’s organization we are all leaders now. So there is great excitement and energy around the whole leadership field. Regional Managers and Sales Managers are supposed to be leaders. We talk of leaders as people who inspire, motivate and stretch mindsets to achieve impossible goals.

They create compelling visions and vibrant places to work. But set against the current socio-economic, business environment I ask whether our current leaders are actually making the grade? I am constantly traveling the world and in the field of “making major sales” I feel things are the same in every country. Most Regional Managers and Sales Managers along with most company leaders are just not aware there is a difference between making a simple sale and making major sales.

What does leadership mean in today’s world?

How well served are we by today’s corporate and political
leaders?

Does the rhetoric of leadership match the current reality?

If so do you understand how to motivate and control a sales force? Do you know how to train your sales force? How much sales training experience have you had? these are all questions requiring a real honest answer not only by your company or prospective employer but also by yourself.

I am constantly being asked questions like “how do I get my salespeople to make more calls?” How do I show my salespeople how to “overcome objections?”.

Well the fact of the matter is many companies employ “Regional Sales Managers” who usually have a great understanding of the company products or services, but very little knowledge of “how to make sales”.

There seems to be very few organizations or businesses who really understand the difference between making simple sales and making major sales.

Very few salespeople, sales managers or Regional Sales Managers understand that overcoming objections is not an issue if the correct questions are put to a prospect or customer at the beginning. Just like my previous post and the cartoon. Most salespeople show their product or solution far to early in the sales cycle and just talk too much.

In the near future I hope to publish some material specifically aimed at the Regional Sales Manager, or Sales Manager of companies involved in making major sales.

If you are in one of these positions within a company or are in line for promotion I suggest you subscribe to my blog now by just filling in your name and email in the box provided. You not only will receive my free ebook but you will be on the list to receive free updates and worthwhile sales tips to make certain you can become the worlds best Regional Sales Manager or Sales Manager with the very best sales force at the envy of any great sales organization involved in making major sales.

This has to be the single biggest problem any sales person has. Stop Talking! Most of the sales training I have seen lately seems to focus on “overcoming objections”, “how to handle difficult customers” and “How to close sales”.

The reality is most sales people yap, and they yap too much. Just think for one moment, if you ask the right questions you will not get objections. Now wouldn’t that be good?

What “No Objections”? If you think that is impossible in sales well think again. Most sales are lost simple because the salesperson is too tied up with their product or service and just do not think about what their customer needs and requirements are. The cartoon above says it all.

One of the most common phrases uttered by sales people is: “I will call you back” some even say “I will call you back in one hour” or “I will call you back later today”. If sales people say this why don’t they do it?

There seems to be a real lack of purpose in these statements. It is extremely common among real estate sales people and even more common with Bank employees.

For some obscure reason service industry such as banks, opticians, builders, plumbers, electricians etc do not understand they are actually in the sales business. They have products and or services to offer yet make these weak statements to prospective and existing customers all the time.

A professional sales person always will call back when they say they will. Professional sales people know very well there are NO excuses to break a commitment with any customer. If a problem arises a professional sales person will always find a way to handle the situation rather than let the customer down.

We all know how frustrating it is when people do not call back and some of us even stay in waiting for that promised call. If you are involved in “making major sales” make certain you call the customer back when you say you will otherwise you fall into the realms of mediocrity.

However well-positioned, intelligent, or accomplished we are, to succeed in this twenty-first century, we all need somebody’s buy-in.

The President of the United States appears before Congress to generate support for a war on terrorism. A CEO goes to Wall Street to rebuild confidence in his company. You present your proposal to the board. A division VP launches a new product. A regional sales director seeks to motivate her team. You have dinner with a major client, a reporter, or speak to an industry group.

Other people’s buy-in—their understanding, commitment, and action in support of our goals—has always been enormously important. But in today’s world, it has become the most valuable asset of all. And the ability to influence people’s thoughts and feelings, to generate their buy-in, has emerged as the paramount leadership skill.

Why? In the twenty-first-century workplace and marketplace, the dynamics of power, authority, and credibility have radically changed. No matter who you are or where you work, people no longer need to follow your lead, buy what you sell, or accept what you say. What’s more, they’re increasingly unlikely to do so, with each passing day.

The workplace has become a “free agent nation,” its citizens an all-volunteer force. Command-and-control management and unquestioned loyalty are ideas whose time has come and gone. In the new organizational world, “there’s nothing you can force people to do,” says Dow Chemical chairman Bill Stavropoulos. “Now, people have to believe, and they have to believe in you.”

Today’s marketplace is a free-for-all, moving in Internet time. Companies, competitors, and offerings glom together in an undifferentiated blur. Investors, customers, and clients click, scan, blink, and decide. Never have they had more options, or fewer clear incentives, to send their business your way.

In the twenty-first century, to refresh Abraham Lincoln’s observation at the beginning of this Introduction, buy-in is everything. With it, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Not ideas, organizations, products, or services. Not you or me.