Elinor Stutz - SmoothSale.net - Sales Training and Motivational Speaking

Expert Delivery Delivers Added Opportunity

Should you desire career advancement and a promotion at work, be certain your current delivery on requests is impeccable.  The same is true for entrepreneurship: should you desire to receive bigger sales or improved opportunities for greater visibility, the tinier requests need to be fulfilled with an equal level of attention.

Another story of poor customer service came my way.  in fact, the company is operating on a borderline fraudulent route.  The service was offered via email as a discount.  "George" purchased three individual hours of service.  Although he parted with good money here is what he received in exchange:

- No response until two weeks later

- Reply stating that purchases were so numerous, George won't be accommodated for six weeks

- Reply stating that instead of scheduling three separate dates for service as advertised, George will have to take all three hours at once.

Reviewing the printed copy, George pointed out that the company is in violation of what they posted.

It's very possible that if enough people become angry, a class action suit will be likely which would put the company out of business.  George will most likely relent, although he is certainly telling his friends what happened.  Over time, having bad word of mouth spread will also put a company out of business.

Whichever track you are on in life, employee or busines owner, strive to do your best each and every day. By all means, live up to your word.  When you do, worry diminishes and you find yourself on the wave of the Smooth Sale!

Read Additional Sales Techniques:

International Best-Seller Highly Rated on Amaon's Kindle; available in paperback too:

Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results 

and

Best-Seller:
HIRED! How to Use Sales Techniques to Sell Yourself On Interviews.

Research Produces Targeted Conversation and Sales

Note:  Today's article is provided by Sander Daniels Co-Founder of Thumbtack, appropriate for business and career.
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Today Thumbtack.com, in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation, has released new data showing that Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma and Utah all earned A+'s for their friendliness towards small businesses.  In contrast, small business owners gave California, Hawaii, Vermont, and Rhode Island an ‘F’, while New York narrowly avoided this lowest category with a 'D' grade.  Top performing cities included Oklahoma City, Dallas-Ft. Worth and San Antonio.  

There are a lot of “business climate rankings”, but there aren’t any that draw upon considerable data from small business owners themselves. The Thumbtack.com Small Business Survey is the only survey to draw data from an extensive, nationwide universe of job creators and entrepreneurs themselves in order to investigate the best places in the country to do business.

“6,000 small business owners have told an unusually nuanced story about what they value in their state or city government,” said Sander Daniels, co-founder of Thumbtack.com. “Although Texas and Idaho clearly come out on top as the nation's friendliest states towards small business, entrepreneurs value a lot more than just low tax rates. Easy-to-understand licensing regulations and well-publicized training programs are often overlooked as critical tools necessary to support small business.”

Some of the survey's key findings include:

·         Texas had three of the top five cities (Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin), while California was home to the bottom three (Los Angeles, San Diego andSacramento).

·         Small businesses said licensing requirements were nearly twice as important as tax rates in determining overall business-friendliness.

·         Among small business owners nationally, women were 9% more likely than men to feel supported by their state governments.

·         An important predictor of small business friendliness was whether small business owners are aware of the state or local government offering training programs for small businesses.

·         Nationwide, small businesses owned by politically conservative entrepreneurs were 17% healthier than small businesses owned by politically liberal entrepreneurs.

·         Idaho, Nevada and Delaware had the most small business-friendly tax codes; California and New Mexico had the least-friendly tax codes.

·         Nebraska small business owners were the most optimistic about their business improving during 2012, while Iowans were the least optimistic.

·         The South was the most small business-friendly region of the country, while New England was rated the least small business-friendly.

The full results can be seen here and include full sets of rankings, dozens of easily searchable quotes from small businesses nationwide, regional comparisons within states, and Census data comparing states' and cities' key demographics against those of other states and cities.

Thumbtack.com and Kauffman ranked states and cities against one another along 21 metrics.  The full methodology paper can be found here.

What is Thumbtack.com?

Thumbtack.com is a place where you can hire help locally. Need a DJ, carpenter, boot camp instructor, or hot dog truck caterer?  Tell us what you need, and we’ll bring you 3-5 bids on that job to your email inbox within 24 hours. More than 275,000 small businesses and freelancers have listed their services on Thumbtack nationwide.

This is information we can all use leading to a Smooth Sale!

Read Additional Sales Techniques:

International Best-Seller in Paperback and Highly Rated on Amaon's Kindle:

Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results 

and

Best-Seller:
HIRED! How to Use Sales Techniques to Sell Yourself On Interviews.

Qualifying Drives Results

If you are human, most likely you have been a few minutes late to make a phone appointment, asked someone to reschedule or were the recipient of the same.  Life happens.  When we err, it's best to offer an immediate apology or when the other party is in the wrong, the more flexibile we can be with accommodating them, the more likely we are to secure the sale in the end.

Through the years, people have asked me to reschedule or just move a meeting an hour back.  My error was asking someone else to allow me to arrive an hour early who is apparently completely inflexible.  Understand, I was going to drive two hours each way for an hour meeting.  My concern was commute traffic on the way back, but it would have been a nice opportunity to catch up and brainstorm ideas.  Not only was my request not appreciated, but there was absolutely no response. As a salesperson, this helped to qualify the relationship and recognize it obviously is not a good match.

Today I met two women at a conference during lunch.  The three of us were a perfect match business wise for one another.  In fact one has the same vision I have for a project and we will confer next week.  Normally I never discuss politics but recognized from their conversation my observation would be appreciated.  Sure enough they both laughed.  I know we will be working together in the near future.

Your motto should be whether meeting on interviews or with potential clients that qualifying is the most important aspect of the meeting.  Instead of getting depressed or annoyed when it does not go well, be happy you learned it wasn't a good fit upfront and that you saved much wasted time.  And when the good match does arrive, be appreciative of the next person with whom you are a match.  

Qualifying is the most important sales technique you can use to develop business and accelerate your career.  It leads you to a very Smooth Sale!

Read Additional Sales Techniques:

International Best-Seller in Paperback and Highly Rated on Amaon's Kindle:

Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results 

and

Best-Seller:
HIRED! How to Use Sales Techniques to Sell Yourself On Interviews.

How Accepting Are You of Feedback?

It isn't easy to hear words that don't proclaim your last effort as brilliant or even good for that matter. When it comes to your person or your entrepreneurship, the feedback is more personal than ever and more difficult to take.   Most people become disillusioned and quit.  But that attitude certainly does not boost anyone's career or entrepreneurship.  

The better approach is to consider the feedback from all angles.  Most importantly scour the information for any resemblance to truth.  If you find an iota of truth in the disheartening words, are you able to work with it?  Can you take what was given to you and run with it to improve the situation?  While the facts may hurt, they can also help us succeed in the end.

Those in creative endeavors such as writers and artists have an even harder time with criticism or feedback.  It becomes doubly personal.  I was told that most authors who are rejected by publishing houses throw their manuscripts away.  Surely there is some good material between page one and the last page.  

When you are able to let the criticism take hold by giving yourself time to contemplate what was said, chances are a far better outcome will be yours.  It boils down to either giving up or figuring out how badly you want to succeed.  And if your desire is strong enough, then doing everything in your power to make things right usually produces the right results.  

Sometimes the tough feedback is our best friend producing the best of all worlds.  And when this occurs, it becomes a very Smooth Sale!

Read Additional Sales Techniques:

International Best-Seller in Paperback and Highly Rated on Amaon's Kindle:

Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results 

and

Best-Seller:
HIRED! How to Use Sales Techniques to Sell Yourself On Interviews.

Working the Room

We were at a family gathering including friends of relatives, many of whom I did not know.  A younger member of the family said to me, "Show us how you work the room."  A smile overcame my face as I happily went about meeting all of the people with whom I was not already acquainted.  

A young man in his 20's recognized my name having previously heard I was the author of a sales book.  He had just entered the sales arena and is anxious to learn as much as he can.  The high point for me came when he whipped out his iPhone to purchase and download the Kindle version of Nice Girls DO Get the Sale.  It's a great feeling to know you can help others coming up behind you and hopefully help them through the learning curve more quickly than you climbed it yourself.

By the end of the evening, quality conversations were had with many, and an opportunity was found to have spoken with everyone in the room.  After the party, another young man, an entrepreneur in the tech field, asked a relative for my email.  He promptly sent a request for an appointment to talk about business.  

The moral of this story is, wherever you go, show interest in everyone before you ever talk about yourself.  Get an idea of where the other person's interests lie.  You are then easily able to share information about you that will motivate further conversation. It's always possible to find your next job or client this way.  You just never know who might be in the room.

When you work the room well, you find the Smooth Sale!

Read Additional Sales Techniques:

In Paperback and Highly Rated on Amaon's Kindle:

Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results 

and

Best-Seller:
HIRED! How to Use Sales Techniques to Sell Yourself On Interviews.

Moving From Goal Setting to Success

This week I taught a class on how to build a public platform while writing a non-fiction book in order to sell more copies.  Upon asking students if they are goal setters, glazed looks overcame their faces.  

I then spoke of "Mary" who was also an aspiring author but took ten years to write her book only to find much of the information out of date.  One stutdent then claimed he, too, took ten years to complete his book and only sold a couple hundred copies.

The discussion signified the importance of setting goals of how many pages to write per day or hours to devote to writing and having a backup plan over the weekend to cover a decreased number of pages written or time devoted.  Backup plans are equally important to the original to cover all bases and the possibility of "just in case".  

Whether you are hunting for you next job or seeking to build business, seriously consider your goals and the pieces required to help you achieve them.  For those goals that are the most appealing such as higher earnings, what are the associated steps you might put into place to make your new place of employment or new clients a greater probability?  

The more energy you devote to serious consideration of your end result and how you plan to get there, the greater the likelihood of future success.  It will put you on to the wave of the Smooth Sale!

Additional Sales Strategies, Read:

In Paperback and Highly Rated on Amaon's Kindle:

Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results 

and

Profitable Prior to Going Into Print:
HIRED! How to Use Sales Techniques to Sell Yourself On Interviews.