To continue with yesterday’s post, I go into the Art of Selling, and more importantly UP-Selling.

When it comes to sales, you’re not selling the product, you’re selling yourself. That’s almost common knowledge but sometimes it slips even the most experienced salesperson. The keys to selling are such:

• Know what you’re selling – Memorize exactly what you’re attempting to sell. Don’t keep a cheat sheet with you because the client will see it, and immediately their trust and confidence in your abilities and the company go down.
• Sell Yourself – As always, keep yourself well groomed, and ready to impress the client. Try a 3-Piece Suit. It gives off the vibe that you’re not there to be a liaison for the company, but you’re there and you mean business. Be kind, courteous, and literally woe the client into you, and your product.
• Location, Location, Location – Set up any meetings to focus the client, on you and your product. Give them samples of what they could enjoy if it’s a product. If it’s meeting space, try holding the meeting in there, let them experience what they’re trying to buy.

Next comes the art of Up-Selling.

Once you’ve wooed your customer into the sale, and you have them committed. Up-Sell. This is truly an art. You have to have the ability to know what the customer could want in addition to what they already have. I work in Hospitality a lot so for me up-selling is going from water to soda’s and wine and coffee. Or from the regular buffet dinner, to individual catering plates. You really want to establish a relationship with the customer that gives them confidence in what you’re selling to them. Always offer them something better, and sell it just as you would the normal product.

Since I began working with my Friend and Co-Worker Craig Shipley at Summit Hospitality. I have learned two things Food, and Up-Sell.

Craig is probably one of the best salesmen so for me to learn from him that to win over the sale you have to win their stomachs. So in that case, whenever you’re working on an important sales lead there are two things you should remember. Feed them and Up-sell. They’re not very hard and once you’ve got them down they help you get the sale and keep it!

So here’s the process.

• Morning Meetings – Always set up the meetings in the morning. Attentiveness and productivity will be higher in the person. As long as it’s not literally the FIRST thing, you’ll be fine. Make sure you don’t schedule too early, if you do you’re going to have a grumpy croud that will not want to deal with meetings or anything at all for that matter.
• Feed The Masses – The likely hood that someone has eaten a big, solid hearty breakfast now-a-days is actually kind of rare. Bring some bagels, cream cheese, and some of that big to go coffeem like they have at Panera. Bring them something to munch on then direct their attention to you, and your sale.

On your next sales lead, try this, the psychology through someones stomach is unmistakeable and will usually help break the Ice, give conversation, and ultimately increase sales.

Photo by bonedad

• Being a college kid, and having a focus on International Business, presentations are a huge part of my college life and my business life. Many times the common presenter overlooks the benefits of simplicity in presentations. I have composed a few presentations for school that grabbed attention and held it throughout the whole time. The key to keeping focus during presentation is to keep the information coming and to make it easy for the audience to pay attention.

• A picture is worth 1000 words
  • Sometimes presenters get a little too picture happy with their presentations. Try your best to use only relevant graphics, whether the graphic is a graph, chart or photograph, make sure it is useful and can assist in describing the overall point of your presentation.
• Hard hitting facts and support
  • Use your facts often and make them support your overall purpose. When you present the fact on your slide, if you put a graphic along with the slide, make sure it is non intrusive. For example:
• Simplicity Sells (To take a TED Title)
  • Simplicity in the presentation will very well be your key to attention. Keep the amount of information on the slide to a minimum, and allow most of the explanation to come from your own words rather than letting people read from the slide. If they wanted to read the slides, you wouldn’t be there.
    Take a look at the TED talks, specifically Stefan Sagmeister, Hans Rosling and Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule for presentations which can be found Here.

Focus carefully on your presentations, Slide Share is basically a YouTube of Presentations and PowerPoints.

Keep in mind also, that with everything else, you’re trying to sell yourself, so think, What point am I trying to get across? How am I getting the audience’s attention? What is my goal with this presentation? How do I present it?

Design Carefully, keep the presentation easy on the eyes, and load it with facts.

You’re on your way to a proper Presentation!