I wanted to share these three sales tips from an answer I posted on LinkedIn:
1. Don’t just “sell a product or service” but become a trusted advisor that provides solutions and can be relied on to help when needed.
2. Listen 80% of the time to the prospect or customer to determine their stated needs and the underlying needs, and talk 20% of the time to ask questions and clarify the answers.
3. Once someone has made a decision to buy, stop selling! I see this too often: when a customer decides to make the purchase, but for a different reason than the one the sales person is trying to convey, they can be talked out of buying. As a sales person, if someone decides to buy, no matter what the reason, stop selling and close the deal. The customer is making the best decision for themselves and knows more about their situation and needs than you do.
In your opinion, what is the key to Live Networking?
The internet made networking that much easier. But there is so much you can do online. How can you translate all your networking efforts done online offline?
Do you guys organize events? Meet for lunch or coffee?
What do you do once you meet someone online?
I have met people from LinkedIn for coffee if there has been a mutual interest. Another great online-offline hybrid networking tool to meet people is Meetup.com. I am the organizer for a few Meetup groups, mostly around entrepreneurship and small business. I recommend using both LinkedIn and Meetup website communities to get the most synergy from online networking and be able to meet the most number of people offline. Remember the key to networking is being able to help others, and both of these websites allow you to do this.
Please feel free to contact me with any additional questions or if I can help in any way.
This is a short inspiring, profound video of Randy Pausch. I won’t say much, other than there are some great coaching and life philosophies unveiled, so you get out of it what’s natural for you.
Thank you, Randy, for your contributions and wisdom.
Here is a suggestion from a member of MyLinkedinPowerForum, which is dedicated to helping LinkedIn users. I am a huge fan of LinkedIn for professional networking, and I think this is a terrific idea!
I want to share an idea that has been very useful for my “personal branding”. I have an address http://linkedin.victorperl.com that forwards directly to my www.linkedin.com/in/victorperl page. It looks great in business cards and it costs less than $10 a year!This is how I did it. Go to godaddy and buy a .com address for your name for $9 a year (it can be .net, .org; .info costs only $3). Then make a subdomain that forwards to your linkedin profile address.
I got home Monday night from the September 2007 Rosarito-Ensenada 50-mile bike ride. It was a great adventure and though it wasn’t as physically or mentally grueling as it was the first time I did the ride (two years ago), it was still very satisfying.
Here were the outcomes of my first ride
Time to complete course, including rest stops: 5 hours, 45 minutes
How I felt physically after the ride: VERY tired, burnt to a crisp, sore all over especially my legs — they felt like rubber, and I was nauseous.
So based on that, my goals for this ride were
Time to complete course: 4 hours, 30 minutes. Done. Completed in 4 hrs, 20 min.
To feel MUCH better at the end of the ride. Done. Very little soreness, barely a tan, much less a sun burn (used SPF 30 as opposed to last time when I only put on sun screen after it was too late), still had lots of energy and no sickness whatsoever.
So when is the next ride? Not sure yet… but I’ll let you know!
