Selling Best Practices

Quora Amalgamation

The following best practices are an amalgamation of answers posted by a variety of authors at Quora for the question:"What is the best advice on selling you ever received?"

Selling Best Practices

1. 50 calls before your 2nd cup of coffee.
2. Let the prospect do 90% of the talking.
3. Ask the prospect what they are trying to accomplish (need/want) then shut up and listen
4. Be 100% accurate about you, your product, and whether or not your prospect needs it
5. Don't sell past "yes"
6. If they don't like you or don't trust you they won't do business with you
7. Stand up when you are selling on the phone
8. See 20 sales prospects each day, belly-to-belly
9. Follow up until you drop
10. Sales is all about trust
11. Know when to walk away
12. Coffee is for closers
13. Write down your most important goals and keep these in front of you everyday
14. Be enthusiastic
15. Speak on the customer's level
16. Sales is 90% lead generation. The rest is customer service and presenting.
17. A confused buyer says "no"
18. Don't venture to sell ice in the Himalayas
19. A good sales person has to be optimistic. Being realistic can often be detrimental. Sales people have to have a mindset that a small grin from a customer is as good as a written deal.
20. Set goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, revisable, and time-based (SMART), and revise them on a regular, even scheduled basis.
21. Rather than setting YES-oriented goals (e.g. close 7 accounts this week), set SMART goals for how many NO's you will receive. If you have some data on your conversion rate and your average commission per sale, you can determine with high accuracy the number of NO's you'll need to shoot for to achieve any given earnings target.
22. The deal should be closed before you make a proposal

Author

The author of these best practices are the multiple contributors at Quora at this link.