Sell Your Way to Success: A Guide Book for Selling in a Changing World [Paperback]

A Guildbook for Selling in a Changing World

Technology has enabled us to flood the market with so much information that most sales and marketing material goes straight in the bin. These selling methods in boom periods work when there was pleanty of spare cash around. Buyers and consumers today have a much greater understanding of products and services and there has been a tidal wave of consumer protection legislation. The high pressure and unethical sales practices of the past are no longer acceptable. Today we need to approach business from a fresh perspective. That is what this book is all about.

It is time to look at the world in which we work and change our selling and marketing practices to reflect the changing requirements of the buyers. We need to 'Stop Selling and Help People to Buy'.

Part 1 - Selling in the 21st Century

The first part of the book looks at the importance of selling in a world of information overload and introduces the KASH approach, KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE, SKILL, HABITS, the four ingredients for success in any walk of life. This overview of selling is designed as an introduction for people new to selling and establishes the basic principles of ethical selling. It is also a reminder of the basics for more experienced salespeople, emphasising the important changes that need to be made to cope with the post-boom marketplace. Success in selling today depends upon creating good, long tern relationships with buyers and in developing a systematic and focused approach to work.

Part 2 - Understanding Buyer Behaviour

'Selling is Solving People Problems at a Profit' This is my definition of selling and it emphasises the importance of creating good long term relationships with buyers. This section explores a simple model for understanding buyer behaviour. Empathy is the ability of salespeople put themselves into their prospects' shoes. New sales opportunities are more easily recognised when we look at the world from our clients' and prospects' points of view. Whether we sell sweets in a corner store or major construction projects around the globe. this model will help all salespeople to satisfy their customers' needs more successfully.

Part 3 - The Sales Process

In this section, the sales process is broken into five self contained steps building to a complete, systematic approach to selling, Finding the Market, Approaching the Market, Establishing the Relationship, Completing the Sale and Servicing the Client. This approach will promote the development of sound working habits and enable every salesperson to be able to identify what they need to do if they find that things are not working. Each has its own set of skills and objectives and the systematic approach enables salespeople to respond quickly and easily to change and maintain their success.

This book is a manual for coping with change in sales and marketing. It is a guidebook for an exciting journey into success. Join me on that journey.

Every day buyers and consumers are bombarded with information from every direction - but most is ignored or thrown straight into the bin. The information revolution we are experiencing means that the new sophisticated buyers are often more informed that the salespeople. The result is that the sales techniques of the 20th century are unlikely to succeed in the new information overloaded millennium.

To survive and succeed in this new world of rapid change we need a fresh approach to selling and marketing to meet the buyer's new expectations

Sell Your Way to Success provides that fresh approach. Every chapter is packed with practical ideas and advice to help you take advantage of the changing marketplace and stay ahead of your competitors.

You will learn how to

* Develop the habit of persistent success with the magical KASH approach
* Form better relationships with prospects and customers
* Become more efficient at prospecting.
* Adapt more quickly to using technology.
* Make more appointments and banish rejection forever
* Create instant rapport with all your prospects and customers
* Generate better customer satisfaction and more recommendations.
* Stop 'selling' and help people to buy
This book is a manual for coping with change in sales and marketing. It is a guidebook for an exciting journey into success.

Richard Arundel has been involved in sales and marketing since the early 70s with experience across the whole spectrum of sales and marketing including direct selling, retailing, sales management, marketing management, and sales training. He has sold through multi level marketing and direct sales; through retailers and value added resellers; through direct response and tele selling. He has sold face to face, through agents, through seminars and over the Internet. The price ticket of his products and services has varied from a few pounds to millions. Today he is a Keynote Speaker, Workshop Leader, Conference Facilitator, Author and an acknowledged expert in the application of technology in Sales and Marketing. His Hi-Tech Hi-Touch approach to communications demonstrates that success today requires a balance of sales technology and sales psychology.

A WELCOME CHANGE

"And you'd better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone, for the times, they are a changing." Those words of warning from '60s poet, philosopher and folk singer Bob Dylan should have been written over the front doors of every business in the UK at the beginning of the '90s. And now, those words need to become the motto for every salesperson in the land and be incorporated into every company mission statement.

The most important lesson from recession is that we are responsible for our own success. There will always be tough times; there will always be slumps. It may be your sales that are affected, it may be your company, your industry, the entire country or even the world. Ultimately. you will have to get your self out of it, or go out of business.
One of the most serious results of a boom is that the future becomes too predictable. Prices will always rise, incomes will always go up, house prices will always increase, business and the economy will always grow. Rates may have varied from time to time, but the direction was always the same. The recessions remind us that the future is not predictable. Where there is change, it will be random and unexpected. This stimulates creativity and vibrancy in our lives.

Change seems to evoke all manner of fears. We often stubbornly resist change even when we can clearly see that what we are doing is not working. We resist mainly through fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of loss, fear of ridicule, fear of failure, fear even of success. There is a simple proverb that we use to support this fear - 'Better the devil you know than the devil you don't'.

If you want to be successful in selling today, you must be prepared to embrace change. Take responsibility for your own future and find new ways to do things. You need to step out from the crowd which is waiting for someone else to sort out its problems and be someone who makes things happen yourself

Habits Enable us to Survive

We are creatures of habit. Ninety nine per cent of everything we do, we do from habit. I know that sounds a lot, but remember when you first learned to drive? Trying to cope with steering, braking, looking ahead, looking behind, the panic at the roundabout, the terror of the one way system. Today, you drive 100 miles and don't remember any of it. All from habit; on automatic pilot. Unless something changes. Then, you are suddenly alert and prepared to try something different in order to survive. If you encounter major road works and you do not slow down, you will probably have a serious accident.

The same applies to running a business. We become skilled in doing things and after a while, they become second nature. We are not consciously aware of what we are doing until things change. Then, in order to continue to be successful, we must adapt what we do to respond to the changing conditions.

Change Provides Opportunities to Grow

Being a philosopher I have often asked myself, "Why are we here?". The answer, I believe, is in two parts.
First, we are here to survive, both as individuals and as a species. That is the natural animal instinct in us, and it is here that habits are essential. Can you imagine trying to drive long distances, if the rules for survival on the roads were not instinctive habits?

Second, I believe that we are here to grow, to evolve; and the key to this is change. When things change we have to think creatively, we have to step outside of our comfort zones and try something new. As we learn, we grow. Think of the significant learning experiences in your life. I doubt if these included college courses or seminars or even sales training sessions. Do you remember your first cold calling session, or your first sales presentation, or the first time you spoke in front of a group of people? Those were real learning experiences, weren't they?

Learning and growth are the result of change, and as life is a learning process, it follows that the only constant in life is change. Some changes are subtle, some are dramatic. The dramatic changes are usually when the subtle changes have consistently met with resistance or have been ignored.

Consider natural change. Beneath the Earth's surface are Tectonic Plates, These plates are constantly moving, but the Earth's hardened crust resists the movement, allowing pressure to build up. The pressure builds and builds and then suddenly, unable to resist any more, it gives. The result we call an earthquake.

The same happens in our lives. As we resist the changes and continue with our comfortable habits, the pressure to change builds and builds until we also experience quake-like results - mountainous debts, collapse of our business or the break up of our family. The same applies to breakthroughs in technology, and political and environmental crises. Sometimes, to quote Shakespeare, "they come not as single spies, but in battalions".

Faced with change of this magnitude you need to approach business from a fresh perspective. That is what this book is all about. It is time to look at the world in which you work and see what changes you need to make in your selling and marketing practice. What new habits do you need to adopt to enable you to survive and prosper into the 21st century?

The world's greatest success stories hide some of the worlds greatest failures. By risking failure, but by being prepared to keep on 'going for success' you can lift yourself out of the turmoil of recession and chaos. This book is a manual for coping with change in sales and marketing. It is a guidebook for an exciting journey into success. Join me on that journey.