How To Increase Profit Whilst Decreasing Expenditure.

“If you know your history, then you will know where you are coming from”: Bob Marley

Sounds like an oxymoron right? Everyone in business knows you need to spend cash and time to make cash, in the form of buying exposure, the odd trade shows here and there, branding budget, marketing outlay, networking events, hours busting your balls trying to think of what to blog about next, paying for sales people and their expenses to bring in the all-important sales.

What if there was an easier way to increase sales and income to your business without increasing your time and capital budget?

We need to have a quick delve back into the history of sales to see where we can make the changes we need.

First of all you need to do away with 'old school sales tricks' and outdated thinking!

The old school business plan that so many follow which is handed down from manager to manager like father to son in a bid to keep the old custums alive, is proving to be outdated and not effective any more.

Decent Sales people were very well paid in the 1980’s-1990’s there was this new high powered sales pitch they swept across Europe from America in the early 1980’s promising a way for people of any education and professional background to get rich the American way by learning the tricks of the trade, the skills of the smart salesman.

Dubious companies were hastily set up and recently made redundant people were learning N.L.P. (Neuro-Linguistic Programing) tricks. They were taught how to cold call like a boss and make many appointments, this was the ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ era and people were a lot less hard-nosed on the phone at that time!

Then whilst in front of punters, they used persuasive subconscious skills like anchoring and mirroring to develop rapport, to feign a kind of trust to use on their victims (customers).

During a spell selling double glazing windows to the public in the early 19990’s I learned about ‘Buyer’s remorse,’ a sense of annoyance and sorrow that manifests itself usually within a few hours after the deal by the recently ‘sold to’ client who feels less enamored now you have gone, and how to be ready for it.

Seems the sales techniques were far more advanced than the products we had offered ever were, we were masters at selling the benefits and getting people excited thus making a very mundane product or service feel very special indeed.

We were paid very well for it at that time!

I got swept up in this movement and as a gullible 19 year old I was selling chrome painted Vacuum cleaners door to door to consumers for 10 times their shop value. I became the European salesman, how?

Because I never questioned anything, I made many sales and got massive commissions by just following the plan. My Sales manager wound me up like a clockwork robot and I did what I was told.

Enlightenment:

Sadly when I started asking questions, I lost the ‘magic,’ like a Garden of Eden moment, I became enlightened when an engineer inadvertently burst my wealthy bubble telling me what they actually cost to manufacture. From that day on I struggled to sell.

It took over twenty years of maturity for me to realise the enormity of the experiences of being the ‘smarmy, answer for everything’ salesman of the age, and later I used a very watered down, more professional and wholesome version of the same skills I had learned to get me a really good corporate B2B sales job in the late 1990’s to the mid 2000’s when I then went on my own.

Back to the here and now:

Since the dawn of the internet things have changed dramatically, I doubt I would have sold much of anything in the 1980’s if people had the internet and could have Google the cost of the things I was selling.

Internet marketing people are now the new Gods, and can find owners of businesses sales online without the suited and booted rapport building robot salesman who stays till dawn and brow beats you out of ever excuse to sign there and then.

The old school sales has been booted out into the ABC ‘Always be Closing’ Museum of outdated trades. Well in most places. There are some who still believe the grey/blue suit, a little yellow in the tie, something significant as the brand on the person, always stand in foyers, walk towards the client, firm handshake, certain look in the eye and easy smiles still works today.

“You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, so that when they turn their backs on you”: Pink Floyd.

Sales today is about helping people make their own epiphany and it to be their idea, not to to be 'convinced' or be beaten at a game of 'sales chess' like it was back in the day.

Buyers have evolved and so must sales. Today most of sales is done through branding, by those who have been at it long enough and have the passion and conviction to stay the course, now people have started to know your name and are now ready to buy because they trust you, they cant really say why they trust you, but you most certainty know why, it is every single 'karmic' branding dollar you spent, it's every blog and press release you wrote over the years without once asking for KPI's or when you will see the ROI.

The modern way to find Sales

Imagine as a business owner you had no marketing team or sales team to worry about, no salaries, no egos, no recruitment woes, no absenteeism, employees tax and day care to stress over, and you could just find a website that published a list of qualified sales leads from people have asked to see someone who sells what you sell in your area, they are the decision maker, and they have the cash and they want to buy now! So all you have to do is contact them, make an appointment and sell!

How much would something like this increase you profits and decrease your costs?

 History tells us 80% of all warm leads are sold!

This is now a reality, there is a website that spent 9 years developing a decent user added membership from business owners who registered their business on their sites for free branding and marketing and in return the members tell the site the things they are looking to buy, and the site owners publish this holy grail of warm business leads for sales managers and business owners to grab as quickly as they can and make those all-important appointments.

Want to see the list of over 50 buyers looking now?

Here you go!

Don’t say; I don’t give you anything!!