100 Sales Tips To Help You Sell More!

Here it is, the ultimate list of sales tips on LinkedIn! Bringing together tips from all across the internet from sales experts and some personal ones from my own sales experience, here are 100 sales tips to help you sell more!

I’m sure I’ll miss some out so please do add any extra ones in the comments box at the bottom:

Always ask plenty of questions, you will build a better relationship and may find more opportunities.
Listen more than you speak.
Prospecting never ends, you should always be looking for new customers. Try and set key prospecting times each day, and goals for how many new prospects you want to get. It could be a small as 5 a day, but that soon builds to 25 per week, and 100 a month.
Always deliver more than you promise. Customers want sales people they can trust, and if you don’t deliver on what you say you will, how can they trust you?
Have a confident and powerful introduction. Make a lasting impression.
Enchantment is the purest form of sales. It is all about changing people’s hearts, minds and actions because you provide them a vision or a way to do things better. The difference between enchantment and simple sales is that with enchantment you have the other person’s best interests at heart, too. Guy Kawasaki
Learn from your customer, every time you speak to them learn more about them and remember/take notes that information.
Spend time on activities that will effect results over those that won’t.
Create value in what YOU personally can offer.
Salespeople today ARE the differentiator. That’s why it’s so critical for you to focus on becoming a value to your customers. Jill Konrath
Build your business one customer at a time.
Always ask for recommendations and referrals, it’s a huge opportunity to find and generate more sales.
Always look for better and faster ways to do your job, sell and serve your customers.
The best sales people know that their expertise can become their enemy in selling. At the moment they are tempted to tell the buyer what “he needs to do,” they instead offer a story about a peer of the buyer.
Speak with face, whether it’s over the phone or in person, it will make a huge difference. Smile, make expressions, and use body language.
You should never be busy, you should only ever be productive.
Know your customers customer, the more you know about the businesses you work with the better.
Take a long, hard look at the way you generate leads. It’s really all about the leads. Do your best to always move from less assertive methodologies to those that are more assertive and more effective. That’s where the results are.
Don’t blame others, the economy or the environment for your performance. Take responsibility and accountability for your results and use it to learn.
Start early and be willing to stay late. Have a winning mentality, a get the job done mindset.
Sales is not about selling anymore but building trust and educating. Siva Devaki
Plan, Plan, Plan! The more you plan, the more chance you have to succeed.
Don’t present all your information at once, give the customer reason to keep speaking to you.
Take part in as much sales training as possible.
The modern sales person doubles as an information concierge — providing the right information to the right person at the right time in the right channel. Socially surround your buyers and their “sphere of influence”: analysts, thought leaders, experts, peers and colleagues. Jill Rowley
Up-sell whenever you can, or find ways to add more value to the sale.
Make sure you know who the decision maker actually is. Whilst there is value talking to all levels of the company, ultimately the decision maker will hold the key to the sale.
Make each sales rep responsible for monitoring a certain number of competitors using LinkedIn. Jamie Shanks
The impact on a customer of a bad buying decision is usually greater than the impact on a salesperson of a lost deal. Think about the customer’s business and what business problem they are trying to address.
Try and find more than one decision maker, so if one goes off the radar, you have another to go to.
Research your customers before hand, save time asking questions you could answer yourself.
You should be good at starting things, but even better at finishing them if you want to be successful in sales.
The No. 1 key to success in today’s sales environment is speed.
Don’t forget your ABC’s – Always Be Closing, always keep an eye out for closing opportunities. A sale is not a sale unless it’s sold!
Don’t be scared to talk about prices and costs. Be confident in the value of what you are selling.
When you create a lead generation message (email, letter, blog post, etc.), you lose 82 percent of the audience because of a bad title/headline.
Always manage expectations, don’t promise more than you can deliver.
Have quiet time to escape from everything, stop, and think about new opportunities and ways to do your job better. It could be a 5 minute walk, a coffee break, something that takes you away from work.
Salespeople should only use social to the extent that it helps them sell. Don’t get caught in the trap of wasting time on activities that won’t yield a return.
Never undervalue your product, or what value you add to your product.
Adopt a “buyers” mentality, put yourself in your customers shoes.
Don’t oversell, sales people can get over excited or too keen. Retain the confidence of your customer by always being in control.
Search on www.yougotthenews.com prior to any sales call or meeting to scour thousands of local and national news and business publications. Find an article about the other person and his/her company that you can reference, so you can ensure relevancy and get the other person talking about him/herself. Sam Richter
Surround yourself with great inspirational sales people (if you can’t in person, use social media).
Don’t give up on failed sales attempts, someday they may need your product or they may know someone else who will.
Don’t fear or avoid customers objections, embrace them and see them as buying signals, the customer is only looking for re assurance.
Have you ever played the follow-up game? Before you leave a meeting, make sure you and the prospect have a clear next step. This step must be actionable and measurable. Bryan Kreuzberger
Have a sales driven culture, make sure you are sales orientated, always looking for and thinking about the sale.
Have a solid data management process, whether it’s with a CRM or through your own system, put the time to do it right.
See problems as opportunities. Look at any negative as the opportunity to turn it into a positive or provide a solution.
It’s amazing how many sales reps fly by the seat of their pants when it comes to leaving voicemails. You’ve got to be prepared prior to picking up the phone. Why not try rehearsing your message or listening to it beforehand? Michael Pedone
Embrace and adopt technology that will help advance the sales process. It could be through social selling, CRM’s, mobile or wearable tech, look into tools that could help you sell more.
Sales is not about selling anymore but building trust and educating.
The key to success in today’s sales environment is speed. The salesperson who delivers the most valuable information to their customer or prospect first, wins the sale.
Use dual screens/monitors. The increase in productivity is more than you’d think.
80 percent of prospects who eventually buy are originally marked as bad leads.
Garbage data in, garbage results out. Whether you do inbound or outbound marketing, the quality of your database and lists has a huge impact on your results. Brian Carroll
The trust that a customer has in your company and in you strongly outweighs the techniques you use to sell. Building trust is better than any sales technique. Mike Puglia
Enjoy what you’re doing, whether it’s cold calling, meetings or even asking for the close, make it enjoyable for you and your customer.
Hit the numbers, sales is and always will be a numbers game. The more people you speak too, the more sales you are likely to get.
90% of your opportunities come from 10% of you contact list. Don’t feel bad about rejection, just keep looking for that 10%.
Social opens a secret door that puts you right in front of decision makers. Up to 70 percent of sales can come through social platforms.
Join LinkedIn groups. You are 70 percent more likely to get an appointment with someone on an unexpected sales call if you cite a common LinkedIn group than if you don’t. Steve Richard
When you’re sending emails, you live and die by your subject line. Making it personal or funny can increase your open rate 10 times or more.
The most common problem in sales can be “time”. Make sure you are managing your time effectively, plan effectively and you will find that there is so much more you can get from your day.
Smile and dial! I had to put this tip into the list, but not only does smiling make you sound better on the phone, it’s also a great tip to keep making calls.
Focus on the 2nd sale, Nearly 85% of all sales are produced by word of mouth.
Target the right time to call your clients. Directors won’t be available 10:00 – 16:00, but between 07:00-09:00 and 16:00-18:00 they are more likely to talk to you.
Do what works, look at what is working for you and keep doing it. Don’t fix what isn’t broke.
Try not to think in terms of selling, but think in terms of building business.
Pressure is an art: Creating FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) in your client’s mind can be a good thing because it will lead to serious consideration of your concept.
Listen more than you speak, get an understanding of the customer’s needs and then customize a solution.
Invest in networking, community and relationships and know the difference between a contact and a contract is ‘R’ and that stands for “Relationship.”
Be fanatical and obsessed about selling, about your customers, and about growing your businesses.
Be passionate and exciting, if you want your customer to believe in what you’re selling, give them something to believe in.
If you don’t know the answer, do not guess. Be honest and use it as an opportunity to show your reliability by saying that you will find out and get back to them.
Never accept good enough as good enough, always push yourself harder than others would ever dare.
Invest in their education, development, and personal motivation knowing that these are the tools of a sales professional.
Humor is a great lubricator: Funny stories always break the ice.
You can always be better. Sales is an art, not a science. Which means it’s never perfect and can always improve.
Constantly think, plan, and prepare in order to continue to build your client base and keep your pipeline full.
Know your client. Make sure to research your potential clients, know their challenges and their needs. One size hardly ever fits all, and you look much stronger if you care about the business enough to invest in the research.
If you want to present products and services that are of value to the prospect and that meet their needs, you have to ASK questions. Ask the right questions and the prospect will tell you what they want and how they need to be sold.
Too many sales reps launch into a conversation by discussing the features of their products and services. Features never sold anyone. The only thing that a prospect cares about is what these features will do for them. In other words, speak in terms of benefits and your prospect will be more pre-disposed to listening to your presentation.
Make sure you are completely convinced that your products and services hold more value than the money you charge for them.
You need to be an excellent communicator and be able to focus your communication on getting the deal closed.
Don’t see yourself selling as much as you do serving but also know that a sale must be consummated in order to truly serve your customer.
There’s no magic bullet. Prospecting takes time and if your sales pipeline isn’t always filled with prospects in various stages of being worked, then you are in for a future sales slump.
Follow-up and follow-through are keys to prospecting success. Just like gardening, if you don’t water the seeds, the garden will languish.
Be inspired by failure, know that failure can be the inspiration for innovation.
You should be devoted to being in your absolute best physical and mental condition. If you come into work tired or in any way in poor form, it will affect your ability to sell.
Look to be No.1 in your sector and industry, not for ego but because it will result in more sales!
Give a prospect something for nothing. An article that would be of interest and value, information that you received online etc. and transferred to the prospect with a note “just thought you might be interested in this” indicates that you are thinking of them and wish to be a resource.
Periodically record a random sampling of your cold calls. Listen to the recording and assess your tone and voice. How did you sound? Would you want to speak with a person who sounds like you? What about your words? Were they clear and benefits oriented. Taping gives you the opportunity to self-correct your presentation.
You can sell only if you yourself are convinced: If you are not sold on the product or service, it will be an uphill battle to sell someone on else.
Have a personal mission statement. Know what you stand for and give your customers a clear view of who you are. Be someone they can trust.
Spend 5 minutes a day prioritizing. Without prioritization, it’s difficult to be efficient and productive.
Keep a thick skin about rejection, it is inevitable but through those rejections may be opportunities.
Make others feel important. The greatest craving of most people today is recognition. Unfortunately, so many people are so tightly focused on their own status and problems they are ignorant to the needs of others.
Sell! As a sales professional you are only as good as the amount you can sell, it’s that simple. Sales people aren’t employed for the amount of excuses they can make, but how much they can successfully sell.