Communications lead to increased sales

Many times we find ourselves beating around the bush, sugar coating communications and not doing what we say we are going to do. If you find yourself participating in one or all of these unproductive activities and want to take your sales to a whole new level follow these three points. First, take yourself and your business seriously. Do this by being aggressive. Not pushy, aggressive. Be proud of yourself, your skills, talents and commitment that you have to serve, sell, and succeed. Value your time and take yourself seriously or no one else will. Qualify your prospects; find out how serious they are about buying from you. You simply don't have time to mess around and neither do they. The faster you qualify them the sooner you close the sale. I challenge you to push yourself to go beyond where you normally get stopped. Do you accept?

Second point; talk straight with your prospects and customers. Take time to think about what you want to communicate before you interact with them. Speak with them in a way that makes a difference as opposed to trying to convince, manipulate or impress them. Trust yourself that you will know what to say as opposed to tripping yourself up and/or rehearsing over and over burning yourself out. If you find yourself rehearsing over and over write down questions to ask and points to make. Over analyzing leads to paralyzing your ability to free flow your speech. As you have heard, we only use a minimal amount of the brainpower that we have. This is mostly because we are constantly over analyzing everything as opposed to trusting ourselves. Often it is the same information being recycled (sound familiar?). Communicate what you need to so that you will be in integrity with yourself and the prospect or client. If you listen to your intuition you will know what to say.

Third and last point, hire a coach. If you are serious about producing results it's a proven fact that you will get more accomplished in less time with a coach. A coach is your partner, your sounding board and your personal cheerleader. He or she will hold you accountable for your actions week to week. They will keep you playing big. Many times your coach will want you to win more than you do. A coach provides structure and they will be direct and let you know when and if you are playing small. They will listen to you for your commitments as opposed to your circumstances, excuses and reasons for not producing results. Remember you are in the inside looking out and have a limited perspective of yourself and your situation. Imagine that! Hiring someone to help you. What a concept! You can't do it alone (at least not without eventually burning yourself out). There are all kinds of coaches out there ready and waiting to coach you. There are sales coaches, success coaches, life, personal, etc. Warning: don't hire a coach unless you are ready to play big and go full out. Interview some coaches and find the one that will take you seriously. But first take yourself seriously and be aggressive. Make that appointment and get that sale! Good luck.

Carlo Cooper of One Smart Team, Inc. is a coach, author and trainer in the areas of Performance, Leadership and Creativity. He happily holds the title of Vice President and Chief Humor Officer. For information on sales, coaching or Guerrilla Marketing (best selling marketing series) coach programs call Carlo at 773.252.0344 or email carlo@onesmartteam.com You can surf their turf at www.onesmartteam.com to find out about One Smart Team's innovative, fun and effective programs along with subscribing to their free Rocket Coach tip of the week.