sales strategies

To make the sale, manage your prospect’s perception of risk.

Last week we received a query from the owner of a retail shop in Chichester, New Hampshire, that sells wood stoves and fireplace inserts: “With the spiraling cost of heating oil, we’re starting to see an upsurge in the number of people walking into our store. Although my one salesman and I seem to do pretty well, I still get the sense that we are not selling as much product as we should,...

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Breaking news: insulting your target market is not good strategy.

In our enthusiasm to convert prospects to our brand of marketing religion, there is a temptation to cross the dividing line between simply uncovering customer needs, an essential part of the marketing process, to implying that the prospect is being wrong-headed or just plain stupid by not seeing how badly they need what we are selling. If we’re not careful about the way we uncover needs and...

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