If you’re considering a career in sales, there are many reasons to take that first step and apply for a sales position. If you hone your skills and become an expert in the craft it can be a very lucrative job. It requires hard work, dedication, perseverance, creativity and people skills. These may all seem like daunting criteria, but in order to succeed at other jobs you are required to have the same work ethic. If you have a good work ethic as described in the previous requirements, sales may be for you. Here are some great reasons to become a sales rep.

Job Security

Money makes the world go round, and is the reason most people get a job. Manufacturers everywhere have products to sell they need sales people to sell their product. Insurance, cable, satellite TV, Internet, phone plans, and company services are all things you cannot physically go to the store and buy, but still need to be sold. This is where you as a sales rep would come in, and the company that needs their product sold will pay you big money to sell their products for them.

Pay

There are a few different ways a sales rep gets paid and they all depend on how much you sell. Commissions are a percentage of the profit from the sale. Some companies will pay you for your time and give you a percent of the profits from everything you sell. You are in control of your paycheck, but it never falls below a certain rate due to the hourly pay. Did you know that some sales reps make double digit incomes every month? Some sales positions are commission only, but they offer higher percentage commissions in most cases. Another form of pay is a base price per item sold. For example a company who sells cars may pay you 100 dollars for every compact car, $150 for every sedan, $250 for every truck and $300 for every SUV you sell. This is a very lucrative business and there is a lot of money to be made in sales. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain in selling. You are in control of your finances. The sky is the limit. If you find yourself needing more money, you don’t have to go beg your boss for a raise, just get out there work harder and sell more.

Bonuses

Most companies offer bonuses to their sales reps. Who doesn’t love bonuses? There are many types of bonuses offered Some bonuses come in the form of milestone payouts. For example, the 5 sells reps who sell the most in one month get a 500 dollar bonus, and the next 5 will get 300 dollars. Another type of bonus is the incentive bonus. This is where a company would set a number for you to sell and when you reach it you get a payout. An example of an incentive bonus would be your employer will pay you an extra 50 dollars every time you sell 100 products. This is their way of encouraging you to sell more of their products and everyone wins. The next kind of bonus is where the company offers a percentage of the profit divided among the reps every month, quarter, year or other predetermined amount of time. For example, if you sell over 300 products in a month the company would pay you 2 percent of the company’s profit from the month and if you sell between 100 and 299 products they pay you 1.2 percent. Many companies even offer a yearly bonus to their top sales rep in the form of trips, cruises, cars and cold hard cash. At Mary Kay the top sales reps always receive a Mary Kay pink Cadillac.

You should use a variety of tools to help you make your sales. Using a variety of tools can help you track online visitors, habits and conversions by using various tools and sophisticated technology. It is important to understand how you can use different sales tools to help close more sales. Here are some tools you should be using.

Google Keywords

Google makes it easy for companies to figure out which keywords they should use for PPC advertisements and SEO efforts. They offer a keyword tool so you can track the words that drive the most traffic, which can result in more sales and give you more information to track sales analytics in the future. Once you know those keywords, you can use them more frequently in your content to attract customers and prospects. Incorporating the right keywords will put your website and company name at the front of the most viewed search engine pages.

YouTube Analytics

Because Google owns YouTube, it now includes a sales analytics tool to track how well your videos are doing. It can tell you how many views you have, the visitor types, where they’re coming from and so much more. If you don’t already feature videos on your website, you may want to consider doing so, as more and more people want visuals that they can interact with and watch, instead of just reading.

Surveys

There are websites that create surveys. You can use these sites to create customized surveys for your company. You can place them on your site or even email them to customers and potentials. They only take a few minutes to fill out, and most people want to voice their opinions anyway.

Networking

Networking is one of the best tools you can use to generate new sales and help you close them. If you can find ways to talk to others and incorporate these sales analytics into your daily lives, you’ll build up your customer base and be able to go after them using all the tools that can create excitement for what you’re offering.

Sharing Files/Collaboration

Sharing an attractive presentation with targeted customers is one of the best ways to generate interest. Sales analytics tools can help identify your client base. Sharing those files with them can then help you get them more interested and help close the sale, as well.

Happy Selling! 🙂

 

One-on-One Sales Coaching

Sales Training

Learning how to brainstorm with a group of people can improve productivity, employee morale and provide creative new ideas and solutions to problems. Brainstorming is meant to help you produce as many new ideas as possible to solve the problem at hand. When brainstorming it is important that you take in as many ideas as possible and save your criticism and evaluation of those ideas for later. Your group should feel like there are no bad ideas. By doing this, your group will stimulate each other and will be able to come up with more ideas.

How to Brainstorm with A Group: The Process

Before You Brainstorm

1. Define Your Purpose

Ask yourself, what do you want to walk out of the meeting with?

2. Choose Your Participants

Be sure to only choose as many participants as you can handle. The group should be small enough so that all participants have a chance to participate. A good brainstorming session can have 5-10 people.

3. Pick a New Environment

By choosing a new place to have a brainstorming session you are setting this meeting apart from other meetings. This will make it easier for the participants to suspend judgement.

4. Be Informal

Do what it takes to get your group relaxed. Suggest wearing comfortable clothes, taking off your tie or jacket and/or calling each other by first names. This will help with the flow of ideas.

5. Choose a Facilitator

Someone at the meeting needs to make sure the group stays on track, reinforces ground rules, stimulates the conversation by asking questions and that everyone gets a chance to speak.

During Your Brainstorming Session

1. Set the participants side by side facing the problem

People sitting side by side in a semicircle or facing a blackboard tend to respond to the problem depicted in front of them. They will tackle the common problem together. Opposed to facing each other and engaging in dialogue or argument.

2. Clarify the ground rules, include the no-criticism rule.

If the participants are strangers, begin with introductions. Then clarify the ground rules and make it clear that negative criticism of any kind is not tolerated. You may also want to state that the meeting is off the record and any ideas used will be anonymous.

3. Start Coming up with Ideas

Once the rules are clear and everyone is introduced. Start coming up with a list of ideas by allowing your facilitator to start asking questions. Write down every idea and make sure they are in full view for everyone to see. This will help stimulate other ideas and reduce the tendency to repeat ideas already stated.

After Brainstorming

1. Take a Break

It is important to let the ideas soak in for an hour or maybe even a day. So try to take a break, lunch or a full day before considering the ideas.

2. Mark Promising Ideas

Once you have taken a break, revisit the list of ideas and star the most promising ideas. Mark the ideas that members of the group think are best.

3. Invent New Ideas for Promising Ideas

Take one new promising idea at a time. Invent ways to make it better and more realistic while coming up with ways to make it a reality.

Brainstorming sessions free people to think creatively. This allows them to generate new creative solutions more easily. If you were asking who should receive a grammy, you would almost certainly come up with a better answer if you evaluated 100 contestants, rather than choosing one person right there on the spot.

The key to coming up with good solutions comes from choosing from a wide variety of options. Collective brainstorming creates opportunities for different ideas from varieties of perspectives, which can be discussed together as a team effort for more innovation and improvements to the overall brand.

Learn how to brainstorm with a group and you will be able to come up with a wide variety of options that you can use to solve common problems in sales and in life.

When you get stuck in a rut it can reflect in your performance. As a salesperson showing your discontent or disappointment in life is a defeatist attitude that just won’t do. Move away from your comfort zone to increase your sales.

Raise the Bar

Just because you have a minimum sales quota to reach doesn’t mean that is all you should set your sights on. Think big and raise the bar on your own. You might have a minimum but you can be certain there is no maximum. Raise the bar and watch yourself excel.

Become Fully Engaged

If you are putzing through life doing the bare minimum you will get back the bare minimum. Apply yourself and become completely engaged with your job and your clients. Stay on top of your game and know all you can about your competitors. Use this information to a) demonstrate your knowledge and b) have some information prepared about what you have the competitors don’t. Don’t bad mouth or even mention the competitors, just use your knowledge to bring your better qualifications to light.

Experience Discomfort

This is not in everybody’s make up which explains why most of us are not billionaires. A comfort zone sounds cosy, but it can also be a bit of a prison. It is like living in a beautiful home and feeling you never need to visit anywhere else. It stifles and it deadens your desire to succeed. Staying with the same company, selling the same things and knocking on the same doors are all enemies of the salesperson.

LOL in the Face of Fear

Fear can stem from many different aspects of life. Some fears are deeply rooted and quite frankly well warranted. However fear of failure, or worse, fear of success will hold you back from experiencing true fulfillment in life. If you are too afraid to take a night course to learn better sales strategies because you don’t want to go alone, sign up and do it. Ha Ha to fear. If you are too afraid to apply for that Sales Managers job because you might get rejected, type up that resume and leave it on your boss’ desk. Tee Hee to fear.

Your comfort zone is also your prison. Breaking out of it is your best bet for success.

One-On-One Sales Coaching