Selling. A lost art.

By Ken Ninomiya

Over the years, ekn links has sold products to major retailers, large international distributors, small mom and popshops and even individual consumers. I was raised on the traditional way of selling products using proven techniques that have been past on from successful sales pros in the past. I often think that a sale is a lost art because our society has become so dependent on the Internet aspect of the everyday sale.

It is true that the online world should not be ignored in both the marketing of a product and the sales of a product but we also need to have experienced sales pros that answer the phone (or online chat) that make that occasional human contact to close the deal. I am not talking about customer service or trouble shooting reps, although, I have occasional had the pleasure of having a customer service representative try to sell my on an upgrade or better type of service. I am discussing the old time closer. The art of sales.

I listened to many sales tapes (yes – actually cassette tapes) and witnessed over twenty professional seminars and participated in a dozen or so sales development events over the years. I have learned a lot about the art of sales over the years and I hope to help you pick up a few of the things that I have learned and now practice as owner of ekn links. I cannot teach you the vital and important one to one communication that is always necessary in sales. I cannot give you the proverbial “gift of gab” but I can help you remember some of those old time valuable sales fundamentals that have created great sales pros and generated a lot of revenue. ekn links practices these basic sales tips and we help to close the deal for many different types of products from medical products to toys. We can help you build the revenue in your business. Contact us for more help but until then take notice of these basic tips.

The Basic Steps to the Sales Call

1. Call the Prospect and set up an appointment. Remember, either you sell the customer or the customer is going to sell you on a reason why they can’t meet you. The goal is to sell the customer on getting an appointment and discuss your solution face to face.
2. Go to Prospect the day of the appointment prepared and with the correct samples, sales order sheets and company information. The Prospect wants to know how you will help them solve a problem. Visualize the sales call and have your sales presentation down. Don’t waste the Prospects time.
3. It is a good idea to develop an immediate rapport with the client with some type of icebreaker comment. Look for your opportunity to get the discussion started in a friendly manner. Make sure that you have control of the sales call but keep it friendly. Don’t forget to close. Ask for the business and handle the objections.
4. At the end of Sales call, thank the customer for their time A few days later send a thank you card or email.
5. Follow up. Most sales are lost because of poor or no follow up. There is no excuse not to follow up in our well-connected world.

Helpful Hints to Remember:

• Time is money, it is important to spend time getting to know the customer but make sure that you devote most of the time to the sales presentation, remember that the time of the client is limited, therefore get to the presentation ASAP.
• Remember to CLOSE!
• Always use creative stories to help the buyer visualize the sales and your solution.
• Never insult the customer or be too direct or bold. Be friendly – not hostile.
• Never argue with a customer or prospect, remember. The customer is always right.
• Make sure that you show the Prospect the solution to their problem immediately.
• Never “bad talk” competitors or downgrade their items.
• Always smile when with a customer. Is this hard to do?
• Remember the law of numbers. The more Prospects you see, the more you will sell.
• Nobody is born a sales person; it comes with practice, consistency and ambition.
• The more you practice, the better your sales pitch. Practice makes perfect.
• Remember that 20% of your customers will make up 80% of your revenue and business. Treat those 20% like GOLD.

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I have been in sales and marketing now for over twenty years, managing start-up new company products and existing products. All of these products have the goal of building a market and creating a brand.  Brands still have valuable meaning in today’s market place and building one requires time, people and money. All of those limited but valuable resources that every company large or small requires to be successful. There are no secrets to building market share and creating a brand that I can share with you. There is no right or wrong approach to go about the strategy of hitting your target. You know you have it right when your sales start to climb and your consumers start to buy your product time and time again. You start to build a brand when you reach this consumer more than once.

The basic strategy of building a brand requires that consumers know who you are and what you do. Every consumers has a favorite brand. I have two favorite brands that I buy under any conditions without exception. These brands have me for life. In marketing, we evaluate this concept as Customer Life Time Value (CLV). If I spend $200 a year on my two favorite brands and live another 20 years then these companies generate $4000 of revenue from me in my lifetime. This does not sound like much but if you get one million of me – that do the same thing – it adds up into a nice business. At ekn links , we help companies position their companies and products so that they can get one million of consumers like me and we help them to build a brand.

I have learned some important lessons over the years when it comes to branding and creating revenue. Although, every single product has it own positioning which is supported by any combination of resources, most products have to start by answering some of the most basic fundamental questions. I am not shocked when I am engaged by a client who has not been able to answer these basic questions. I often start my new clients off by helping me understand what their answers are to this basic set of Brand Development questions. I would like to share these basic question with you in this blog.

Use the set of question below to help your company begin to understand how to build your brand. Answering these questions below is a great place to start in understanding what your brand and product is all about.  At ekn links, we provide a complete marketing service that will help you answer these questions and prepare a detailed strategy report that will help to make your brand a success. Visit us at www.eknlinks.com. We can help.

Answer the following questions will help you create your brand strategy:

1. How do your competitors position their brand against yours?

2. What is your competitors marketing message? How is it different from yours?

3. What marketing promise does your competitor make? Do your competitors deliver on their marketing promises?

4. Is there a marketing segment that would benefit from your brand that the competitor is not already servicing?

5. Can your brand name be pronounced and remembered easily? Does it translate well into other languages? How does it sound against the competition?

6. What is my company’s overall market message? Does it make sense with the product brand message? Is your message clear and focused?

7. Do you know who your target audience is and does your message connect with them?

8. What promises does your company make during the sales process and do deliver on those promises?

9. Does your customer or clients believe you are delivering on your promises?

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When/How/Where did you guys meet?

Don: Val and I met at church about 6 years ago, but it wasn’t the old school meet and greet. She had been attending my church for about a year and Val claims that she had never noticed me. I use to notice her, she was extremely pretty but I thought she was really young. It was when I found out she was really 18 (legal) I made my move.

Val: I met Don at my Dad’s church. I didn’t even know if he was at the church, because I use to always sit near the front, and once church ended, I left. I was pretty new there and didn’t socialize with too many of the young adults. It was about one year into my presence at the church that I heard this girl going on and on about this hot guy named Don. I was curious about who he was and when I saw him…the only words that came to mind was “wow, that’s a sexy man!”

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Washington, DC –An increase in breast density appears to be the culprit behind an increase of breast cancer found in women participating in the estrogen and progestin therapy study, a part of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI). That is the finding of a new WHI analysis led by Celia Byrne, PhD, assistant professor at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, and presented during the AACR 101st Annual Meeting 2010 in Washington, DC.

The WHI was launched in 1991 and consisted of a set of clinical trials and an observational study, which together involved 161,808 generally healthy postmenopausal women. One of the clinical trials examined the health effects of estrogen plus progestin therapy (EPT). The study was stopped early in 2002 because of an increased cancer risk found in those taking EPT. In the current analysis, researchers set out to determine if a change in mammographic density for EPT users could explain the increased breast cancer risk.
“In fact, that’s exactly what we found,” says Byrne. She adds that mammographic density is one of the strongest predictors of breast cancer risk suggesting that it might be a useful intermediate marker of change in breast cancer risk.

For the analysis, researchers obtained mammograms from study participants taken before they were randomized to the EPT or placebo arm of the WHI study. They also obtained mammograms from 97 women in the EPT arm who later developed invasive breast cancer. The mammograms (of the contralateral breast) were taken a year after they were randomized. In addition, the researchers collected mammograms from 77 women, also taken a year after they were randomized to the placebo arm. Finally, mammograms from a “random side” were collected for 733 health controls. The mammograms were digitized. Four experienced readers blinded to treatment and outcome assessed mammographic density, the proportion of the breast area appearing dense on the mammogram. The risk associated with both baseline mammographic density and change in mammographic was evaluated. The four readers’ results were highly correlated.

A decline in mammographic density was seen in more than half (57 percent) of the women in the placebo group compared with a 16 percent decrease in the EPT arm. Eight-four percent of women in the EPT arm had increased mammographic density compared to 47 percent of the women in the placebo group.

In the EPT arm, both the baseline and change in mammographic density were significantly associated with breast cancer risk. Using these mammograms, researchers could “predict” those who would go on to develop breast cancer. Among the 20 percent of women with the greatest increase in mammographic density in the EPT arm of the study, breast cancer risk was more than tripled (3.6-fold) compared to the 20 percent increased risk in the group with the lowest increase or decrease in density.

“The overall result within this sub-study for the effect of EPT on breast cancer risk compared to placebo was similar to that of the WHI findings,” says Byrne. The researchers reported an overall 24 percent increased breast cancer risk for those in the EPT arm.

“For women using hormone replacement therapy with estrogen and progestin, breast density is a factor that a physician should consider when tracking their breast health,” concludes Byrne. “For general screening, breast density might one day be used to help determine mammograms that demonstrate uncertainty about a visual anomaly.”

In addition to Byrne, authors include Giske Ursin, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; Christopher F. Martin, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC; Jennifer D. Peck, The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK; Elodia B. Cole, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC; Gerardo Heiss; University of North Carolina School of Public Health, Chapel Hill, NC; Anne McTiernan, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA; Donglin Zeng, University of North Carolina School of Public Health, Chapel Hill, NC; Rowan T. Chlebowski, University of California Los Angeles, School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA; Dorothy S. Lane, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, Stoney Brook, NY; JoAnn E. Manson,Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA; Jean Wactawski-Wende, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY; Shagufta Yasmeen, University of California Davis Health System, Sacramento, CA; Norman F. Boyd, Ontario Cancer Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada; Martin J. Yaffe, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; and Etta D. Pisano, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC.

About Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center
The Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of Georgetown University Medical Center and Georgetown University Hospital, seeks to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer through innovative basic and clinical research, patient care, community education and outreach, and the training of cancer specialists of the future. Lombardi is one of only 41 comprehensive cancer centers in the nation, as designated by the National Cancer Institute, and the only one in the Washington, DC, area. For more information, go to http://lombardi.georgetown.edu.

About Georgetown University Medical Center
Georgetown University Medical Center is an internationally recognized academic medical center with a three-part mission of research, teaching and patient care (through Georgetown’s affiliation with MedStar Health). GUMC’s mission is carried out with a strong emphasis on public service and a dedication to the Catholic, Jesuit principle of cura personalis — or “care of the whole person.” The Medical Center includes the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing and Health Studies, both nationally ranked, the world-renowned Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization (BGRO), home to 60 percent of the university’s sponsored research funding.

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I can say waiting on the Lord is not the easiest thing because it requires a lot of faith and there has always been a battle on this faith idea.  How do I wait on the Lord you ask? Well the first thing you have to do is to have faith in the Lord and understand that he will do what he says will do for you: “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”(Matthew 21:22). We ask for things all the time and while we are asking we are having doubts about receiving what we are asking for. I was at church one day and I heard a sermon and the preacher said that when we ask for something sometimes we don’t get it because we are standing in our way with doubts.  If you already think that you are not going to get something, why waste your time asking. I don’t ask for things that I don’t think I am not going to get.

I firmly believe that whatever I have or own is only because God knows it’s good for me to have. I have known to be a really calm person, I wait my turn. In my personal life all the jobs I have ever gotten I didn’t have to look for. The ones I do look for I have never even gotten a phone call back but the ones that the Lord wanted me to have I just get a call from someone in a company I didn’t even apply to or even knew existed.

One particular case, when I was in college I was looking for a job, although I had a job at the school it wasn’t paying the bills. I looked for jobs, but nothing. I knew the director of career services and I told him I wanted something. He called me one day and told me that he has found me a potential employer, I went to the interview and nailed it and I got the job. So what I am saying is that God knows how to get things done and all we have to do it wait. Sometimes we have to make the first move and leave the rest up to him. Some of you may think that the director got me the job, call it what you want, it was God’s will using the career director.

True story, I remember being a kid I was at a church where this lady used to be the first one there and the last one to leave. She prayed excessively, she fasted like no other. All she wanted from God was a man. After many years of praying, she finally got a man and got married. So, you can say that’s a job well done on God’s part which is good. However, once she got what she was praying for she stopped going to church as she used to. What I’m trying to say here is despite when God answers our prayers, we shouldn’t stop praying altogether.

You see, sometimes we cry, plea, beg for something and without even realizing what that could do to us, but since it’s what we wanted we keep on. Not everything we ask for we will receive and the reason I am saying that is because we know what we want but God knows what we need thus he gives us according to his will and what we need.  When we ask for something and we don’t receive it sometimes it is for our own good.

Psalms 40:1 I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. The key to wait on the Lord is faith.

It is easier said than done, people spit out ideas and preach about things all the time without realizing that sometimes it takes more than just getting on our knees and praying. Prayer is the key to all doors but only if it is HIS will.

1 John 5:14-15 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: 15 And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.

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