Sales Tips: The Sales Snowball

Tips to Grow and Manage your Sales Process

Background of Where These Tips Come From

My name is Brad, and I'm known to the business world as "Rain Man". The reasoning behind the name is due to my mind working in 1's and 0's, rarely participating in conversations that aren't business related, as I am business ALL of the time. People often see my personality as being a mix between Alec Baldwin in "Glenngary Glen Ross", Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man", and Jack Nicholson in "As Good As it Gets". Needless to say, I'm past the point in life of being the guy who should be in front of a potential client, as I lack the ability to be politically correct. That being said, clients like dealing with me through their sales experience on occasion, as I ensure they are being provided with accurate information, realistic timelines, and a flawless result in our solutions. Please take a moment after reading through this article to read our about us page for more information, as you will be very informed and enlightened by the content.

Now let's back up 15 years. Fresh out of the Army, I went to work at an auto mall in Toledo, Ohio. Never having been in sales, I was a natural at the trade, as I just wasn't a salesman. Clients loved the fact that I was overly knowledgeable about the product lines, and I was straight to the point. My opening conversation on every client encounter always started with the same question, "Good afternoon. How many cars to you plan on buying today?". Generally, I would get a snicker and a very straight forward response of "Just one.". Yippee, I just qualified the buyer in 10 seconds or less.

I sold new Nissan's when they came in 3 colors...Taupe, tan, and beige. Nissan was nearing bankruptcy, and their cars just plain sucked, but I sold a "shit ton" of them. All of this came from what I call "The Sales Snowball". We'll go through these sales tips throughout the article, and I hope you take notes, highlight, and refer your friends to read this article, as I promise that you will revolutionize your sales process with these. Some of what you will read, you have most likely read or heard before, most likely in different form or fashion. Following these sales tips and implementing them in your daily life will payoff big.

Ensuring These Tips Work: Getting in the Right Frame of Mind

I highly recommend you follow, read, and learn from the following three individuals. Each has their own technique, great information, and sound advice regarding tactics and attitude.

There is a plethora of sales trainers out there, and they all have different, yet similar fundamental messages. We'll go through these after I recommend a few other sales tips, videos, and movies. Let's start with the videos you should watch, learn, follow, and most importantly emulate. This first video is the heart and soul of what it takes to succeed in sales. It's a very old video, and I watch it once a week on Sunday afternoon to get my head in the game to start the upcoming week...And I'm not even in sales !?! Read about Art Williams on Wikipedia here. You will cherish the sales tips Art Williams gives in this 21 minute video. This is from 1987, and is 1000% relevant today in sales.

Sales related movies every sales person should watch include:

Glengarry Glen Ross

Boiler Room

Wolf of Wallstreet

Wallstreet

Defining The Sales Snowball

The sales snowball is quite an easy program to follow. The reason I call it the sales snowball is due to similarities in this method to Dave Ramsey's debt snowball, but applying sales focus to his debt reduction system, while maintaining consistency in attitude and drive. Everyone wants to be rich, however only people with the right attitude and drive receive the riches of their efforts. It all starts with the dream, as the dream creates the drive.

Be a Student of your Industry. Know what you don't know.

I had a boss once, who preached that everyone should be a student of their industry. The successful sales person always knows their products, services, and offering inside and out. I worked with an older salesman in the car business who would walk the lot daily to ensure he knew every ounce of inventory that he could offer to his clients. Besides knowing his inventory, he took extra steps to ensure he remembered all of his clients' names, and their family member's names, along with details about his clients. I was amazed by his attention to detail, and how well he could create a consistent work flow and routine.

I applied this to what I felt was my strongest area, product explanation. I prided myself in always being truthful with clients, and I was selling an excellent product line, however I needed a competitive edge against Honda and Toyota or I would lose the sale. I searched and searched for a product feature that made our Nissan's the better purchase decision, and settled on a singular feature...Safety rims.

Did you know that all Nissan's are equipped with safety rims as a standard feature? Safety rims are designed to ensure the tire won't separate from the rim in the case of a blowout, thus causing a rollover. After all Mr. Customer, you surely wouldn't want your wife and kids to be involved in a rollover accident, correct? The answer was always the same. Most of the time, the customer would leave and go down the street to the Honda or Toyota dealership, as I worked on an auto dealership strip with every make and model being offered in a 3-5 block radius of where I worked. The client would go down the street and get their test drive and walk around on the next vehicle, followed by asking that key question I had planted in their mind..."Does this car have safety rims on it or are they available?". "I don't know Mr. Customer, I'll have to ask my manager". The sale was over...

Here's the thing...The secret, and one of the best tips is that every car manufactured since 1957 and sold in the United States has been required to have safety rims on it. By being a student of my industry, I could offer a product feature that was completely truthful, along with beating out my competition for the sale.

All Tips Talk About Attitude

Of course you get the attitude talk, but let me simplify this to the endth degree. It's really simple. Keep positive people around you, and throw out the garbage like garbage. What does this mean? If you are in a relationship with ANYONE that is a Debby Downer or Negative Nancy...Get rid of them, dump them, divorce them...RUN!!! If you find that your best friend is a Lazy Larry?...Get rid of them. They just aren't worth dealing with. Maybe they've been your best friend since you were 4 years old?...Who cares...Get rid of them! Easy enough? Surround yourself with winners and they will elevate you towards success.

Start Rolling Your Snowball

Here's the key to the article. Start rolling your sales snowball. Sales tips rarely define this very simple process to ensuring you are staying on track with your goals. I'll provide these steps in list form:

Set your personal material goals in list form, based on cost (lowest to highest), similar to identifying debt in Dave Ramsey's debt snowball.
Define each potential client as a goal achiever. What material goal can you achieve through making this sale?
Never babysit a sale. Continue to prospect as the client enters the sales funnel.
Ensure process fluidity throughout the sales process. Identify your weak points to eliminate.
Don't fear the no, while respecting the response and learning why you received it.
You never know enough, so keep studying your trade. Stay up to date on new technologies and competitive edges.
When you "Do It", just do it again, and again, and again, and again.

When you assign a material goal to a client, the sale becomes more defined for you. If you don't make the sale, just cross the item off of the list. It's not gone forever, just until you get through your entire list and get back to that item again. Your list should have a minimum of at least 100 items on it. When you get the no (which is way better than maybe), you will have a greater drive to get a yes from that particular item the next time around. You will have created the want, thus creating the drive to get the want, and the want is what you are after.

Good luck, happy selling, and look out for further definition of this article's content in future posts. Don't forget to subscribe to our email list. We only send out notifications for what makes sense for our clients.