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Sales tips from The Accidental Salesman

27/01/2010 send to a friend

From the age of 17, Richard White wanted to be his own boss. After spending 25 years in industry as an accountant, he realised his dream and is now running The Accidental Salesman as a consulting business and online resource for anyone wanting to know more about effective selling.

Your top 4 gems

We call up Richard and ask him for the top four pieces of advice he'd offer to home businesses wanting to improve their selling strategy. This was his response.

See the world from your customer's position - have empathy and stand in their shoes to understand their needs and requirements
Work out why your prospect is interested in your offer
Work on the relationship and be consistent
Do not attempt to educate a market (The Ed of EN doesn't quite agree with this one as Apple educates the market all the time in terms of coming up with products we didn't know we wanted/needed and they do a pretty good job of it!)

Richard spends his time hosting sales masterclasses and coaching individual clients. If you'd like to know more about Richard, The Accidental Salesman, or indeed anything about sales, click on the link below.

The Accidental Salesman

What are your top sales tips? Share them with us here or in the forums!

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Comments

Author: Roland Millward

Date: 31/01/2010

Comment: Good tips! No 4 is only for the large corporations who have the power to educate a market. However small businesses and individual sales persons can educate a customer and that will lead to a sale. Financial Advisers do that all the time.

Website: http://rolandmillward.com

Author: Richard White

Date: 02/02/2010

Comment: Good observation Rowland - the easiest people to educate are those who know like and trust you - especially existing customers.

I am a very pragmatic guy and if I were talking to a business with the resources of Apple then they have many more options.

A home based business that is typically short of cash will be better served leaving other people to educate the market and instead take a more solution based approach

Website: http://www.theaccidentalsalesman.com

Author: Sean Morgan

Date: 22/02/2010

Comment: The required strategies should be implemented very carefully for them to be effective to sell snything. It's some wonderful strategies only that is providing the boost to the B2B brands. As such it is crucial to take the help of the right tools available in the market. Richard has given some pieces of advice which can be very effective to improve their selling strategy. What is the definition of a good sales tool? Well I don't really know. But I found this cool new sales tool, VideoColdCall, and it is working for me

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