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How to Send Your Sales Skyrocketing (#5)

By Patrick Gant

A brand-new article we’ve prepared for Engage Selling Solutions, based on the sales presentations of Colleen Francis.

#5. Handle Objections Skillfully

In this five-part series, I’ve shared with you a range of activities that you can engage today to help turbo-charge sales in your business—no matter whether you are a sales professional working solo or managing a sales team. I’ve identified for you what you need to do at the front-end of your sales cycle—defining your best customers, obtaining referrals and testimonials and making better use of all of these in how you sell to your prospects. I’ve also talked about how to engage your sales math and why this is an important step to take if you’re determined to join the ranks of the top-10 percent of sales performers in your organization. More

Self publishing is about to get a lot more lucrative

By Patrick Gant

Lulu, one of my favourite micropublishers, has wisely embraced Apple’s brand-new iBookstore (think iTunes for books).

The outcome: Apple gets more content, Lulu gains a distributor and authors gain access to a highly lucrative market of readers who buy a lot stuff online, including ebooks. Everyone wins.

Lulu’s timing could not be better for this. Have a look at the kinds of sales that ebooks are generating these days.

According to the International Digital Publishing (IDP) Forum, ebooks generated some $165.8 million in sales in 2009: more than triple what was reported in 2008 ($53.5 million) and more than five times the record for 2007 ($31.5 million).

Data: International Digital Publishing Forum

This is an niche industry that has barely…just barely begun to hit its stride.

Results for 2010 are already described by the IDP as being off the charts…some $60 million in January and February alone, putting it on track to score some $300 million in sales by the time the year is through.

How to send your sales skyrocketing (#4)

By Patrick Gant

A brand-new article we’ve prepared for Engage Selling Solutions, based on the sales presentations of Colleen Francis.

#4. Engage Your Sales Math

So far in this five-article series, I’ve focused on what you can do at the front-end of your sales cycle to help generate the great results that you’re looking for in your organization. This entails fine-tuning your prospecting and targeting skills and finding multiple ways to get the word out on the street about your work as a sales professional. Getting that component right is crucial. More

Window dressing

By Patrick Gant

Photo:EllenJo.

Roger Ebert, whose writing has been absolutely on fire these past few years, has weighed in on Hollywood’s infatuation with 3-D films, giving it a big thumbs down.

The distractions that 3-D movies demand of its audience are obvious to anyone who has had to endure wearing a pair of those goofy glasses—and that will play a large part in this being fad that falls out of fashion just as surely as it has before. But Ebert touches on another important point: great films…great and successful films…have found their audience just fine over the years without 3-D, and it’s hard to imagine how any of them would be improved via this newest tech obsession.

The lesson here is this: you can dress up a mediocre product with gimmicks and while it may initially attract a little attention, soon people will tire of it.

The way to reach an audience and to get them coming back for more is by telling a great story—or in the case of studio executives, by having an eye for a good story when it hits the desk.

It’s that simple. And that hard.

How to connect with your customers

By Patrick Gant

Concentrate less on describing what your product or service does.

Think more about what problem it solves for your customers.

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