05/31/2022
How to Stand Out in Business and Sales
by John Chapin
These days it’s extremely easy to stand out in business and sales. Work ethic, sales skills, follow-up, and attention to detail are all at historic lows in many sales forces. Here are some ideas that will help you stand out from all salespeople, even the best. Some of these are tips for standing out among other salespeople from a client perspective, others are tips for standing out from a peer perspective. Many of these will make the average salesperson groan because they require next-level commitment and hard work. The top salespeople on the other hand will love these, and probably already do most of them.
Ways to stand out from other salespeople:
- Follow-up with leads nine to thirteen times, and in some cases, more. 81% of sales and appointments are made after the fourth contact.
- Answer your phone nights and weekends.
- Respond to e-mails nights and weekends.
- Answer your phone right away or return calls within an hour or two.
- Return e-mails within a few hours.
- Always follow up on issues, even if you handed it off to someone else.
- Continually improve your sales and customer service skills.
- Never stop learning and be coachable.
- Always be growing personally and professionally.
- Learn as much as you can about each of your clients.
- Stay up to date on everything going on in your industry and with your clients’ businesses. Join associations, read industry publications, etc.
- Constantly look for new ways to make your clients’ lives easier. Find other ways to help your clients and solve their problems, both those related to your business and those not.
- Connect other people.
- Make it as simple as possible for people to do business with you. Eliminate anything in the sales process that is difficult or time consuming for the prospect/client.
- Deliver more than promised and expected; go the extra mile.
- Outwork everyone else.
- Be early for appointments.
- Always open with an affirmative response.
- Focus on what you can do, not what you can’t.
- Always be honest and operate with complete integrity.
- Always focus on the prospect’s or client’s needs first and always do what is in their best interest.
- Be over prepared for all sales calls and interactions.
- Know exactly what to do and say in all sales situations.
- Make more sales calls than you have to.
- Always do one more… make one more call, send one more thank-you note, make one more contact.
- Always have a great attitude.
- Be enthusiastic.
- Always put in extra effort.
- Persist and persevere.
- Be known as the hardest worker, or one of the hardest workers anyone knows.
- Get along with people.
- Send hand-written thank-you notes in blue ink.
- Focus on building many good, solid, long-term relationships with clients, co-workers, friends and family.
- Always be building and nurturing your network.
- Prospect and build your business every day.
- Don’t make a client call you to follow up on something.
- Make the call you’ve been thinking about forever, but have been putting off because you’re afraid to make it.
- Live by the rules: the client is always right and the client always comes first.
- You’re going to have to fail a lot to be successful in sales. Your goal should be to at least double your failure rate.
Here are some things to do to make your life better.
- Do hard things.
- Invest in yourself to become better professionally and personally. Read books, take courses and classes, go to seminars, and do other things to constantly improve.
- Surround yourself with the right people.
- Surround yourself with the right environment.
- Don’t make excuses.
- Pay close attention to the details.
- Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Just make sure they aren’t thoughtless or repeated mistakes.
- Focus on solutions, not problems or who’s to blame. There will be time to analyze what happened later. Fix the problem first.
- Be accountable and take 100% responsibility for everything in your life.
Finally, here are a couple Zig Ziglar quotes related to the above:
“The harder you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you.”
“You can get everything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”
John Chapin is a motivational sales speaker, coach, and trainer. For his free eBook: 30 Ideas to Double Sales and monthly article, or to have him speak at your next event, go to www.completeselling.com John has over 34 years of sales experience as a number one sales rep and is the author of the 2010 sales book of the year: Sales Encyclopedia (Axiom Book Awards). You can reprint provided you keep contact information in place. E-mail: johnchapin@completeselling.com.
John Chapin
#1 Sales Rep w 34+ years’ experience, Author of the 2010 sales book of the year: Sales Encyclopedia (Axiom Book Awards) – also the largest sales book on the planet (678 pages).
508-243-7359
johnchapin@completeselling.com
www.completeselling.com