1. Find out in advance how many people the facilitator expects that you will meet at the event. You want to bring more cards than that if you are one to sometimes say, "Oh I forgot my business cards." In making that first impression, it matter as much about what you think about yourself but what others might believe.

2. Have business cards handy without the need to fumble to exchange them.

3. Upon receiving someone else's card, pause to look at it, say their name aloud while you look at them. When you get ready to move on to your next round, do the same before you leave each other. Now, you are one step closer to tyng this person to the discussion you had.

4. Have a pad or a networking journal along with a pen or pencil for notes in conversations that you want to keep top of mind.

With speed networking being as popular for finding contacts and referrals as speed dating is for finding that certain someone, you will look your best being prepared. Many think it starts with the business card. If you are an introvert you're going to love the preparedness. If you are an extrovert, you'll likely have all the business cards you need!

What other ways have you let your business card help you?

Speed Networking: Help Your Business Card Help You is a post from: Courage Coach for the Reluctant Marketer

If you want to know: why prospects and clients have price objections, how these objections affect the salesperson and three main things to do to protect yourself when then come up, read, That’s Outrageous, it’s too Much Money! by Marshall W. Northcott.

Sales Tip – What to Do When Price Gets in the Way is a post from: Courage Coach for the Reluctant Marketer

Until you drive one you may not understand this, however three main things about such an exotic car that satisfy introversion, at least the one we own are: the intoxicating sound of the engine inside is quiet enough to hear yourself think, as it takes curves it feels like it’s on rails and it’s history is about solutions. What does this have to do with introverts who sell? Introverts are similar to a Ferrari ride: quietly connecting, steadily taking the turns and built for more than a race. Here’s how introverts in sales are similar to this:

Selling is about connecting: Given that introverts often find it easier to listen than to talk, we’re naturally appealing to our prospect’s human nature to be heard. As we satisfy their need, we’re also allowing ourselves to sort through our thinking before we speak. This allows us the chance to help the prospect do they same: tune in to what they believe important. We’re connecting before we speak.

In sales it’s important to know there will be a turn of events. As we listen introverts are going to be naturally curious. This is an opportunity to help the prospect also find out what it is they really want. Asking questions first instead of spouting off your spiel actually furthers the conversation. Leave your sales pitch on the back burner; be yourself and allow others to talk first.

Selling is about providing solutions you hear the customer wants. Introverts are more about building deep connections not necessarily quantity. As told in Grand Prix History, produced by The Motorsports Publishing Group, LLC the history of Ferrari reports interestingly “racing was not used to sell more cars, rather cars were sold so that the team could go racing!” Introverts who outsell extroverts may likely have a similar philosophy: let’s listen, think things through, analyze with the prospect and come up with solutions.

None of this is to say extroverts may not have these traits; it’s just that introverts get their energy being true to actions like these.

Just like the Ferrari energy is not just on the outside, you can feel it inside, so the introverts energy to have a successful sales style, comes from inside. NOTE: my husband says he wishes I told him I felt this way about the car years ago so we could have had it sooner.

Back to business: what do you think about how introverts who sell are like a Ferrari or any other exotic car?

Sales Tip – Top 3 Ways Introverts Selling Style Like Exotic Ferrari is a post from: Courage Coach for the Reluctant Marketer

As an INTJ, if I follow this advice, which I do and will, there also has to be, "Carve out a little more quiet time."

What do you think? What else would be something simple to include in your sales and marketing in a down economy? Add you comment.

Survival Selling in a Bad Economy is a post from: Courage Coach for the Reluctant Marketer

Anyone who sells has a goal to make sales. Maybe this undermines salespeople to be systematically planned and purposeful in sales follow up with their prospect. Just as with a new friend it is follow up that will turn a prospect into a customer.

Maybe you think, “I feel like I am bothering people so tend to put it off.”

You are invited to a neighbor’s house for dinner, like being invited to a prospect’s office for a meeting.

The dinner goes well; the sales meeting goes well. At the end of the evening your neighbor smiles and says, “Let’s get together again.” The meeting goes well and the prospect says, “I’ve got to think about this.”

How do you respond to each of these relationship events?

“Generally, I follow it for two or three calls and then let it go,” might be your approach.

You have a new friend you enjoy talking with. If you are an introvert in sales, you enjoy and are energized by the deep conversations. If you are extrovert, you love talking, period.

You have a new prospect and during your first meeting, you discover they have a problem when they open up to you. It’s a problem you can easily solve with your product or service.

You and a new friend really hit it off on first meeting. You are the first to call to get together again; your new friend is out of town and their voice mail picks up.

It took trust for your prospect to tell you their situation. You’ve opened up a new relationship. They just expressed regret that the timing is off.

How do you respond for the next step for your friend? And your prospect?

So here's the question:

Whether you are in business to business or business to consumer sales, it’s about relationships.

What’s your assessment of how sales follow-up can be similar to new friendship follow-up?

How would it help you if you decided, selling is a lot like building a friendship?

Leave your comment below:

Sales Tip – Think About Sales Follow-up Like Meet the New Neighbor is a post from: Courage Coach for the Reluctant Marketer

Salespeople can always learn valuable behaviors from dogs. With my dog’s recent illness we had to stop her treats while the veterinarian ruled out one diagnosis from another. If she wasn’t in anguish about it, I was. Then I began to wonder, “Am I keeping treats from my prospects or my customers?” Embarrassingly, it’s my customers who might be going without a follow-up treat at times. But now I have ideas of what and how to treat both prospects and customers.

It matters what kind of treat. The reality is if you are in sales, a telephone call, an email, a card, an in-person visit, these are appropriate treats of “I care about you,” when you aren’t trying to just sell something. Actually it does and it doesn’t matter what kind of attention you pay to customers or prospects. Just like your dog likes one brand over another, your customer and prospect have a preference of how you communicate too.

Be sure your treat is appetizing. Here’s where your customer and prospects preference comes in. How often do they prefer to hear from you? How do they prefer it – in person, by telephone, with a card, with email? Just find out and fashion your follow-up with their preferences.

Try different treats until one hits the sweet spot. About three years ago I increased my follow-up with written, real, greeting cards. My business took a 30% jump in that year. At that time, it was more effective than a telephone call and outweighed results of email. What is your customer’s sweet spot?

All sales treats are not created equal. Each customer and prospect has their preference. Even salespeople have their preference of how they stay in touch. The best follow-up is to take a queue from your customer and prospect preferences. The next best follow-up is for a salesperson just to have a planned and acted on system for follow-up.

And you can try a real greeting card for a sweet spot with your customers and prospects for free. Send a real greeting card from your computer. Postage included - for a treat.

Sales Tip – Sell Without Follow-up with Your Customers or Prospects? Then Give Up Selling is a post from: Courage Coach for the Reluctant Marketer

It’s not a secret that selling involved several parties: at a minimum the seller and the buyer. In the USA crime stoppers is a philosophy of partnership between community, media and law enforcement because someone other than the criminal can solve the crime. When a salesperson is aware of such a partnership is selling, stopping a sales crime, can bring in revenue.

Reluctance to get involved. Are you getting your clients involved enough? How about getting them involved to the degree you build the bridge from unknown to known? I like to involve my prospects early on because it is when we each have the most success. With a complimentary session, the prospect experiences me, my service, my style. They get to know, like and trust me and that gets them over the bridge from unknown to known. It’s similar to the puppy dog sales closing technique except for both me and the prospect: we each get to hold, pet and decide if we are right for each other. How can you overcome your prospect’s reluctance to get involved?

Going the sales trail alone. Whether online or in-person networking you deepen relationships with people you identify as prospects and connectors. Keep in mind to also continue to deepen your relationship with past customers. In a down economy, it’s often the referral of you and your product or service that stops the crime. You can either ask for a referral or have a positive and strong enough effect that someone will refer you. You can be the one who comes to mind when hearing about your need, prompts someone to refer you. More studies bear out: people buy on referral at least seven to nine times more easily. You don’t have to go it alone.

You don’t ask for the decision. I’ve done this on rare occasions. Why only rarely? My perspective is if I have followed the science of selling, then I owe it to myself, having earned the right, to ask for a decision. When I don’t ask, it’s usually because I’m not so confident I’ve done everything. My preference is to get a no and then figure out where to go from there with the customer.

NOTE: All selling crimes involve you; some center on the customer. Certainly there are more crimes that need to be stopped but with these crime stoppers which are more controllable on the salesperson’s side, will more quickly get sales results – a definite edge in a down economy.

And you can sidestep your sales performance anxieties, overcome your fear of rejection and demolish your devastating doubts to become a top sales pro using the secrets revealed in FREE reports at Sales Tips for Introverts.

What selling crimes do you want to know how to stop? Let me hear from you.

Sales Tip – Selling Crimes? Bring in the Sales Crime Stoppers! is a post from: Courage Coach for the Reluctant Marketer

On a recent energy clearing telecall, the leader was talking about the bedtime stories we tell ourselves. Energy clearing is important in particular for introverts who sell because how quickly our energy can deplete from all the extroverting that selling requires. But what good is energy clearing and recharging if the bedtime thoughts you have continue to repeat the negative?

What sales results do you want to create? As you begin to drift off, think of positive results just ahead of you. If you are an introvert, reflect on the perfect fit of your systematic marketing plan. If you’re an extrovert, tell yourself about the excitement in your marketing plan. Avoid replaying any lost prospects or lost sales stories.

How are you talking to yourself about sales results? Are you encouraging and uplifting as you drift into sleep? If you are replaying anything like disappointment or discouragement from the day’s events, you set yourself up for more of the same tomorrow. Any negativity in your self-talk or conversation is better served while you are awake and can counter it.

What do you say? The only familiarity you might want in your story would be places you network, marketing activities you like that give you results, just a few things that allow you to participate and be in the story. As an introvert, remind yourself how you have the skill set customers crave: you listen and think before you respond. A real extrovert? Think about your natural networking skills that are paying off.

Do you celebrate and express gratitude as something remotely close to what you want shows up? Recognize possibilities from the little things. Maybe you intend to have five new clients or orders in a particular time. You’re half way there and you have one new client or order. Stop – be grateful and do something that would be celebratory for you.

Your short bedtime story is complete with the results you want, acknowledgment that you are on the track to success, and expression of your gratitude for any small steps toward what you want. As an ending, future pace those sales results: tell yourself the continuation of how you know things are perfect in a few days, a few weeks, even months or years. Now you are clear and charged for just those results you want.

And you can continue to sidestep your sales performance anxieties, overcome your fear of rejection and demolish your devastating doubts to become a top sales pro using the secrets revealed in FREE audios at Sales Tips for Introverts.

Patricia Weber, 20 years sales training and business coach helps introverts, shy and even reluctant to sell extroverts who want to accelerate their sales results!

Sales Tip – Rock-A-Bye Salesperson, Tell Yourself a Better Bedtime Story is a post from: Courage Coach for the Reluctant Marketer

1. Sales and marketing plans usually include a degree of networking. Be selective about the events you go to. As an “A” in INTJ in Myers Briggs types, I usually go early and speak with three to six people and then I’m free to either sit and eat, just wander around or leave. Selectivity and purposeful introductions are key to my success.

2. Schedule your days so any extroverting – speaking engagements, networking, even one to one meetings - can be done after you have some quiet time before and after. This allows you to pace yourself. In particular, you want any activity that restores and refreshes you. Selling can be enjoyable this way!

3. Email is a great way of communicating for introverts. You can control the conversation more easily. Don’t hesitate to draft an introduction or follow up email and let it sit in draft mode. Then before you “speak” you’ve satisfied that innate need to think first.

4. Maximize your planning side to minimize crunch time. If you start preparing for a sales presentation or making a proposal well before the deadline, this lets you manage both time and energy.

5. Remember that introversion can look like shyness, but it isn’t. Professor Bernardo Carducci of the Shyness Institute at Indiana University defines the difference this way: an introvert hangs around the edge of a social or business event to preserve their energy; a shy person is reluctant to join in because of the risk to be judged.

6. Understand yourself as an introvert. Since we need more time to restore our energy, select enough speed reduction activities to protect your energy. Hire a coach if necessary who understands the introvert’s care.

No one is solely introverted or extroverted. Being an introvert in sales doesn’t mean there is something that needs to be fixed. There’s nothing broken. We’re in the perfect position as introverts to do more ‘being’ instead of ‘doing.’ The truth is even extroverts may find it stimulating to slow down on occasion.

Join me on Tuesdays in 2009 for Tuesday Triumph Tune-Ups guaranteed to demolish your devastating doubts: Sales Tips for Introverts.

Sales Tip – Introvert Salespeople Celebrate Speed Reduction Day to Rev Up Sales! is a post from: Courage Coach for the Reluctant Marketer

1. We Belong Together, Ritchie Valens. “You’re mine and we belong together.” Is that what you are thinking about your prospects? And just how are you showing them? Do you take your time to build rapport? Are you getting to know them? Remember if you’re an introvert, sales is about deepening a one to one relationship. Then you le them get to know you, your product and your service.

2. What's Your Name, Don and Juan. “What's your name? May I walk you to your door? It's so hard to find a personality, With charms like yours for me.” Learn about primary personality styles with a model like the Personal Profile System® or some other. An easy and exacting model of a prospects buying style will help you help them easier. If you open the next sales step sooner or later, depending on the buying style, you will find a perfect match of selling for your customer.

3. Stop And Think It Over, Dale & Grace. This is the slow song of rapport: “We've got to stop and think it over. Before we say we're in love. Are we right for each other? Can what we feel be lasting love?” Ask early on a qualifying question like, “And are you able to move forward today if you find I can provide you with …?” It is your role to ask at the appropriate time, often at the end of follow up meeting, for your prospect to make a decision. If you find there are concerns or objections, don’t feel obligated to respond immediately. As introverts, take that brief time to collect your thoughts before you respond. Clients appreciate you thinking things over too.

4. Talk To Me, Little Willie John. “Talk to me, talk to me. Um-mm, I love the things you say. Talk to me, talk to me. Tell me what I want to know.” Welcome objections. I remember an early selling situation where I was not communicating properly with a prospect on their sensory language pattern. I was using primarily visual words when she was clearly auditory. I was getting maybe, maybe, maybe until I made a question shift using auditory language. All of a sudden she was pouring out her concerns to me! Because of that, I could answer her questions and she signed training contract. Learn to listen: introverts just pump that listening muscle and extroverts if you have learned to listen then do it!

5. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, Roy Orbison. “The silence of a fallin' star, Lights up a purple sky, And as I wonder where you are, I'm so lonesome I could cry.” Lack of follow-up is the bane of salespeople. Yet the prospect wants to and even needs to hear from you. Maybe they aren’t really lonesome, but they are waiting to hear from you. They want you to attend to their original interest. Plan a scheduled series of between five and twenty-one follow-ups. Planning, deepening a relationship: sound comfortable for an introvert?

6. At Last, Etta James. “At last my love has come along. My lonely days are over, And life is like a song.” Both the prospect and the salesperson will be singing this! The buyer, they want relief from the product or service you have. You the seller, you want that new happy, lifetime customer. Both buyer and seller really are headed in the same direction, but it is because of the skills of the salesperson that they will reach that same point, at the same time, together.

More than a stroll through history with the Jukebox melodies take to your salesperson heart some of the meaning they carry for selling. Better yet listen to each song if you can. It’s the music in them that will make you smarter, take the pain of rejection away, improve your creativity and reduce your stress.

And if you want to sidestep your sales performance anxieties, overcome your fear of rejection and demolish your devastating doubts , you can join me every week on Sales Tips for Introverts for free teleclasses!

Patricia Weber, 20 years sales training and business coach helps introverts, shy and even reluctant to sell extroverts who want to accelerate their sales results!

Sales Tips – Salespeople Get Uplifted With Jukebox Music! is a post from: Courage Coach for the Reluctant Marketer