Having a consultative sales style is great, but you cannot leave out old school sales fundamentals. Many of the consultative sales seminars and sales books offered today along with many of the sales trainings at Fortune 1000 companies are very good, but many leave out one key point from old school sales. It is that during prospecting and in the sales cycle your main objective is to get to a yes, a no, or a follow up at a later date. While it is true that the consultative sales style teaches you to find out if there is a real need for your product or service, and it does help you to find ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors to build longer term relationships with customers, it doesn’t ensure you are not wasting your time. Your main goal should be to determine if the prospect is really in a position to purchase your product or service. Your time is extremely valuable. You cannot waste your time working with prospects that are just not going to turn into sales.

I have worked at Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies where the company sends their new or existing sales force off to consultative sales training. It can be very good training and can teach salespeople all of the skills needed in the consultative sales approach (asking questions or probing, finding the prospects real needs, presenting the solution, etc). The consultative sales style can be an education in itself. Upon completion of these trainings they can make you feel that through this technique that you could sell anything to anyone. Unfortunately, the sales training leaves out the most important piece of information in sales, identifying buyers. Having the ability or skill to identify who is ready and willing to buy your product or service is the most important skill in sales. Usually the consultative sale training is valuable, but without the skill of identifying buyers it can lead to sales disaster and a short sales career. I have witnessed sales men and sales women trying to sell their products or services to anyone and everyone using the consultative sales style, but not identifying buyers, which resulted in no sales. The smart ones figured it out. The rest well, they were forced on to other endeavors. Seasoned sales people know that not everyone is a prospect. The lesson is that not everyone wants or needs your product or service. Even if they are identified in a vertical market, doesn’t mean they are in a position to buy. Don’t waste your time on those prospects and move on.

Every sales person has played this game, including myself. I have not wanted to know the answer from a prospect, so I have dragged it out for months. I didn’t want to face the fact that if the sale didn’t go through I didn’t have enough in my sales funnel to make it up, or to make quota, or for that matter ends meat. This practice is not productive. Don’t do it. You need to know your sales cycle and what you have upcoming in your sales funnel. You need to get to a yes or a no from your prospects so you know where you stand and so you can make adjustments accordingly.

It is about time management and prospect management. In sales you don’t have the time to waste, especially in this economy. You want to know if they are really interested in your product/service and if they are in a position to buy, if not then move on. You can put them on a newsletter email list or follow up with them at a later time. But face the facts that some prospects just are not going to buy your product or service no matter what. They just aren’t in a position to buy. That is fine. Don’t take it personal and move on. If you waste too much time on the prospects that are not going to buy, you will miss out on others that will, and you will go broke. So do yourself a favor and get to the yes or the no. Don’t let it drag out. It is a fact that the longer the prospect drags their feet the less likely you will close the sale. So get to the yes or the no.

Do you ever wonder what successful high ticket consultants are doing why they’re reaping so much benefits and dollars? Do you want to become one of them? Then, these tips are for you:

Determination. Succeeding in the field of high ticket consulting isn’t easy especially if you haven’t created a huge name in this field yet. It may take years before you can get the kind of attention you need. This will require a lot of time, patience, planning, and effort. It will help if you know ahead of time how bumpy the road can get and that you’re determined to get to where you would like to be no matter what it takes.

Expertise. Do not sink your teeth into this endeavor unless you’re absolutely sure that you know the nuts and bolts of the subject matter that you’re trying to target. If you think that there are things that you still need to learn, equip yourself with the needed knowledge and get relevant experience before you even think about offering consulting services in the online arena. Doing extensive research and attending seminars offered by the experts will surely help.

A powerful website. No matter how knowledgeable and competent you are, your chances of convincing people to do business with you are relatively slim if your website is lousy or if it’s very simple. If you want your visitors to come back and if you want them to consider doing business with you in the near future, you need to make your website as explosive, powerful, and unforgettable as possible. It must have what it takes to present you as a competent consultant who can offer your customers what it takes to get them to where they would like to be.

In-depth knowledge about your competitors. Your customers are not the only ones that you need to consider when running your consulting business. You also need to think about your competitors who are out there to win the business of your prospects. Know what they’re doing and get to know the strategies that they’re using. Do not allow them to outplay you. It’s important to make sure that you top their offerings all the time.

Internet marketing skills. Unless you plan on hiring affiliates to sell your consulting services in the online arena, you must have exceptional internet marketing skills. Promote product awareness by using exceptional product promotional tools like PPC and banner ads. You must also know the best ways to boost your page views. For that, I highly recommend content-based marketing solutions like articles marketing. There are so many things that you need to learn about internet marketing in order to secure decent sales. I suggest that you read more resources that contain comprehensive information.

8:30am to 10:00am. It’s most often a fairly relaxed start to the day – some of the 100 consultants in the building will have been working fairly late so there is no hard start time and most people arrive between 9 am and 9:30. I like the quietness of the mornings however and find the first hour before most people get in quite productive, so I usually try to get in for 8.30.

Even only a few months after starting the job, it is common for Associate Consultants (ACs) to manage their own time, and this includes your preferences for early mornings or evening work. Half an hour or so is usually taken up by checking emails and appointments for the rest of the day. I will then get everything that I need together for a catch up with my project manager at 10am: normally a description of the previous two days analysis, a synopsis of key insights learned and some ideas on what needs to be done next.

10:00am to 12:00pm. Usually once a day, or every other day, I catch up with my project manager or with a wider set of the project team. If it is a team meeting, the two or three ACs will take it in turn to informally present their recent output with senior consultants or Directors. Directors in turn offer their opinions on the output and always add several levels of insight into what we as ACs manage to glean from our own analysis – the benefit of 15+ years experience is always very evident. As well as these insights the Directors advise as to which areas warrant further research, which informs my agenda for the next couple of days.

12:00pm to 1:00pm. Lunch time! With the project under control and the next deadline a week away I can afford to take an hour for lunch. More often than not, this means going out for some sandwiches and taking them back to the social room in the office. There are normally ten or so people in the room at any one time, but with 15 new starters having just arrived, things are bit more hectic than usual. The conversation bounces between what everyone has been up to outside of work, upcoming plans, trashy news from one of the many magazines lying around the table, and occasionally discussion of an interesting project that has come up.

The make up of the firm is pretty diverse with backgrounds ranging from Theology to Microbiology, as well as the more predictable Economics and MBA students. This makes for some interesting chat. Moreover, most people at the firm have some serious get up and go about them so it’s always good to hear what people are getting up to outside of work.

1:00pm to 3:00pm. Back at my desk and after a quick web scan, back to work. After this morning’s meeting there are a couple of things to clarify from previous analyses and some new things to look at. To put it in context I am currently working on a project for a major retail client who is looking at a potential acquisition. They are in the very early stages of this process and have hired us to give a provisional estimate of the deal value – at this stage my job is predominantly to compare the cost structures of the two firms with a view to sizing the synergies that may be achieved were the companies to be combined.

As is often the case, the two companies have used their own favoured categorization methodologies for their costs; the first step therefore is to use our experience to make the cost categories comparable. After completing this yesterday, the Directors suggest we run our results past the client, and gain the perspectives of key differences in cost structures from some key industry brokers. To this end I track down a broker at one of the investment banks who has previously published research on the target company. I am pleasantly surprised to find him happy to take some time to give me his perspective on industry standard cost structures and what may drive departures from the norm. After this discussion I am pretty confident that we have painted an accurate picture of the target company’s costs structures. There are some small refinements to be made to incorporate some of the information he provided. After doing so I put together a summary of our methodology and outcomes and send it to the client for discussion later in the day.

3:00pm to 3:30pm. A round of coffees with people on my floor and enough time to send out a few emails.

3:30pm to 4:00pm. My contact at the client calls to discuss the work I sent through earlier. Our analysis indicated that the target company had lower staff costs per store than our client, driven by a lower number of staff per store, which turns out to be something that they had previously suspected but had never formalized. She also describes the benefits of higher staff numbers in terms of customer satisfaction, queue lengths etc. We discuss their previous attempts to quantify these and how these could be developed, and possible alternative methodologies. This may be something to look into further down the line. However, for now, we have an agreed set of cost estimates for the target firm and have a good idea of the cost implications should the target firm’s stores staff levels be raised to that of our client’s stores.

4:00pm to 7:30pm. After getting to a place where we are fairly comfortable on the cost side I now move on to the revenue side of the equation: Both our client and the target have published aggressive store expansion plans. The challenge is to estimate how these will translate into revenues going forward and the size and shape of the combined store portfolio if the target were to be acquired. The head of property at the client sent through his estimate of which of the target’s stores would be suitable for conversion, and which would be sold off upon acquisition. We begin to quantify these effects and at 7.30 we have made some good progress in setting up the model which I will continue to develop tomorrow. As mentioned earlier, the further you progress, the more autonomy you have over your workload. Thus, if things are under control, you have the freedom to leave earlier some evenings and make up the work another time. When deadlines approach that freedom is often no longer there, but for now, I’ll head off to enjoy the bright lights of London.

Businesses are generally interested in marketing and advertising the company’s products directly through the use of the conventional method in order to catch the attention of potential clients. The world wide web comes with a new test to the prospective client who is free to choose the information from the myriads of site which is right there within the browser.

Targeted traffic to your money sites boost beyond any doubt with the help of search engine optimization. If your current money sites overall performance is probably not really motivating, interact with a search engine optimization consultant and find out how search engines work. How your site can stand the battle of being on top of the list to promote visibility and access to your website. It is imperative that your site should gain leverage on top of the competition when it comes to organic ranking. The SEO Consultant and his squad will work on pulling down your competitors and take you on the top spot as far as search engines are concerned and make sure you have best visual so your site can earn a lot of credibility despite stiff competition. Consider your site not being listed with Google! This situation could possibly cut down your 70% chance in making a sale!

Typically the potential customer is definitely the one receiving the benefit of online searches having a huge selection of web pages to choose from. Search engine marketing is the actual method which is involved in an extremely complex approach to greatly enhance the presence of websites. Search engine optimization is the process involved in positioning your site on top of the first page of search results.

Finding your site a spot on the top ten of the search engines and helping you maintain and improve your position to the top is what the SEO consultants are expert of. When you are on top of the first page, traffic starts to accumulate and automatically the possibility of the users turning into clients and buyers will also go up! A SEO consultant should understand first the objective and the advertising scheme of the company he is working. He should also understand the budgeting restrictions and try to make an in depth analysis of the present placement of the website and should be able to suggest the selected methods with regards to the optimization of your website as well as redesigning of your current website, in order to get improved search results. The optimization procedure takes an estimated length of time to be able to achieve the precise position in order to get a good volume of traffic. The visibility of your website will certainly generate potential customers and depending on the site content they are converted which is essential for the growth of your company.

It is really important to know the goals and objectives of the web site. They then simply assess or evaluate the strengths and availability of resources before embarking on a draft plan in order to jack up the site with visitors. A change of the site content is essential in converting a potential customer, the convincing power and the ability to make visitors press the “buy” or the “add to cart” button is what every site need. A little change might be needed when it comes to the design to make a user-friendly a website as we have to consider also the duration of the site to load. We need to keep our potential customers busy and do not have a chance to think of visiting other sites because of the longer length of time for our site to load.

You must understand that your website is going to compete and needs to survive in this competitive world it should certainly possess all the characteristics with the best of its kind. Most people are unable to do this. You need to rely on a SEO consultant to provide the maximum visibility as well as potential customers to your money site by means of applying special techniques along with eye catching keyword phrases. What are you waiting now? Work with the best search engine optimization consultant you can get. The best way is to ask your friends first if they know someone as long as you don’t compete with each other or you can try going to oDesk where you are able to get a chance to interview a lot of providers according to their skill. A tip for you to be able to screen the providers faster is by posting a job with specific skills or who passed specific exams.