7 Ways to Sell and Retain Your Integrity by Ari Galper

Based on e-mails I continue to receive daily, the answer is a resounding "yes."
Eliminating traditional sales thinking and tactics does take effort, because the messages of the sales "gurus" you've read over the years can continue to bubble up in your mind, especially when you're in the sales process.

Despite your good-hearted intentions of helping others with your service or product, do these traditional "sales tips" still pop up in your mind?

? Focus on "closing" the sale and it will happen

? When you feel rejected, brush it off and get ready for more

? If a potential client says "no," it's your job to turn it into a "yes"

? When a potential client challenges your product or service, just sell harder

These ideas reinforce the traditional sales message that your only focus should be on pursuing the end goal of making the "sale," regardless of the personal toll it might take on you and your potential client.

It is possible to sell without compromising your integrity.

Here are seven suggestions:

1. Focus on the getting to the "truth" of your potential client's situation. You may or may not be a fit for each other, so focusing on the end goal of making the sale only derails the trust-building process. Without trust, you compromise integrity.
2. Eliminate rejection once and for all by setting realistic expectations and avoiding traditional sales behaviors such as defensiveness, persuasion, and over-confidence. If you're not trying to sell, you can't be rejected.
3. Stop "chasing" potential clients who have no intention of buying. How can you do this? Shift your mindset and boost your truth-seeking skills so that you can quickly, yet graciously, discern whether the two of you are a potential "fit" or not.
4. Avoid calling people "prospects" or even thinking about them that way. People are people, and when you label them in your language or your thoughts, you dehumanize them and the sales process. "Prospect" reinforces the notion that sales is only a "numbers game." Train yourself to think about "potential clients" instead.
5. Take the "cold" out of your cold calling. Don't start with "Hi, my name is... I'm with... We do...". When you begin a conversation by making it about you, instead of about the other person, you immediately cut off the possibility of opening a dialogue. Try the more humble approach of asking "Maybe you can help me out for a second," and keep in mind that you're really calling to help them solve their problems.
6. Don't try to "overcome" objections. Instead, determine whether the objection is the client's truth or not. Then you can decide whether to continue to open the conversation.
7. Avoid using "I" or "We" in your e-mail communications to potential clients. These words indicate that the focus of your communication is on satisfying your needs rather than solving their problems. This sets the wrong tone for a potential relationship.

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About The Author: Ari Galper, founder of Unlock The Cold Calling Game makes cold calling painless and simple. Learn his cold calling secrets that even the sales gurus don't know. Listen to a free cold calling audio seminar, visit http://www.unlockthegame.com/

Markets and Target Markets

We defined market here as people or organizations with needs to satisfy, money to spend, and the willingnes to spend it. Within the same general market, there are groups of customers with different needs, different buying preferences, or product-use behavior. Not all customer who wear pants want to wear jeans. Not all firms the use computers want the same amount of memory or speed. The group of customers (people or organizations) for whom the seller designs a particular marketing mix is a target market.

Target Market Strategies.

There are two altenatif of target market strategies. One alternative is to threat the total market as a single unit-as one mass agregat market.Everyone in the market can be adequately satisfied with one marketing mix. This is sometimes called as a ‘shotgun’ approach (one program, broad market).

With the other alternative, the total market is viewed as consisting of several segment with differences significant enough that one marketing mix will not satisfy everyone or even a majority of the market. Therefore one or more submarket are selected as target market.

Market Segmentation.

Market segmentation is a process of identifying, describing and dividing market before select it as target market. In segmenting we first identify the needs of customers within a submarket and than decide if it is practical to develop a marketing mix to satisfy those needs.

The goal of segmentations is to divide a market so that each segment respond to a different or unique marketing mix. Three conditions help marketers move toward this goal:

• The basis for segmenting must be measurable, and data describing the characteristic must be obtainable. The age of customers is both measurable and obtainable.
• The market segment should be accessible through existing marketing institutions (middlemen, advertising media, company sales force) with a minimum of cost and wasted effort.
• The market segment should be large enough to be profitable. In concept, management could treat each single customer as a separate segment.

A company can segment its market in many different way. And the bases for segmentation vary from one product to another. However, the firs step is to divide a potential market into two broad categories: ultimate consumers and business users. The sole criterion for this segmentation is the customer’s reason for buying.

Ultimate Customers buy goods or services for their own personal or household use and are satisfying strictly nonbusiness wants. They commonly called the consumer market.

Business users are business, industrial, or institutional organizations that buy goods or services to use in their own organizations, to resell, or to make other products. They constitute the business market.

Segmenting markets into two above groups is significant from marketing point of view because the two segment buy differently. Consequently the marketing mix-product, distribution, pricing, and promotion-will depend on whether it is directed toward the consumer market or the business market.