By Ari Galper, Creator of Unlock The Game®

… Continued from Part 1

The bottom line is:

When a prospect gives you the “silent treatment,” it doesn’t mean you’ve lost the sale. It just means you don’t know the truth yet.

What you need to do is call and learn the truth.

Why is learning the truth so important?

Here are 4 important reasons:

1. You stop losing confidence in your selling ability. The “silent treatment” threatens our “hopeium.” We start blaming ourselves. We don’t know where we stand — a painful state of limbo. Our self-talk is negative and full of self-blame, and we’re on pins and needles wondering whether the sale will still come through somehow.

2. You increase your selling efficiency and decrease your stress level. Once you learn the truth about your prospect’s situation, you can either stay involved with the prospect or move on. I often say, “A ‘no’ is almost as valuable as a ‘yes.’” Why? Because it frees up your time to find prospects who are a better fit with your solution. This lets you work much more efficiently because you can quickly weed out prospects who aren’t going to buy. Knowing the prospect’s truth lets you walk away without that guilt-laden voice whispering, “If you give up, you don’t have what it takes.”

Learning your prospect’s truth translates into tangible results that equal real dollars. You’ll also put an end to the self-sabotaging stress that comes from living in “silent treatment” limbo.

3. Sales pressure pushes prospects away. When you respond to the “silent treatment” with calls and e-mails, you’re really telling them that you’re determined to move the sales process forward — which means you’re looking out for your needs, not theirs. This makes them mistrust you and run the other way.

4. The “silent treatment” — totally breaking off communication — is how prospects protect themselves from sales pressure when they don’t feel comfortable telling us their truth. The more we press, the more they run.

But the opposite is true, too. The more we relax and invite the truth, the more straightforward they’ll be with us. Prospects feel okay sharing what’s going on with them when they know we’re okay with hearing it.

How to Reopen Communication

After Anthony and I had talked about some of these issues, he said, “This all makes a lot of sense, Ari, but I’m still not sure what to say when I make that call.”

It’s simpler than you might think.

* First, simply give your prospect a call. (E-mail and voicemail are very impersonal, so use them only as last resorts if you can’t reach your prospect after several phone calls.)

* Second, take responsibility and apologize for having caused the “silent treatment”. Here’s some language I suggested to Anthony that will make prospects feel safe enough to open up and tell you the truth about their situation:

“Hi, Jim, it’s Anthony. I just wanted, first of all, to call and apologize that we ended up not being able to connect. I feel like somewhere along the way maybe I dropped the ball, or I didn’t give you the information you needed. I’m not calling to move things forward because I’m assuming you’ve probably gone ahead with someone else, and that’s perfectly okay. I’m just checking to see if you may have some feedback as to where I can improve for next time.”

When you respond to the “silent treatment” this way, the results will probably surprise you. You may even learn that the prospect has legitimate reasons for not having gotten back to you.

You’ll also find yourself more productive and less frustrated. It’ll make a world of difference in your productivity level, your stress level, your income, and how much you enjoy what you’re doing.

Remember…

You haven’t lost the sale. You just don’t know the truth yet.

Ari Galper is the World’s #1 Authority on Trust-Based Selling and the creator of Unlock The Game®, a new sales mindset that overturns the notion of selling as we know it today. Unlock The Game has been available for over 10 years and has made sales breakthroughs for business owners and entrepreneurs in over 38 countries. You can take a Free Test Drive of Unlock The Game by downloading Ari’s free audio seminar “7 Sales Secrets Even The Sales Gurus Don’t Know!” atwww.UnlockTheGame.com.

By Ari Galper, Creator of Unlock The Game®

If you’ve been selling for a while, you’ve probably had at least one experience in which your prospect suddenly started giving you the “silent treatment.”

Anthony described this dilemma very poignantly when he called me a few weeks ago:

“Ari, I don’t know what to do when I get hit with the ‘silent treatment’ — you know, when I’ve worked with a prospect for quite a while, and we’ve had great conversations, and they’ve expressed interest in our solution — and then all of a sudden everything stops. I try calling them back once or twice. I even send a follow-up e-mail, but nothing. They just disappear. And I figure I’ve lost the sale, and I don’t know what I did wrong, or what to do next. It makes selling feel like such a painful and arduous process.”
If this has happened to you, you may have felt anxious and confused. You may have told yourself, “It’s not as if I’m the one who did anything wrong. I put everything into the relationship. How can I rescue the sale if I can’t even get them to talk to me?”

The “Hopeium” Trap

There is a pressure-free way to reestablish communication when your prospect starts giving you the “silent treatment.” But first, it’s important to understand why the situation happened in the first place.
Most of us who sell get caught up in “hopeium,” a comical term that means we focus our hopes and desires on making the sale. But hopeium can be a trap, because it’s impossible for you to keep in mind your most important goal: to learn your prospect’s truth.

When we fix our minds on the outcome — making the sale — we automatically begin anticipating how the process will go, and we also begin expecting that things will happen as we hope they will.
But if we’re in that mindset and our prospect suddenly breaks off communication, we feel lost, anxious, frustrated, discouraged, and confused. We become preoccupied with what went wrong.

We may even feel betrayed.

Is there any way to clear up the mystery?

Yes, by giving up your agenda and learning the truth about where you stand with your prospect –and being ok with whatever the truth may be. “But how can I learn the truth when they’re avoiding me?” you may ask. “And why do I need to let go of the sale?”

Let’s take the second question first. If you approach your prospect while you still hope the sale will happen, you’ll introduce sales pressure into the relationship. This will push your prospect away from you and destroy any trust you have developed with them. Instead, you can eliminate sales pressure by telling them that you’re okay with their decision if they’ve decided not to move forward.

In other words, you take a step back instead of trying to chase and follow up with calls because you’re focused on getting a “yes.”

… Check back at 12 noon Eastern Time for Part 2 and learn the steps on how to avoid the Silent Treatment

Ari Galper is the World’s #1 Authority on Trust-Based Selling and the creator of Unlock The Game®, a new sales mindset that overturns the notion of selling as we know it today. Unlock The Game has been available for over 10 years and has made sales breakthroughs for business owners and entrepreneurs in over 38 countries. You can take a Free Test Drive of Unlock The Game by downloading Ari’s free audio seminar “7 Sales Secrets Even The Sales Gurus Don’t Know!” at www.UnlockTheGame.com.

By Nika Stewart - http://laptopmom.com/

So you want to make more money, but you don’t want to work more hours. You see people doing it, right? What are they actually doing to make more money without taking away from important family and “me” time? It’s simple: LEVERAGE.

What is leverage? Creating leverage in your business means to multiply the impact of your work so that you can give more value to more people without working more hours. Take a service business as an example. You typically work with clients one-on-one. What if you were able to take the information that you are sharing with one client at one particular time, and share it with, let’s say, 20 clients at the same time? That is leverage. What are successful mom entrepreneurs doing to build leverage into their businesses to make more money without sacrificing family priorities?

#1: Teach – If you are taking the time to give value, you might as well have lots of people receiving your brilliance. Teaching a class to a room full of people is a leveraged way to share your information. Want even more leverage? Teach the class as a teleseminar and invite people from all over the world to call in.

#2: Get Lazy – No need to create additional content. Multiply your income by turning what you have already done into new formats. Transcribe your classes and create an e-book. Gather your class recordings and develop a home-study course. Package your articles into a special report. Leverage the content your already have!

#3: Get S.A.D. – Systemize, Automate, Delegate. Create systems for all your business tasks to assure higher productivity and greater income. Use technology to automate tasks that take a lot of your time, and suddenly you have many more hours each week to build your business. “Clone” yourself by delegating lower-level tasks, and twice the work can be done in the same amount of time.

#4: Be Passive – Offer your value as information products. If you create an e-book or downloadable audio class, your work is done. But your program can be purchased over and over and over (while you are on vacation, while you are taking the kids to school, while you are sleeping).

#5: Your Unpaid Sales Force - Leverage your marketing efforts by having other people recommend your products and programs. How? With an online affiliate program. Affiliates earn commission only if a sale occurs, so you don’t have to pay out any money until money comes in. And you’re getting in front of many more people who would never have heard about your products (without working any more hours). If you’re tired of trading time for money, and you are ready to create real wealth, without sacrificing other priorities, it’s time to build leverage into your business. You will create more freedom, more flexibility, and more income.

Nika Stewart, The Laptop Mom, has a fanatical obsession with helping moms grow freedom-based, flexible, at-home businesses built on their passions and gifts. Her Laptop Mom S.U.C.C.E.S.S. System shows moms how to build passive streams of income while spreading their brilliance in a big way – all without sacrificing family priorities.

Check out how 8 moms do it in the free e-book, 8 Easy Ways to Become a Laptop Mom. Grab your copy here: http://www.laptopmom.com

By Liz Wendling

Burnout is a debilitating condition in any profession, but can be a growth killer for anyone in network marketing or direct sales.

Very few network marketers recognize or admit to burnout, especially when they are in the midst of burning out. Some of the red flag symptoms include increased absenteeism, withdrawal, deteriorating performance, low energy and feelings of dread at the thought of another day of work.  Then cynicism sets in and they begin complaining about their customers, managers, the products they sell and the economy they have to sell in.

Sales burnout can be beaten, so when the symptoms and warning signs begin to show up, make sure to take action to prevent burnout from taking hold.  Here are 5 ways to slay the burnout beast:

1. Take care of yourself: Salespeople that are always on the run can fall into bad eating habits. Eating fast food in the car between sales calls, getting snacks from vending machines and grabbing something quick running through airports can pack on the pounds and adversely affect health. How can you take care of customers and perform your peak efficiency if you body is not at its peak?
2. Take some time off: How long has it been since your last vacation?  A long weekend in 1998? Many salespeople put off vacations and don’t spend time on their favorite hobbies. Everybody needs a break.  Play a round of golf, schedule a massage, go for a workout or just hang out.  Put it on your calendar and schedule it just like you would an appointment with a customer.
3. Leave work at work:  Many business and sales professionals are now tethered to their job via a Blackberry, Droid or some other device. It becomes increasingly difficult to avoid working twenty four hours a day. Occasionally we all have to work at night or on the weekends. The key is to set an expectation when important projects arise. If you really don’t need to work, keep the electronics off. Most MLM professionals work in home offices – try to set aside certain hours that you won’t spend in your home office.
4. Start fresh with a positive attitude: When people get into the burnout phase, they tend to dwell on it. Start fresh and leave the past where it belongs, in the past.  If you haven’t been seeing enough customers, cold calling or networking, stop dwelling on failures and focus on fresh opportunities. Start thinking, acting and talking like an upbeat peak performer.  It is an essential ingredient to your sales success.
5. Change your routine:  Shake up your day and make a complete change to your routine. Change time you wake up, the time you leave for work, what you do for lunch…everything! Restructure your day and watch what happens to your mindset and your paycheck. Ruts and routines are bad for business, and devastating for sales people.

Recognizing the symptoms and taking action can save your sanity or your business.

Liz Wendling is one of Denver’s top sales coaches and believes everyone is in sales. Visit her website www.salescoachforwomen.com or e-mail Liz@salescoachforwomen.com

By Heidi Miller

How to post personably in social media while representing a brand

Every network marketer knows that real, personal connections are where the bread is buttered. However, as the person grows within the network, the brand can take over.

With respect to social media interactions, as in real life, not a lot of specific advice is given as to how to avoid being opaque and disengenuous and turning people off. Marketers using social media can run across this challenge when they find themselves in the position of wanting to speak as a human being but while also representing themselves as a personal brand.

What makes a post come across as insincere and corporate instead of transparent and human?

How to avoid sounding like a corporate robot

1. Buzzword bingo. Buzzwords such as “deploy,” “minimize,” and “superior” come across as carefully chosen for their marketing impact and actually serve to dilute the content and create the feel of a corporate ad rather than a human leaving an honest opinion.
2. Sentence length. Real humans don’t cram this many perfectly-massaged marketing messages into one sentence. Instead, we tend to alternate short, summary thoughts with longer, explanatory ones.
3. Random capitalization. For some reason, spammers love to capitalize random words for no apparent reason. Perhaps they think the words can’t speak for themselves?
4. Gratuitous quotation use. Again, I’ve never really understood why, but spammers and those who hand-letter signs along the highway have an affinity for putting quotation marks around words and phrases that are not being quoted by anyone. For more fun on this, check out this great site documenting unnecessary quotes in hand-lettered signs around the world.
5. Obvious sales pitch. This almost goes without saying… except that it doesn’t, since some folks still seem to think that a conversation with a stranger is the right place to jump in and make a sales pitch. Whether you are online or face-to-face, straight-out selling to strangers isn’t a useful tactic. If you’re not sure what is appropriate in a conversation, hint: “Buy my stuff now!” isn’t. Never has been.

How to Post as a Personal Brand

1. Write the way you speak. There is a time and place for formal, lengthy, perfectly-massaged messages. A blog or discussion group isn’t it. Do your readers a favor and use conversational language for your online writing. With the fire hose of information today, most visitors are skimming for key concepts; if intrigued, some will slow down and read the entire article. Don’t obfuscate with marketing speak pre-approved by the PR department. Just be yourself.
2. Don’t be obtuse. Use spoken language as your guideline for sentence structure. Alternate long and short sentences, and don’t add independent clauses where you would normally start a new sentence. If you’re unsure, say your response out loud. Then transcribe it and write it up. Again, it’s a conversation, so write the way you talk.
3. Follow capitalization rules. Just because you want to shout about your product doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow standard rules of grammar, mechanics and usage. Listen to this Grammar Girl episode on capitalizing proper nouns. Understand that capitalizing common nouns, such as revenue, performance, or job candidate as we see above, is patently incorrect and will make you look like an illiterate spammer. Or worse, an SEO marketer.
4. Don’t put quotation marks around anything that isn’t a direct quotation. If you can’t cite the source, don’t use quotes. If you absolutely must emphasize a word (and you probably don’t need to if you’re being authentic), use italics. For more information on the correct use of quotation marks, check out Grammar Girl’s episode on the topic.
5. Contribute to the conversation. The value of participation in a community is equivalent to the value of participating in a live networking group. The focus isn’t on direct sales to group members; for that, we can go to your website. Discussion boards, like networking groups, exist for conversation, and many even monitor and enforce no-selling and no-promotion rules quite strictly. The value of the discussion lies in the engagement and communication among its members. Instead of selling, try adding something useful to the conversation. If the discussion sparks an insight, try blogging about it in more detail and then linking to the blog post with the comment, “Hey, this was so interesting that I wrote out my thoughts in more detail on my blog [link]. Would love to know what you think.”

Would you rather do business with a  brand that sounds a bit more like a corporate robot or a human being?