The Direct Selling Education Foundation has posted an article on ways to increase your sales. While targeted at direct sellers (duh) these suggestions would work well for any salesperson or small business owner.

Of particular interest is the idea of offering a 'quick sale,' a product that is both inexpensive and immediately available. This is a great foot-in-the-door technique because once you've convinced someone to buy from you, even if it's a tiny purchase, he's much more likely to listen when you try to sell him your BIG product.

6 Ideas to Increase Sales

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Webinar Wednesday is a celebration of all things webinar. You will find upcoming webinars, links to recorded webinars for those who missed them on the first go-round, and occasional recaps of webinars I recently attended.

New Webinars:

"Sales Forecasts: How to Get a Realistic View of Sales Opportunities" (Thursday, May 24th 2:00 pm ET) - hosted by Selling Power. Tips and tricks for creating accurate sales forecasts.

"Email Marketing 101: Tips to Improve Email Responses" (Thursday, May 24th 2:00 pm ET) - hosted by Pinpointe. Tips on how to design emails that will intrigue recipients without being flagged as spam.

"Why Do Buyers Do That?" (Thursday, May 24th 3:00 pm ET) - hosted by Laura Posey. How buyers think, and what will make them want to buy from you.

"Reach Your Revenue Goals This Quarter: Solutions to Close Deals Faster" (Wednesday, June 6th 1:00 pm ET) - hosted by DocuSign. Use electronic signatures to expedite your deals.

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Everybody fools themselves about something. With salespeople it's a particularly dangerous practice because those self-deceptions alter our attitudes, which can have a huge impact on sales success. Identifying and stomping out those little delusions is an important step.

While everyone tends to fool themselves in different ways, salespeople tend to have a few Big Lies that are pretty consistent. Odds are that you've accepted at least one of these common delusions and suffered for it.

5 Common Sales Delusions

Related Reading
Controlling Your Sales Cycle
Elements of a Great Sales Plan

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A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about Selling Power's take on the use of logic and emotion in sales. Yesterday The Customer Collective blog tackled the same subject from a different perspective. Trish Bertuzzi argued that salespeople should deploy logical and emotional arguments in equal measure.

Bertuzzi cited Jill Konrath's training style as an example, describing how Jill starts out by presenting some interesting facts and then proceeds to draw an emotional word-picture of a typical buyer's day. She uses logic to demonstrate the facts behind the problem (selling to busy, important prospects) and then uses emotion to help her students appreciate that problem at the gut level. Bertuzzi believes that this is a great model for any salesperson.

Selling Is Neither Unknowable Wizardry Nor Chemical Reaction

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