Top 7 Ways To Hone Your ISP Sales Performance

Every ISP has two types of sales: order-taking for dialup access, and proactive sales where you meet with clients to identify needs, solve problems, and pitch a proposal. Guess which is more demanding?

by Christopher M. Knight [August 30, 1999]

This article addresses the second type of sale, where a you attract or engage a client—using salesmanship skills—to sell your ISP services, whether they be a large volume of dialup accounts, ISDN, DSL, dedicated T1, DS3, ATM bandwidth or website hosting, design, promotion, etc.

Here are the seven most important things to think about:

1) Master your materials
To be a true leader, the minimum that the ISP salesperson needs to maintain a mastery of—

•  their product
•  the basics of the ISP industry
•  common objections and benefit-oriented comebacks
•  information on the top three competitors

—as well as understanding the sales cycle typically associated with this type of sale. This information would typically come from a sales manager. If you're a one person ISP show, you have a lot of reading to do.

2. Prepare, prepare, prepare
Use the night before and/or the weekends to prepare your proposals for the day or week ahead. This way, you're not taking precious selling time to accomplish these tasks. There are only so many hours during your sales day, and these MUST be free for contacting your clients and best prospects, making/delivering proposals, asking for orders, and handling any necessary followup.

3. Don't quit at quitting time
When it's time to go home, make just one more call. Imagine: If you did this five days a week, within a month, you will have made 20 more calls than your competitors—and probably everyone else in your office. Sales is a numbers game, and this is an easy way to get the odds working in your favor.

4. Lead; don't follow
Because this is a high tech industry, very rarely will your client know more than you about your services, but your goal is to not only educate throughout the sale process, but to manage the expectations of your client, so you're able to meet or exceed them. Some people believe that customer expectations are always customer-generated, but that is not always the case. You can easily set up the expectation for what and how the process will happen between your ISP and your new client-to-be.

5. Be generous
Send your prospects and clients-to-be little presents of information: Go to bat for them on research they might need, and supply them not just with the information they asked for, but also with answers to questions they may not have asked explicitly, but that were implied in your conversations.

Let's say, for example, that you are pitching a $5,000 website design/hosting job to an auto dealership. You might dig up some research on what his competitors are doing on the web, and send it to him along with your notes on how you think your potential client could do better. and if he was interested, to contact you.

6. Be thoughtful
Do things for your customer that you might not get paid for directly, such as solving billing issues, or going beyond the call of duty in any way, even if it means fighting your own internal red tape to make them happy.

7. Dress sharp
Keep your shirts pressed, shoes shined, and attitude buffed. :) The typical rule of thumb is to dress 15 percent better than your client. Don't over-dress or under-dress: You risk being excluded or not being taken seriously by a potential client who doesn't know you very well yet.

Great salespeople know that there is no simgle magic success secret in sales; rather it's hundreds of tiny details and action items wrapped around your sales goals and end outcomes. Stop thinking about the future, pull yourself into the present, and get to work.

Sales is a numbers game, and in an ideal day, you'll spend 4 to 6 hours or more in front of, or on the telephone with, customers, making proposals and asking for the order. If you're spending less than four hours a day in sales, and you're a full time rep, it may be time to ask yourself what the heck you are doing with your time, and possibly if you even belong in sales.

Great "sales machines" are not born, but rather are self made. If you believe you can do it, I know you can, and there is no greater job within an ISP than sales. All things are possible in a sales position, including management, VP / President or just higher personal income when commission selling.

One last piece of sales advice: Don't let anyone stop you from your success in sales—not your supervisor, your CEO, the ISP you work at, or the ISP industry in general. You and you alone are totally responsible for your sales.

To Your ISP Success!
Christopher Knight
Founder & Managing Editor ISP-Lists.com

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