Archive for the ‘Marketing Strategy & Planning’ Category

Not why customers buy, but why prospects become customers

Prospects buy from your company because they establish a belief that your company offers the best value for their money. Customers buy from you for the same reason. But what key factors move a prospect with questions into customer with beliefs?   When you can identify these factors, you’ll get sales performance improvement.

Part of the answer is features and benefits. But what is it that finally moves the prospect from an awareness of the benefits you offer to a belief that he will receive those benefits from your company?  One benefit he must believe in is value, which includes price. Price is a stated fact. When you quote a price, that’s the price he will pay. But what little things (or big) will comprise the value you offer?

In addition to price, value includes strength or durability; it includes delivery or availability; it includes service or support, and it includes performance or facilitation. All these factors may be included in the sales presentation, but what makes them believable? Everyone has at least some testimonials. What is going to cause each buying influence to believe in your product and your company?  Determining these factors requires sales process analysis.  When you identify these factors, you will get productivity improvement.

Just to make your sales management job harder, each buying influence may have different factors that result in believability. And at least some of those factors will be hidden, or not obvious. It’s not a matter of just telling the truth, it’s a matter of what little things can go wrong – or will go right. It’s a matter of gaining confidence in your company, and its ability to deliver value. No supplier is perfect, so what are going to be your company’s imperfections?

What does your prospect know about your company when your salesperson walks in the door? What preconceived attitudes or beliefs does he have? What is it that is going to cause each buying influence to commit to your company? There’s a point at which every buying influence turns from negative or neutral to positive. There’s a point at which each buying influence believes that it will be worth the effort to exchange a known supplier for an unknown one.

Again, those factors may be different for each buying influence. What can you do to identify their concerns and reveal their decision criteria? The answer, is going to be different in almost every case. Thus, for effective sales management these questions must be asked, and then answered, in every case. For suggestions on how to answer these questions. ask for Knotes and Comments 201 (“Sales As A Production Process”) and 205 (“The Easiest Way To Increase Sales”).

Is To Make It Easier For Your Salespeople^* To Sell More

While Making It Easier For You To Manage Sales Development

*especially independent rep salespeople

If what you’re doing now isn’t producing the results you want, Review It and Revise It!  Extensive experience reveals that simply applying some basic sales development tactics can provide significant productivity improvement.  As an added benefit, implementing these tactics will make it easier to manage sales development.

1. Know To Whom You Want To Sell – Targeting

2. Know Why Prospects Will Buy From You – Positioning

3. Use Process Control to Guide Sales Progress – Process

Here’s where most sales management  falters.  You don’t want to give your sales  people a script to follow, but you do want to provide guidance.

4. Use Quality Assurance to Measure Sales Progress – Measurement

If you’ve identified the steps in the sales process, then the salesperson knows when each step has been completed.  Now  just identify or categorize the steps, and you have a measurable process, and improved sales productivity.

It’s true. very little in sales is black and white, it’s more often a shade of gray. But think how much easier it is to modify a process step with a comment than to try and describe the whole situation.

5. Use Quality Assurance When Sourcing Salespeople – Selection

Sure it’s more work, but considering the investment and expected return, it’s worth it to make sure.

To learn more about what you can do to make your life easier, ask for Knotes & Comments 205.

The Primary Mistakes That Prevent Getting The Reps and The Results You Want

And How To Solve Them

It takes significant time and effort to find and retain a high performance independent rep agency.  To maximize your return on sales management investment, you need to prepare a strong foundation.

To achieve reasonable sales productivity, there should be  at least $1 million or more in annual sales potential  in a territory with good potential.  To achieve  optimum sales performance requires a highly motivated rep agency plus good sales management practices.

A. Abdicated Management

It’s a prevalent attitude among sales management that sales development and marketing can be delegated.  For sales, manufacturers want to delegate it to independent reps.

SOLUTION: You shouldn’t expect to delegate your company’s income.  You need a management system that will direct reps into the highest potential accounts and then help them get the expected results.

B. Obsessive Management

Asking salespeople, or reps, to submit subjective commentary status reports is counter productive.  You don’t want/need to know everything that happened on every sales call.

SOLUTION: You only want the facts, but you should help the rep gather them.  You need to determine each target account’s sales potential, and then help the rep to make a sale.  You also need to know each agency’s true earnings objective, and then help them reach it.

• Learn the four things you can do to increase your sales – and the rep’s earnings – while building your earnings.  Ask for  Knotes & Comments  206.

is to help your salespeople close orders.

As a Harvard Business Review article pointed out, “boost your sales reps’ productivity not by hiring the most-gifted individuals but by helping existing reps sell more.”[1]

It may sound too easy to be true, but it’s a sales strategy that works!  We’ve been helping clients implement this strategy since 1977.

If you are already getting all the sales you think are available during this economy based on identified target accounts (see If You Covered the Territory: KC 102), then you DO have a challenge.  If you believe that sales could be increased despite the economy by using effective targeting and process control, then you have an obligation.

Your obligation, of course, is to determine how to improve your targeting and better manage your sales process.  The two simplistic answers are:

• Refine and redirect your targeting with database marketing, and/or
• Refine and apply quality assurance management to your sales process.

Targeting, of course, means you need a complete and prioritized list of target accounts, plus some easy way for you – and each salesperson – to monitor and measure coverage.  Yes, I did say easy.  The process may require a little effort for you to set up, but it will then be easy for you and your salespeople (including independent reps) to use.

Now is a very good time for you to help your salespeople advance from the art of selling to the science of order production (see You Can Achieve Profitable Growth by Treating Sales as a Production Process: KC 201).  Let’s discuss how you might implement Sales Performance Quality Assurance™, to maker it easier for both you and your salespeople to monitor and manage sales growth.

Phone or e-mail to get a dialog going.

[1] “The New Science of Sales Force Productivity;” Harvard Business Review Article; September 1,  2006

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “if we but know what to do with it. ”

Yes, I’m old enough in my business career to have been  through a number of  “down turns”  in our economy.  I offer my comments on some previous recessions on our newly published web page to those of you who are willing to consider that age can (but doesn’t always)  contribute to wisdom!

Having not been blessed with a silver spoon, I have had to use the “Power of Positive Thinking” many times during my career.  This attitude doesn’t solve problems, but it should initiate enough creative thinking to come up with alternatives to “wringing your hands.”

If  one of your major concerns is building sales, it’s possible/probable that the perspective and experience of Growth Development Partners can help.  Ask for Knotes & Comments 104. Give us a call, or send an e-mail. We’ll try to offer a fresh approach!proach!