Warning! This column isn’t about blaming salespeople for failing to meet their numbers.
What it is about is understanding the shifting landscape in the sales function of any business, in which growing the top line, reducing costs and maintaining proper customer service are all important factors of making the sale.
Certainly, finding ways to use the Internet to facilitate the sales process is a priority. At the top of any list is what can be called sales communication, the task of making it possible for salespeople to stay in close contact with their customers. The successful salesperson must implement a wide array of tactics to grow a book of business.
For this to occur, it may be helpful for salespeople to reconfigure both their thinking and their practices in specific ways:
• Move to “It’s up to us.” Closing the deal is the salesperson’s symbol of success, and accomplishing the task by himself is part of the job’s ethos.
The team selling concept is an attempt to move from a “me” to more of an “us” approach. But while it’s a helpful step, it may miss the mark.
First American Insurance Underwriters, Inc., a life insurance and annuities wholesale brokerage firm, sees the winning formula as a combination of a salesperson’s in-depth experience and the company’s specialized expertise, particularly when dealing with complex financial issues. One is not more important than the other; it takes both.
• Become an extension of the customer. The Internet is having a formidable impact on more than distribution channels. Before, the bond between salesperson and customer was primarily a relationship, leading to the assumption that all dealings with the customer must go through the salesperson.
With the Internet, that assumption ended. Buyers have learned they can depend on the Internet to perform up to our expectations. They use it as an extension of themselves.
What does this mean in terms of the salesperson’s relationship with customers? More and more customers may be measuring a salesperson’s value against their online experience. This means they expect the salesperson to serve as an extension of themselves.
Ramon Avila, the George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Ball State University in Indiana, says research indicates that women may be better able to deal with that challenge.
“In sales, you have to be really people-oriented,” he says. “You have to listen and understand the client’s wants and needs. … Women are generally better at that than most men.”
• Move beyond product knowledge. Again, before the Internet and, more particularly before Google, salespeople were the primary source of product knowledge. Finding the information that only sales staff possessed is only nanoseconds away today.
Equally important is the fact that software is simplifying all types of products, making them more intuitive in function. On a recent evening, only one person showed up at an Apple store for a class on using the iPhone!
What customers need – whether B-to-C or B-to-B – is a way to maximize the benefits of what they buy. Where salespeople generally stopped in the past is just the beginning today.
• Never dispose of prospective customers. Although there are prospects who never become customers, there are others who will. And that presents an opportunity.
We never want to make a mistake when buying, so we tend to rely on resources we already feel comfortable with, even if we haven’t bought from them in a long time. These can often be the easiest sales: the customer is ready to buy and price can become quite secondary.
What’s so interesting about these situations is how pleased these late-blooming prospects are to be placing an order. It’s almost as if they are finally repaying an overdue debt for the time and effort invested in them.
• Become marketing-driven. It may seem that the words “marketing-driven” and “salesperson” are incompatible. What has someone in sales to do with marketing?
The answer is found in what is happening in sales. Every salesperson is expected to accomplish more today, as well as tomorrow. Many are being handed larger territories, while still others are being given additional lines of business. Inevitably, the strategy is to focus on the biggest customers and the best prospects and to neglect the rest.
When asked about this situation, the response is almost always, “I’ve just been so busy, I haven’t had time to get to them.” This is not an acceptable answer.
The goal of the marketing-driven salesperson is not to meet with or even to speak with every possible prospect or customer. Some require regular direct contact, either by phone or in person. The majority, however, can be “touched,” at least monthly, with e-mail bulletins that offer new ideas, concepts and solutions (not just more product information) and that encourage recipients to respond.
The goal of this marketing strategy is threefold: 1) to demonstrate that the salesperson is a valuable resource; 2) to give the recipient the opportunity to respond immediately; 3) to create a stream of sales over time.
A marketing-driven approach is not simply to “get the message out,” but, more important, to constantly connect with both customers and prospects in a way that helps them recognize the salesperson’s value. •
John R. Graham is president of Graham Communications, a marketing and sales consulting firm. He can be reached at j_graham@grahamcomm.com.
