Basic 5

the basic principles for good sales results
 
 
Sales results: lots of authors wrote about it. Methods were developed, courses were attended, seminars and sales conferences were organised to raise sales results. Often with success, but even more often without any notable effects. How is that possible? How can so much effort lead to so little result?
 
An inappropriate start of a sales plan is very often the first mistake a sales manager makes: he does not bring enough structure to his sales organisation, which consequently leads to salesmen walking around like beheaded chickens, being busy with who knows what, but never with selling more and selling better than before the manager’s interference. Nevertheless it is not very difficult to improve sales if the following five basis questions are addressed: they bring structure and a solid base to your sales plan:
 
the ‘Basic Five’
  • What are we really good at
  • Who can take advantage of that
  • What advantage can they get if they do business with us?
  • How can we prove our outstanding characteristics?
  • How can we draw attention of clients and target group?
 
I will explain these five items one by one:
 
What are we really good at?
A difficult question to answer: how can this question be answered neutrally and objectively? Who is going to decide that? How can it be proven to be neutral? And are you not too modest in your judgement? Do your competitors do better than you, or is it the other way around? How do you know for sure?
If we ask our clients ‘What are you really good at?’ they very often respond in a first reaction with general comments: non-issues like ‘flexibility’, ‘reliability’ and ‘knowledge level’. Of course we don’t accept these arguments:
‘No, what are you really good at? What makes you proud? What is special about your company? What are you doing far better than your competitors?’
After a severe discussion with your staff you usually find an answer. And even if this is not the entire and objective truth, it’s also not very critical. Maybe a little bit of wishful thinking is even good: it provokes. Of course you should accomplish what you promise, but we will come to that later.
 
Who can take advantage of that?
 
What group of people can get benefits from the things you are good at? We are talking about your target group. How could you find them? Can you identify the promising prospects at this stage? A-potentials as we call them: the potential clients of which you in advance can say that they, as well as your company, will be very glad to do business; so mutual benefits. Now what we often see is that many sales representatives have the idea that ‘very much’ is good and ‘even more’ is better. We don’t agree: in our view it is much more preferable to look for quality rather than quantity building up a data base with high potential clients.
Think about this: whenever all sales representatives should work at let’s say five highly potential clients, and they all should report to you about the progress of their acquisition, about their worries, their successes and their objectives, then you could help them to be even more successful because you and all your salesmen would know these clients and their demands in detail: a small but top quality data base often brings more effort than huge lists of so-called prospects.
‘And what about all those small clients?’ many people ask us. ‘We can earn good money with them also, so why shouldn’t we work on them as well?’
Yes, maybe that is true, but realise that your sales representatives are very expensive employees, which can be best set in as efficiently as possible: with high potential clients. And if the smaller B-clients are so important for your company then you should consider using another marketing and sales tool like for example direct marketing. Making choices is sometimes very difficult, especially if you have to decide what NOT to do, but nevertheless it’s one of the main tasks of managers.
 
 
What advantage can (potential) clients get if they do business with us?
Clients only buy if they see any benefit in doing business. If not they simply won’t buy! That’s why you should identify yourself as well as possible with your client: get under his skin. You should get into his world of thought.
Formulate your strengths by reasoning backwards from the benefits he is looking for. This is a very crucial point: many salesmen talk about a standard list of benefits or even worse, of characteristics and functions of their product, and never ask about the demands of their clients, of the improvements they could make with the salesmen’s product, the benefits that their product can bring. Sales managers should watch their salesmen’s attitude very carefully in this respect: it’s the sales manager’s task to improve the commercial perception and negotiation skills of his sales crew.
 
Now how many sales arguments should a sales representative bring forward? In our view salesmen should have three or four very good reasons why this particular client should buy from him: the sales arguments are directly linked to the specific benefits this client can get if he is in business with the salesman’s company. Exclusively for this client, for his present situation, for his demands and triggers, and of course in close relation with the things the salesman’s company can do and wants to do. This will do perfectly: giving more sales arguments will only confuse your client. Again: make choices.
 
How can we prove our outstanding characteristics?
Calculations, inspection reports, certification documents, they all give proof of the quality of your company; they all ‘prove’ that you do what you promised to do. But these documents are a little bit artificial: we rather prefer the judgement of our clients. It’s a very strong motive when one of your clients certifies in official documents that he is very satisfied with your company, that you helped him to solve a problem, that you helped him to reduce his costs, to raise his sales, or to improve his organisation. A testimony like this – in marketing it’s often called a testimonial – is the best instrument to convince other clients. Use it as a sales instrument as often as possible.
Other possibilities to ‘prove’ the quality and reliability of your company are for instance articles in technical or trade journals read by your clients, interviews in local papers, even TV or radio interviews. Use as much photos of your company’s people and your clients as possible: real people talking about doing business. And if these interviewed clients are well known people, nobody doubts the reliability of your company.
 
How can we draw attention of clients and target group?
How can you again and again get your business message under the attention of your target group? What ‘vehicle’ do you choose?
There are many ‘vehicles‘  that can bring out your communication. It’s even an advantage if you use many different ways to get in touch with the potential clients you selected in your data base as described in the second of five basic questions. It is not useful to distribute your story very widely, especially if there are lots of costs involved in your way of communication. You want to communicate with a small group of A-potentials who you want to persuade to do business with you, and of course with your present clients to whom you are doing business already.
From the many ways you can choose of, we already discussed the publication of an article. It often appears not to be very difficult to arrange an interview from specialist journals read by your target group. If there is an article published, you could make photo copies and send it to each of your pre-selected potentials and present clients.
A periodical newsletter, send by regular mail or e-mail, keeping your target group informed about new developments. Of course you put a testimonial in it from a well satisfied client telling his story of cooperation between him and your company.
Your company’s website should also contain testimonials of clients, with photographs of the real people that are telling their statement about you.
It’s more a matter of inspiration, creativity and of course effort, than a large marketing budget: It’s Low Budget Marketing!
Another very important way of communication is the personal approach: the sales interview. Well prepared, all relevant benefits formulated: your tactical plan of attack is ready!
 
Epilogue
This article is about the five basic principles your sales plan should contain. But there is an earlier phase as well: your basic attitude. In our view it looks like this:
  • You always operate from your own strengths. That means that you have to know what your strengths are
  • You are pro-active: nobody else will initiate activities; you have to do that yourself
  • You are the manager: only you ‘pull the strings’!
 
From this basic thought, combined with the Basic Five, you are on pole position in your sales approach!
 
Jan Boeren
 
 

Five very difficult to answer but in itselve simple questions will help you to improve your sales

 

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Diez iez Vietnam

This book is about the story of life of prof. Adrie van Gelderen. I met him on one of my PUM missions where he was a local representative of PUM. Adrie told me he had a manuscript of his story of life and asked me my opinion about publishing it. I promised to read it and give my comments. And indeed I did: I told him that his book would not be a profitable cash cow, however, publishing your own literary thoughts will give tremendous satisfaction, it's fun to do and it's not expensive at all.

Now Adrie was seriously ill at that time and unfortunately he passed away before we could take his book into production. So we, being Adrie's friends, decided to publish the book posthumously and donate all the refunds to his 'affiliate-foundation'.

'Diez iez Vietnam!'  is written in English. A copy can be ordered by clicking the link.