Is It Time To Assess Your Sales Strategy?

Here are some ideas and questions to consider when planning a sales strategy.

Customer Focused Sales Strategy

Instead of looking at the steps to a sale consider stages a customer goes through in making a decision to go with your product or service.

: When selling to businesses rather then starting at the top or decision maker start with the persons who would benefit from your product or service. Start with the person/people who experience the problem that your service or product resolves.

Do not sell them Build a relationship with them and ask questions about their needs and problems. Find out whether it is a big concern and whether they are committed to solving it. Explore the need. Ask about the decision making process. Who makes the decisions how do they make decisions? When selling to individuals, Do Not Sell until you have explored the persons situation. What are their needs? How big is it? Are they committed to doing something about it? What have they tried? Did it work? What is their attitude toward your service or product?

Qualify the customer. Does the customer have a clear decisionprocess in place and have they used it to select one or more final contenders. What is the process? Failure to uncover purchase decision criteria may end in the sale going to someone else.

Assess your competition. Who do you think will be your competition? Ask

Follow the following steps before making a sales pitch.

1. Gain entry by appealing to their interest in being on top of things
2. Begin by asking questions to better understand the source of their dissatisfaction
3. Reassure them that you’re interested in their ideas and not out to sell them anything.
4. Help them to see the problem as serious enough to require immediate action
5. Query them about who’s who, what’s what, and where people are reporting problems
6. If a problem seems an opportunity for you, see if they’ll introduce you to the problem owner and enlist them to help you make a business case to the decision maker
7. Move on if you’re not getting the information or access you need
8. Sell when there is a need. Do not sell too quickly.
9. Approach the decision maker and build the relationship.