4 Sales Tactics To Put Your Salespeople Back In Control
We recently posed this question to the LinkedIn business community, “Which challenge in today’s market most overwhelms you / your sales people?”
- 44% of the respondents said that their customers’ loss of business weighed heaviest on their sales teams.
- 18% said that customer focus on price most overwhelmed their salespeople,
- While another 15% cited the customer’s lack of vision as the main culprit.
- Finally, 12% targeted the salesperson’s workload as overwhelming.
Business “Gold” (AKA Good Sales Strategy) Some experts say “gold” is the best investment you can make these days. From the comments of our poll respondents, it appears that a good sales strategy is “gold” as well. Sales strategy – clearly communicated to the sales team – can help them regain control in the sales effort, and navigate today’s murky economic waters with a purpose. Here’s a sampling of comments:
- Help The Sales Team Apply Effort Where It Matters - “Salespeople have to be reminded to focus on what they can control,” says Mike O’Reilly (GM, ITW Construction), “Sales leaders have to help their salespeople identify where they can win today.” O’Reilly points to businesses that will benefit from the Economic Stimulus Bill. To leverage this new reality, sales leaders can guide their people to identify accounts that will benefit from that bill and work with those customers now to help them plan how they’ll score wins once the stimulus dollars roll in.
- Help The Sales Team Guide Their Customers To Look Ahead - “We have had some limited success with discussions on how clients are preparing for when business turns around,” says Jay Wysocki (Regional Program Manager at CEI). Strategic selling may require that you teach your salespeople how to lead such discussions.
- Help The Sales Team Practice Extreme Resourcefulness – “A client of ours sells 25% of its production to the auto industry here,” said Flavio Veiga, a business acquaintance of mine from Brazil, “The auto industry simply stopped manufacturing cars in November, December, and half of January. Nothing the salesmen could do would make a sale. We [created], along with the salespersons, actions to be implemented with the procurement officials such that when they buy again, they will be more likely to buy from this company, instead of from their main competitors. Sure enough, the government reduced the tax on automobiles, sales increased, the factories started producing again, and our customer is happy again.”
- Help The Sales Team Recall Its Role – “It’s easy to act like a victim in this economy,” O’Reilly added, “however, we did not hire salespeople to be ‘victims.” We hired them to be ‘difference makers.’” O’Reilly’s advice reminds us that market leaders emerge in any economy – good or bad.
The Bottom Line
We pay our salespeople to work around obstacles to discover and pursue available profit opportunities that coexist with market challenges. “Of course the loss of business has to be a concern,” responded James Harsche (Sales Rep, Port Supply), “but this is what we train for, to help turn that around.”
Share Your Golden Insight
Today's market presents unique challenges for sure, but I've found that
unique challenges often translate into unique opportunities. What has
crossed your mind lately about competing in this market?