May 08 2007
Thoughts On Strategic Selling
Now that I am posting twice every week, before possibly moving to every day, you will notice two things: First of all, I will be using a weekly theme and secondly, the posts will be in smaller digestible chunks – ahhhhh, …. I hear your audible relief !
This week’s theme is strategic selling, a subject that I know something about.
In most industries to-day, a handful of ideal customers have become universal targets. Nearly every industrial salesperson dreams of calling on the CEO’s or managing directors of those top companies, which logically means that there are maybe 500 customers for a million sellers. With such intense competition, conventional approaches are not equal to the challenge. Salespeople need to develop strategies that distinguish their products, services and their organisations in the mind of the customer.
Making a sale has always involved an element of systematic planning but strategic selling means more than rehearsing product information and timing the close. Strategic selling begins with understanding your company’s strategy, vision, and distinctiveness and then selecting high profile customers.
The next step, logically, is anticipating each stage of the buying process, from analysing the competition to identifying the influencers and decision-makers and being switched in to the buyer’s political issues. In other words, there is a need for a comprehensive strategic profile and rigorous opportunity assessment process.
Most important, strategic selling means strategising from the customer’s point of view. Top achievers see strategic selling as a routine part of their work - not a final resort.
If you have yet to discover the innovative and very clever Kevin Dwyer, then I urge you to acquaint yourself with him. He produces a weekly newsletter called “Winds Of Change” and in this week’s edition is a section on “Trust” – I quote:
“One might expect that trust was a normal state of mind for most people until they had some experience with others. Statistics from the 1990’s - pre-9/11 - suggest otherwise.
A World Values Survey revealed the following picture of the percentage of people saying that other people can be trusted.”
You will find the league table fascinating, unless you are French!!
Until Friday… JF
