May 10 2009
Selling Strategically – What Exactly Does That Mean?
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.
And Now the Good News:
It is now a given fact in any sales-related seminar or conference you may attend that traditional sales methods are being relegated to the annals of history. The new, more discerning customers of today have seen to that. They now wield greater bargaining power, demand more value for money and have become more knowledgeable and professional when it comes to decision-making. Suppliers are now faced with rising customer expectations and the need to become more flexible to the requirements of each individual client.
Yet the key to differentiation lies within these expectations, since more complex buying decisions lead customers to value closer links with their suppliers.
Today’s News: On Tuesday, we will witness the launch of the new Top Sales Expert’s site – probably the most significant sales related site on the internet. To coincide with the re-launch, a new Executive Board has been formed to oversee the team, and a “working commitee” will also be appointed in the coming weeks.
Here is the new board.
No doubt you will recognise most of them?
Top row, left to right: Paul McCord, Jill Konrath, Erm me, Colleen Francis, Keith Rosen and Joanne Black.
Bottom row: Wendy Weiss, Dr. Greg Stebbins, Nancy D. Solomon, Kevin Eikenberry, Linda Richardson and Kendra Lee.
Experts from every conceivable field, and no, I am not going to tell you how many combined years of experience we have!
More news on the TSE launch tomorrow, but think CHOICE!
Tomorrow: My guest on The JF Guest Author Spot is my good chum Joanne Black, who is of course the leading expert in the world on referral selling and the author of the mega selling “No More Cold Calling” – be sure to join us.
I definitely agree that selling into large requires the ability to do “strategic selling”. Having worked for over 10 years a Sales Engineer, I have seen reps who can sell strategically and some who just can’t. Do you think that there are still roles for salespeople that are great at relationships but can’t do strategic level work? Perhaps in midmarket sales or as farmers rather than hunters? Can they be trained?
I also think that people get hung up on the strategic part of the process. In my experience the great salespeople are the ones that can analyze the situation but are also very intuitive. I am not convinced that just because sales need to be more “strategic” that they are any more logical than in the past. Politics still play a huge role, but they are more complex now than ever. I think sales management can get strategy confused with a strict process (“did you do proper qualification? That’s a required step in our cycle…”) when they are very different things (although both are arguably very important).
You’re absolutely correct. The world of sales has changed and become more complex. However, we can shortcut much of the selling complexity when we’re referred. How?
First, when we’re referred and introduced, we get the meeting with our sales prospect. And the higher the level, the more important an introduction becomes. Recent research has shown that the two reasons a sales executive will take a meeting with a salesperson are 1) a referral from an internal source, and 2) a referral from a trusted resource outside of the company.
Second, when we’re referred, we’ve gathered critical sales information from our referral source. We know the issues and can test our sales positioning with our referral source.
Bottom line: We shorten our sales time, get the meetings, and are equipped with inside sales information that is priceless!