Enlarge Your Sales Team Without Increasing Headcount
How does your customer define "better touch"?
Customers are making slower, more deliberate decisions than ever. Nurturing the relationships, keeping your sale on the front burner while also hunting for new opportunities may be more than your salespeople can manage. Bad News: You need more salespeople. Good News: They may already be on your payroll.
Over the past two years I have heard too many people saying that their production people have nothing to do. The CEO of an engineering firm bemoans the fact that he has architects sitting around with no projects. Manufacturers complain that their highly-skilled machine operators are sweeping floors. Service providers are watching their technicians come in late and leave early due to a lack of work.
To address this issue, we build on Chuckism #12: "There are two types of people in the world: those who know they're in sales and those who don't."
Selling in a down economy like we are in right now is different from selling in a boom economy.
· Customers make slower, more deliberate decisions
· Customers are more likely to choose the "do nothing" option
· Customers will want or need stronger analytics to justify the decision to buy
· More contacts will be needed before and after the sale
· Better or different contacts will be needed
You can begin addressing each of these immediately. It is not easy but it is effective. I explain all of the details in a complimentary Chief Sales Officer White Paper. You can download your copy here:
Some ideas you may want to consider for your sales team:
How would your customers define "better contact"?
Answer that question and you're well on the way to increasing your sales.
Customers must see value in every encounter with every vendor. If there is no perceived value, or WIIFM, there is no need to invest time with the vendor.
It is probably fair to say that your salespeople are making the best contacts they can. They have about maxed out on the process, even with continuous quality improvement (CQI) in sales. Incremental improvements will be small and, perhaps, indiscernible to the customer.
Begin letting your customer service people and technologists make customer contacts. How can everyone or anyone in your organization make effective customer touches?
Just don't call it "sales".
Your customer service people and your technologists are in those positions because that's where they want to be. If they wanted a sales career, they'd be in sales. As they begin making customer touches, they will gain confidence and begin making better and better contacts. Using CQI will create visibly improved touches, ones your customers can see and appreciate.
Just don't call it "sales".
Too many people have too many misperceptions about what sales is and isn't. (For a comprehensive tutorial and mind changer, have them view Module One "What Is Sales" at www.SaleSSuiteS.com > Online Training.) As a result, they resist selling, based on their current perception of selling.
Selling is helping and teaching.
Why do people choose customer service as a career? To help!
Why do people choose technology as a career? To teach! (They enjoy sharing ideas.)
Customer Service employees are nurturers. Ask them to help nurture the relationships with your existing accounts. This will give your customers more touches and different touches while freeing your salespeople to do the heavy lifting in sales.
Technologists are all about finding better ways to use technology. Let's turn them loose with our customers and see what ideas they can find for using our capabilities to make customers more successful.
For consistency and to insure the most professional contacts are being made, use the following roadmap.
SALES > TECH/CUSTOMER SERVICE > CUSTOMER > SALES > CUSTOMER
· Sales drives the process and owns the relationship with the customer. Sales initiates the process by delegating some elements of selling to a technologist or a customer service person.
· The technologist or customer service person contacts the customer using the process outlined by the salesperson and using the basic sales training they have been given.
· The technologist or customer service person then discusses their customer touch with the salesperson and a follow-up action plan is initiated. The technologist may recommend an enhancement; the customer service person may have identified another need.
· The customer is touched again by the person best able to implement the findings.
Using this model, the salesperson remains the primary contact on the account and insures that the messages being delivered are consistent and in sync with the account plan.
Give your customers more touches, different touches and better touches by deploying your other employees into the sales arena. Just don't call it "sales".
