Tag Archives: effective sales strategy

Business Development, Business Strategy

Why is Selling So Difficult For Small Business Owners? Use These 3 Sales Management Strategies

Why is selling so difficult for small business owners? The ability to sell is necessary for every business yet it is often a neglected activity. To simplify the selling process, you need to build a sales approach into your marketing mix program. (Your marketing mix includes product, price, promotion and place – the sales activities belong in the promotion category.)

First, it is important to understand the marketing mix promotion category. Marketing promotion includes personal selling (face to face), direct mail marketing (one-to-one and via email or mail), and use of telemarketing campaigns (one-to-one and via telephone). Additionally, marketing promotion includes the advertising (for example, radio, newspapers, internet, magazines, storefront, and more), promotions (for example, trade shows, coupons, contests, point of purchase displays and more), and public relations (for example, press releases, community involvement, and more) activities.

Second, it is important to build a sales plan targeted to each product or service category, and also focused on each type of customer. If you are entering new markets, use sales contact management and sales leads software to focus your efforts. This software will also provide good sales service maintenance and follow-up support. Business process management tools help you to focus your sales activities and provide you with valuable time saving tactics. You can track and manage your activity and results for leads, prospects, and customers. You can also integrate your sales leads software with your sales management software to develop reports on customer purchases, service or product launches, price change impacts, service or product change impacts, and more.

Third, develop strong negotiating and closing skills. Always look for a win/win solution both for you and your customer. Make sure you focus on the unique value and benefits of your products and/or services and how that value will benefit your customer (solving their needs or problems). To negotiate a sale and to close a sale effectively requires a specific skill set. You need to be a very good listener and really hear what your customer is saying. You also need to be sincere – how many times have you heard pre-rehearsed closes that just turn you off? You can practice your close but when you are in front of a potential customer make sure that you can close based on what your customer just told you, what you heard, and what you believe you can deliver – in effect, how will you fulfill your customer’s needs more effectively than other suppliers?

To be successful in business, you need to either be successful at selling or be able to hire a great sales person because no matter what you have to sell (product, service, idea or something else), you will have to sell it to someone. Learning how to sell effectively is possible but you need to enjoy it. If you dread the idea of selling, don’t do it (your customers can perceive your discomfort and you will find it even harder to make the sale). Hire someone who loves to sell to do it for you (you can hire an employee, or sales agent, or contract worker, or broker but it is likely that employees will be most committed to you and your business). Customers and potential customers will resist buying from someone who isn’t comfortable with the sales process, and while you might get some orders, hiring someone who is good at selling will free you up to do what you’re good at… a much more effective use of your time and resources.

Overcome the challenge of developing small business sales skills:

  • learn to focus on developing a marketing mix promotion that includes building service or product differentiation and positioning features and benefits that help you to increase sales successfully;
  • learn to build an effective sales plan and use software and business process tools to help you manage the plan;
  • make sure you develop strong negotiating and closing skills and
  • learn how to manage your own efforts, or the efforts of others.

Learning how to sell effectively is of critical importance to your small business sales growth; and just as important is recognizing when to hire someone to do the selling for you.

Kris Bovay is the owner of Voice Marketing Inc, a business and marketing services company. Kris has 25 years of experience in leading large, medium and small businesses; including developing successful sales plans and strategies.

You can find more strategies on how to sell on the More For Small Business website: specifically business to business selling and business to consumer selling strategies. Copyright 2010 Voice Marketing Inc.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Kris_Bovay/216730

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sales Coaching

An Effective Sales Strategy That Will Deliver Results in 90 Days

There is no question about it- these are very trying times and sales coaching needs to focus more on innovative if not shrewd approaches in order to maintain present levels of performance. Sales gurus contend that the professional must be dynamic and flexible as he faces the challenges and threat in the market. They have to be a lot more imaginative and persistent in their approaches in order to win additional share in an already tight and shrinking market. In this prevailing sales arena, only the resilient and persistent ones are expected to survive.

There is a fundamental sales strategy that when implemented would definitely hit the jackpot for the professional. This tried and tested technique will deliver positive results within 90 days.

This sales strategy is as simple as it can possibly get. When you are finished covering it, you may ask how this can possibly help your cause. But then again, this strategy has repeatedly been tried and tested and has continued to ring success to a lot of salespeople. Further, this technique is also a popular solution adopted by most experts and is extensively used in sales coaching sessions.

It has been proven in many instances that one-on-one sales performance mentoring is the fastest way of getting results from your assets. This approach affords the opportunity for a two-way interaction between the mentor and the protégé as they explore ways to improve on the performance. The mentor provides the overall framework and roadmap to a successful undertaking. On the other hand, the professional integrates the techniques shared to him by the sales coach while he considers the overall situations in the field. He may or may not advocate some modifications with the close supervision of his mentor. This technique encourages the collaboration between the sales coach and the sales professional by observing a two-way type of mentoring.

To become successful as a mentor, there are certain guidelines that have to be followed. We will focus on the most essential of all the guidelines that can deliver the strongest impact on the performance.

Spend sufficient time with each of your sales representatives. You can do this either by phone or in person. The frequency of the interaction must be a least twice a month. Depending on the nature of your business, you may even choose to have weekly one-on-one consultations with the members of your team. The meeting shall cover the “what was” and the “what will” of your activities. Generally, you will do cross referencing of actual results in the field and compare this with the established action plan or program. Results of the comparative analysis of the previous events will serve as the basis on the action on the plans for the succeeding week. You then have to decide if there is a need to adjust the sales target or make room for some intervention activities in order to meet the target for the upcoming week.

Chuck Stewart recently spent time researching business with a sales coaching [http://www.aburaconsulting.com/] specialist. He found it extremely helpful with building a sales strategy [http://www.aburaconsulting.com/] for his marketing team.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Chuck_R_Stewart/191394

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2180090