You may think once you’ve made the sale that the hard part is over. You are mistaken. The work has just begun. You can make your sales work simpler by considering what you do next. Here is a plan to work on your business after you make the sale.
Keep it simple.
When I look at the choices to make, I always prefer the one that is simplest to get the job done. I once worked with a customer to provide a sales process. They had previously hired a sales consultant who recommended an elaborate process filled with documentation. The only problem was the process was so extensive and the documentation so tedious that the salespeople never implemented it. My work was to develop a simple process that the sales team would actually implement.
What you should consider after you make the sale are the steps that keep your selling both simple and effective.
What do you need to do?
Start with defining what you need to do.
Linda Deutsch had an amazing 50-year career as an Associated Press reporter. She covered a who’s who of trials. She covered the trials of O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson and the four police officers who beat Rodney King. She wrote about the trials of Patty Hearst, John DeLorean, Exxon Valdez skipper Joseph Hazelwood, the “Night Stalker” serial killer Richard Ramirez, the Unabomber and the Menendez brothers. She was there for the trials resulting from the deaths of John Belushi and Anna Nicole Smith and when actor Robert Blake was acquitted of murder. Deutsch covered trials with music producer Phil Spector, Daniel Ellsberg and the leaked Pentagon Papers and Winona Ryder’s shoplifting from Saks.
It was how she covered each trial that will help you in your plan for your work. She believed her work was to simplify what she saw each day at trial in the court. She even took notes with two different colored pens, held simultaneously in the same hand, to distinguish between quotes and facts.
What she was doing was uncovering the essence of each trial. For example, the Manson trial was the 60s culture. Patty Hearst’s trial was about post-Vietnam alienation. What is the essence of each one of your accounts when you look at your business? Is it about growing your business at the account? Perhaps the key is to keep the competition out. Another focus might be building a reference for other business.
Now do it.
If the essence of that sale is to grow your business you need a plan to build strategic relationships within the account. Those relationships will help you when you want your customer to evaluate new products. You would focus on documenting your customer’s cost savings with your products and services if your goal is to keep the competition out. Getting reference letters requires more work. You will want to both document cost savings and develop relationships with your customers. That’s a good way to develop customers who will be willing to write reference letters to support your sales claims.
Don’t make your selling harder after the sale than it needs to be. Consider what the essence is of each account and work to achieve that essence.