One thing you want to do is prevent losing sales. After all, think about how hard you’ve worked to get your business. The challenge of selling is that you’re always at risk of losing sales. Here are 3 more strategies to implement now so you prevent losing sales.
Demonstrate what you’re worth.
It seems to some salespeople that a quick and easy way to gain new business is to lower their price. It’s really not as easy as it might seem. There’s always risk involved in trying a new supplier that some buyers are unwilling to take. You can make the lower price appear to be much less attractive than it is. How do you do that? You demonstrate to your customer what you’re worth.
Look at the products and services your customer buys from you. How are you helping him avoid a cost, reduce a cost or increase his revenue? You might have to make more contacts at your customer to learn this information. Do it now! You get to take credit for the savings once you are able to demonstrate how much you are delivering. A low-priced competitor often cannot “match” the value you bring. What’s the outcome? You prevent losing sales.
Look for new products to sell.
Often salespeople overlook new sales opportunities at their existing customers. How do you find new sales opportunities? You learn about your customer’s business and goals for the year and beyond. You ask about issues they are facing. What problems is he experiencing that your products or services could address? You now have something to discuss with your customer and you might even sell a new product. Ask about what has changed over the past year. Often those changes mean your customer needs new products to address new challenges.
One sales professional makes it a practice to review his product catalogue once a year because it’s important to find more products to sell. He’s often forgotten about products that he could sell if he had just remembered he had them! These forgotten products could be the start of a sales call discussion to uncover possible applications at your customer.
Critically evaluate yourself and your business.
It’s never too late to start work to prevent losing sales. It is less likely to lose business when you truly know as much as an insider knows about your customer’s business. You know who is the competition and what your customer thinks about that competitor. You know which critical buying decision maker and influencer thinks about you and your service.
Any of these knowledge gaps makes you very vulnerable to lose business. Start now and fill in these critical knowledge gaps. The benefit of knowing these gaps is that they clearly define your sales call objectives and prevent you from simply “stopping by.”
What do you do if your budget makes a face-to-face sales call impossible? You get on the phone and call your customers. Ask for their help to make needed introductions. Just don’t delay. Every day you wait to shore up your business is a day that makes it easier for a competitor to take away your business.
Losing sales may be part of business. Just be sure that you’re making sure that it’s your competitors, not you, who are losing their business.