SALES QUOTE
“Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.”
–Erma Bombeck
For Salespeople…
Thanksgiving is approaching. While I hope you’re thinking about how thankful you are for everything you have, I also hope you’re thinking about taking care of yourself. Part of taking care of yourself is getting enjoyment in your life on a regular basis. Your enjoyment doesn’t have to be big things. Small things can do a lot for your spirit. Just ask Erma. The dessert cart works for me. Go out and enjoy that decadent whipped cream treat. Who cares if it’s not good for your waist line. It is good for your soul. You can walk it off later, too.
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THE BLOG S AND OTHER COLUMNS
I’m now writing The Real Deal, a column on women in business for Allbusiness.com Hope you’ll read more ideas so you can achieve your success in business.
You can get RSS feed for the blog.
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THE SELLING IDEAS FOR THE MONTH
A Different Kind of Sale
You may have noticed it’s hard to sell to Fortune 500 accounts. When your business success depends on the successful sale to these companies you learn a few things along the way. Matt Lippincott, Ph.D. is a Business Analyst with SAS, the world’s largest privately held software company. Dr. Lippincott is an account strategist supporting SAS’s national account sales. He has worked on over 50 multi–million dollar sales. He’s worked on sales strategy with other companies as well. Here’s what he’s learned about selling to Fortune 500 accounts.
What makes them different? The Fortune 500 accounts are different because they are vast siloed organizations. They have different sub-headquarters all over the country, with different decision makers, who influence the decision. Dr. Lippincott says, “You could be talking to a senior level person in the retail branch and later to a senior level purchasing manager in manufacturing. They probably don’t know much about each other.” Your product or service has to be relevant to both. He adds, “You also may see a lack of uniformity in processes from one organization to another. This comes as a result of business acquisitions over the years.”
What to expect? Unless you are talking to the CEO, it’s going to take considerable effort to understand the problems and relationships in these accounts. Start by understanding the people involved. Lippincott recommends learning the political climate. He does this by fact finding. He diplomatically asks employees at many levels about the key personnel. Lippincott says, “You’ll hear what they did in the past and you’ll find out who are sincere and who you can’t trust.” He also learns what motivates the people he’s working with. Some want short-term solutions to get their next promotion. Your best solution may take two years. That won’t interest them because two years is too long to wait for their success. Lippincott advises in those situations to break the project into three to five month cycles. This enables someone with short-term concerns to see initial value in a few months.
Sometimes you find surprises. If your sale requires customer effort to get it implemented, you may find people who are not willing to give you the information you need. Lippincott learned this after being on site for six months. One contact feigned ignorance. He was in fact one of the smartest people at the account. He treated all vendors that way because he didn’t want to increase his workload.
What do you have to do? Lippincott recommends you do considerable research to understand your prospect’s competitive and industry pressures. Your questions have to be specific. They must demonstrate you have knowledge of their business and where the potential problems are. Lippincott suggests researching your own company to see if it is a customer of the prospect. He knew of one sale where the salesperson was able to learn from an internal contact that the prospect managed product returns badly. The planned sales call then included actual customer data for the prospect on how much money they were losing. You could also get valuable information by talking to your prospect’s suppliers.
Lippincott likes to talk to the incumbent vendors who have long-term relationships at the account. Companies like IBM and other large consulting companies typically have people working on-site at other large companies. Lippincott adds, “You can borrow power. If people have built respect within the organization, you can show them how to add value to what they’re doing and they’ll walk you in to the relationships.”
Caution. Lippincott says to beware of uncovering a big problem that can be solved. If you can see the value of solving it, ask yourself why they haven’t solved it yet. The reason could be that it’s not a big enough problem balanced against the resources it will take to solve it.
Fortune 500 companies are more complex than other prospects. Being knowledgeable about them is just one way to make selling to them a bit simple.
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Action Items
1. What can you learn about the political climate of the company you are calling on?
2. Who is doing business with your customers? Can they help you with your sales strategy?
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Programs
You can check for current programs.
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When you receive a qualified referral, you will get the sale in 50-90 percent of the time. No other strategy gets results like this.
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A GREAT SELLLING TIP
A great website to help sales professionals especially so they can travel light is:
https://www.onebag.com/
You’ll learn new strategies to pack light so you can focus on your business and not be distracted from a poorly planned trip.
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Here are some selling tools to help you sell more now. Click on the photo to find out more!
Monday Morning Sales Tips : A book that has quick ideas for you to be more successful in sales. Real-World Selling: A book with selling skills and strategies that work in the real world of sales. Secrets of Persuasion: Audio CD for the clues to use to speed-read people and close more business.