Mastering the Basics of Selling
By Orville H. (Pete) Casto, Jr.AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Orville H. (Pete) Casto, Jr.
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4490-4072-7Contents
Foreword...........................................................ixPreface............................................................xiiiChapter 1 Plan and Organize Your our Approach......................1Chapter 2 Establishing Objectives..................................9Chapter 3 Know Your Products.......................................17Chapter 4 Know Your Competition....................................25Chapter 5 Know Your Customers......................................31Chapter 6 Don't Make Promise You Can't Keep........................41Chapter 7 Maintain Timely Communication............................45Chapter 8 Start Your Sales Career..................................49Chapter 9 Something to Think About.................................55Chapter 10 Letters of My Promotions and Awards.....................59~ Appendix ~.......................................................69
Chapter One
Plan and Organize Your Approach
Selling is an activity that can be done by one person, or by a team of two or more salespeople. It is a lot like any other profession; you have to like and enjoy the field you work within to be successful. How you approach it makes all the difference to your success levels. Selling can truly be very rewarding.
Whether you have just started your career in sales or have been in the profession for a number of years, or if you're making a major career change altogether, you will need a sound understanding of the "basics of selling skills." This will give you a better understanding of the keys to success as you focus on the sales opportunities at hand.
First, let's do a self-examination. Are you ready to make a total commitment to an age-old profession? And if you are, let's start by answering the following key questions:
1. Do you like the sounds of a selling profession? 2. Do you believe in yourself? Are you a self-starter who is self-motivated? Are you ready to start new projects right away, or are you a procrastinator? 3. Do you believe in the company and the products you're representing? 4. Do you have the personal integrity that will help build credibility with your clients? 5. Is your vision for achieving success strong enough to allow you to establish goals and objectives, and to pursue those goals until they're accomplished? 6. Are you undaunted at the prospect of working the hours that it takes to succeed? 7. Do you have the stomach to take the hard knocks, to pick yourself up, to not take rejections personally but go right back to selling again? 8. Are you flexible? Even though your competition may beat you out, can you keep your eyes on the goal and go back with another game plan to bring your client company's management back to the table? In other words, at the end of the day, do you know that you did not give up? 9. When you look in the mirror at the close of each day, can you truly feel good about what you see and feel?
If you can answer yes to 90 percent of these questions, then you can feel confident that you're headed toward becoming a successful salesperson.
Once you've conducted this self-evaluation, your next step is to plan and organize your sales territory. This will be the first of several key steps that will help you analyze the accounts in your geographical jurisdiction. The goal of this analysis is to obtain a solid grasp of your customers' location, the products they produce, their size, and their potential importance to your company. Based on this analysis, you can classify your accounts into categories, such as A, B, and C.
This process will develop into several discussions with your manager. You will begin to gain insight into the direction of your customers' thought patterns and priorities. This will also give you a stronger understanding of the products and their importance to each of your customers, and to the company you represent. In the area of planning, you will want to understand where your competitors stack up against your company. Learning their strengths and weaknesses will help you plan an effective sales pitch. In-depth market knowledge will also enhance your understanding of your clients' statements during your sales call. Your own knowledge of the market will allow you to feed accurate intelligence and data back to your management.
Let's start organizing and identifying your customers. First, you will want to interview your customer service personnel. They can be an excellent starting point for information on existing sales records, and can answer questions, such as: Which products are selling? Who is calling in the orders? How regularly are they paying their accounts?
You may be able to retrieve existing client records that go back several years, and may even find sales personnel who are still working for the company and who can provide you with customer information on some of your accounts. It does not hurt to question all parties and gain as much intelligence as possible.
Another source of information is manufacturing directories that states often publish. These directories provide a listing of companies, their manufacturing location, the number of employees on their staff, and where their headquarters are located.
When you come across a new account and you have no previous sales records for that account, the first thing you will want to do is establish a file on what products they're buying and from whom. Getting a new account to approve your product is a time-consuming process. You may decide to request assistance from your research and development or technical personnel, to help you become acquainted with the customer's technical personnel. This will facilitate obtaining the approvals you will need to process a sale. If you obtain these approvals up front, prior to receiving an actual order, this will expedite delivery when the order does come through. Prior approvals also prevent potential delays, and a delayed order may cause you to start off on the wrong foot with your new customer..
The first specific step to getting your product approved is to work through your client's purchasing department to obtain a copy of their specifications. Have them tell you who you should contact in their technical department. This will give you the names of others with whom you can develop future contact.
This process is called in-depth selling, and it is often the way to start proceeding when you locate a new customer. Know your own strengths and weaknesses. Build on your strengths, and work to improve your weaknesses, Be honest with your customer. Keep a smile on your face, consider and show enthusiasm to the wildest of ideas, and examine them closely before you close the door. And think positive. A salesperson without a positive attitude would be likened to a "cowboy" without a horse. Everyone is different, but when you are in the sales profession, you must find the proverbial silver lining within yourself, even in the darkest of defeats. An example of a defeat can be the loss of an order. Examine the reasons that caused that particular defeat, learn from it, and become a better salesperson.
Chapter Two
Establishing Objectives
Establishing objectives and strategies will take time. The longer you maintain your sales coverage of an account, the more these objectives will change from year to year. You will need to clarify the objectives and strategies you plan to accomplish in the short and long term.
As you approach a customer, your first pass may be as simple as getting to know the leaders and the different functions within the account. The second objective would concentrate on the products they produce, and on those products they would potentially buy from your company. At that point, you can project the sales units you propose to go after. Your objectives for the first year could look something like the following:
Who are the key decision makers within the new account? What position do they hold? Get to know the players.
What products do they produce, and in which quantities? Which products do they need in order to produce those sales? Determine the products and volumes you could potentially sell.
Who are your competitors? What is their position in the market?
Once you have determined those factors, and depending on the size of the account, you may decide to make joint sales calls with some of your key management staff. But remember to keep your report brief. We all know that the longer the report, the less likely it is that the people who receive it will read it. I would suggest that you keep your objective sheet to a single page per account, and be very specific. This is especially helpful when you have to keep track of a large number of accounts. The longer you maintain the sales coverage responsibility for a given account, the more advanced your objectives will become. It is good to have a copy of your manager's objectives, so that you can blend your objectives as a team and receive your manager's understanding and agreement.
It is also a good exercise to establish written objectives for each call you make; this will assure that you cover everything that needs attention. Your objectives can be as simple as a handwritten page of topics that you need to cover, and you can check each item off as you go through it during your meeting. The more calls you make on your customer, the more issues you will have to cover. The deeper you get into discussions around those issues, the more information you can find out about your customer, and the closer you become to the individuals with whom you are communicating.
No matter the size of the account, take time to review your objectives for that visit. Who will you be visiting? What message do you want to leave with specific individuals? What subjects will you be discussing with others? What is the current year-to-date business you want to review? Are the totals by materials versus contract volumes above or below targets? Why? Are there any issues you are currently working on? Are there any disputed invoices, pricing, or billing issues that need to be addressed? These can all be sorted out through your customer service group. And last, but not least, thank the customer for the business and establish the timing for your next visit.
As my opening sentence stated, take time to review your objectives for the call, and make sure you cover all the issues.
Call in advance for your appointment and establish the subjects you want to discuss. Be sure to ask if there are any specific topics your customer wants to cover. This will allow your meetings to be more productive and will give you time to prepare to respond to your customer's issues with solid facts, while showing respect to your customer. It has been my experience that this helps you obtain future appointments. If your clients are always pressed for time, they will know that when you call again for an appointment, you will be organized and are not just coming in to "shoot the breeze." If you are meeting a customer that you like to entertain with a lunch date, this can be established during your telephone call. Estimate the time you'll need to discuss the topics you want to review, and allow yourself the proper amount of time. Following up with a lunch is a good touch.
As you prepare for your meeting, keep in mind the objectives you are trying to achieve with your customer. Know the questions that you want to ask. Sell your benefits. Understand your customer's needs and potential. Find out what it will take for your client to assign to you the share or percentage of business that you are targeting.. Sell your benefits while asking for the order.
At the conclusion, when you ask for future orders, be sure to thank your customer for the business you're receiving.
Know who the decision makers are, do not overlook them, know who the employees are in that company, be polite, and show respect to everyone. Sell yourself, your products, and the benefits that dealing with your company will give a client.
If there are several departments or groups within the organization, such as a purchasing department, a research, marketing, or manufacturing department, you should know the key personnel in all areas. Know their objectives, know how your company resources can benefit each of these areas, and use that knowledge to build credibility for yourself and your company. Use your company's internal resources, such as the staff in the research and development, distribution, engineering, marketing, and sales management departments to help you build these in-depth relationships.
This is often the start of the process when you locate a new customer that has no previous record with your company.
Know where you have been, by informing others who will have contacts with this potential customer where your company stands in the negotiating process. Therefore, all of the people involved will be on the same page. Know where you are currently in terms of changes to the account. For example, there may have been changes in personnel or location at the company that you are targeting. Your competitors may have changed their strategies, thus opening the door for your company to make a move. Again, advise all parties on the present activities. Know where you are going. You can lay out your business objectives on where you are headed. You can also outline several key issues or requirements that will impact the success of those objectives.
At the end of each quarter, you can utilize this data you've collected to communicate with your managers at the end of each quarter, giving a one-page summary of your top ten accounts.
Chapter Three
Know Your Products
What are the products you are selling, and how are they produced? What does the manufacturing process entail? Are any materials that your competitors produce blended into the manufacturing process?
As a salesperson, learning everything there is to know about your product is the first step. The second step you will want to understand is your customers' needs, how your products are being used in their manufacturing process, and which competitors' materials they use.
For example, when I was involved with a soap-bar production company, the manufacturer wanted their soap bar to have a more slippery feeling. The company I worked for at the time was producing a product that could be added to the soap production formula to give that feeling. Because our R & D staff knew what the customer was trying to acquire, they produced some soap bar samples that showed very promising results. As the development proceeded, we collaborated with the technical personnel and made several further changes in our product. The results were "new" sales of 6 million dollars a year. More importantly, we developed some very solid relationships.
This demonstrates the importance of not only knowing your products, but also of collaborating with different departments within your organization and building a good relationship with your customer's research and development (R & D) group. These groups work daily to improve their products, trying to gain the edge on their competitors'.
At the same time, as the salesperson in charge of the account, always keep your purchasing group informed on what you are doing within their R&D group. Effective communications with those departments will often place you (and your company) in a very favorable position for new business. In chapter 2, we discussed establishing objectives. The soap-bar example also demonstrates that the longer you maintain the sales coverage of specific accounts, the deeper you and your company become involved, the more opportunities you will have to understand your customer and the direction they are heading. This makes it much easier to establish objectives, while demonstrating to your management the professional leadership you are building with your accounts. Another advantage of in-depth product knowledge becomes evident when you have developed good relations with the purchasing department at a client company. When a new sale is negotiated, try to establish a Quality Assessment (QA) Team between your company's Technical personnel and their counterparts at the client company. This allows you to sell in-depth, while establishing stronger relationships with your customer's company in departments other than the purchasing group.
Here are a few examples of the make-up of a QA Team. Note that the titles can vary:
Your Company.............Customer Salesperson..................Buyer/PA R&D Manager...............Technical/R&D Manager Product Manager...........Product Development Manager Distribution Manager......Manager of Product Storage
Additionally, you will want to work jointly with the PA/ Buyer to determine the exact personnel to involve in such meetings. It will often become your responsibility to orchestrate and organize this QA team and establish the date, time, and the agenda items for meetings. This role will position you to better understand your customer, and at the same time, it places your company in a very favorable position. This process enables you to learn a great deal of information about your customers and the direction in which they are going.
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Excerpted from Mastering the Basics of Sellingby Orville H. (Pete) Casto, Jr. Copyright © 2010 by Orville H. (Pete) Casto, Jr.. Excerpted by permission.
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