SELLING IS LIKE DIGGING FOR DIAMONDS!

Are you a territorial salesperson or manager with sales quotas? If so, you know how important good planning is to successful salesmanship. Selling is like digging for diamonds! Diamond miners know they need to move tons of dirt to find a few good stones but they don’t go into it looking for the dirt. Salespeople need that same kind of mentality when prospecting their territory. Like miners, sifting through mounds of dirt, salespeople need tools to sift through heaps of contacts to find some good key accounts. But the tools must be easy-to-use, quick and accurate else they won’t use them. Some of the most important tools salespeople need are:

PRICE/VALUE FORMULA: the most common objection salespeople hear on a regular basis no matter what products they sell is ‘your products cost too much’ and ‘your price is to high’. Therefore, it’s critical you learn how to master skill overcoming this objection else you might not get to the next step in the sales cycle.

QUALIFY ACCOUNTS FOR EXPECTED VALUE: Multiplying the Account Potential (AP) by your Estimated Share (ES) is a good place to start when qualifying an account, but it’s not a good place to end. Whether you have a slim chance or a very good chance of winning the business has a big impact on the real value of this account to you. You need to learn how to factor in the probability of winning the business (PF) to get a wiser and more accurate value for this account.

CLASSIFY ACCOUNTS ACCURATELY: Whether you use a 3-category or 5-category classification system you need to determine ‘Dollar Volume Limits’ to classify your accounts by Expected Value. This is critical because how you move through your territory and cover your accounts is based on the geographical location of your ‘Key Accounts’. Proper account classification enables you to maximize time with accounts in your territory that have the greatest sales potential for your products.

SETUP AND IMPLEMENT CALL CYCLES: Call cycles are very important because they ensure you are allocating time and effort with the best accounts in your territory and nothing falls through the cracks. A call cycle equals the amount of time it takes to make one good call on every key account in the territory. Accurate qualification and classification are critical when setting up good call cycles.

AVOID HIGH OPPORTUNITY-COST ACTIVITIES: a high opportunity-cost activity is an activity that will not generate any revenue and prevents you from generating revenue elsewhere. It’s like spending too much time with non-decision makers. This activity has a double-negative impact because it’s not generating any revenue and is robbing you of sales elsewhere.

All these selling tools, plus more, are integrated into our Territorial Development and Management (TDM) training program. Please visit my website and contact me with questions and/or a free no-obligation quote for training: http://www.21stcenturysellingskills.com/