This is a re-post of a prior blog
Writing
this post less than 45 days prior to the 2012 elections I have chosen to share
some findings about the selling of candidates to the public that relate to
business to business selling. The item
that comes to my mind is the things that salespeople and sales organizations do
to drive the customers away.
Our
evenings during the last few months have been filled with robot-callers and
personal surveys that all seem to end with an appeal for more money. This year the contributions requested are as
little as $2.00, yet when you follow the link to sign up for the $2.00 donation
there is not even a box to check for that suggested donation. You sure can make a larger one however! The aim of the callers is to sell the candidate
and elicit a donation to fund more calls to all of us!
The
point that I want to initially make is that the biggest mistake that is made in
sales is contacting the customer too much and too often. Nate Boaz, John Murnane and Kevin Nuffer
share in a McKinsey Quarterly article in May of 2010 that while customers in
this category say they care about product and price, what they really want is a
great sales experience. For the salesperson
this means getting the basics right.
“Customers want to be contacted just
enough, not bombarded. Sales reps should know their products or services
intimately and how their offering compares with those of their competitors. Customers need information on exactly how a
product or service will make a difference to their businesses. And while they
may say price is one of their biggest concerns, a satisfying sales experience
is ultimately more important.”
We
are approached constantly by sales organizations that do not have a clear
understanding of when to develop salespeople.
The answer is all of the time!
Salespeople are just like athletes who are sent to exhaustive spring
trainings every year for baseball near our home in Southwest Florida. The same is true for all teams and also for
salespeople who must be groomed and taken to higher levels.
Development
is needed to understand changes taking place in the field. Too often the focus of customer is to see a
concept and methodology that the customer does not buy into on the first call. The constant pounding of that concept or idea
is not the answer to winning the customer over.
It is a constant drip of the idea over time. Ultimately even the drip of water will carve
its path through a piece of rock.
