Members | Support This Site | Logout

Home   Newsletter   Tutorials   Columns   Articles

Notes On Using Strategic Relations In Selling Interactions

Selling generates revenue, revenue creates profits, and profits keep your business running. The following includes notes on using strategic relations in selling interactions. Strategic relations helps increase the number of selling interactions so you can sell more.

(The following is also an example of what I was talking about in "Using the Simplified Theory of Compression Learning" -- the items created include both my personal experiences and compressed concepts from the original article.)

____. Tips for Sales & Marketing Pros. (eGrabber , 24 June 2003) Newsletter.

1. Seek strong sales people who are good at selling over sales people who are familiar with your product. A great sales person can almost always learn your product, it's much harder to learn sales.
2. Measure sales people by profit margin not dollar volume. After all it's profits you are in business for. Encourage sales people to seek win-win situations, but not to discount product just to make a sale.
3. Review your sales peoples "sales to sales-expense ratio" but remember different sales people have different methods -- also consider a customers lifetime value. It might cost $6k to produce a $10k sale, but if that customers is worth $150k over the life of the customer then it's worth the investment.
4. Make it easy for others inside the company to refer customers to sales people. Use customer interaction points to identify other customers needs, then get permission to pass the customer along to sales. This pre-qualifies your customers and improves your conversion ratios.
5. Encourage sales people to sell ideas that solve customers problems over specific products or services. Your offering becomes axillary to the solved problem, and solutions is what the prospect really cares about. When you solve one problem, customers will come back for other solutions.

You will also want to look at where your sales people interact with customers, and at what points are the most sales conversions are happening. Often the most successful sales people have the most interactions with customers -- they attend more sales presentations, they write or call customers regularly, and they prospect regularly.

While there is a difference in quality over quantity, successful sales people build relationships with potential buyers and maintain those relationships over time. They choose to invest in prospective customers who will generate the most profits overtime if they are measured on profits -- but be careful, if not treated right, some sales people will take advantage of customers just to push up the margin.

Great sales people don't have to be taught relationship building skills, but they all will admit they need to tune their methods. A subscription to Applying Strategic Relations or regular on-site training will keep their skills fresh.

© 2003-2010 Building Business Relationships, All rights reserved.

Justin Hitt helps you turn business relationships into profits using tested strategic selling methods. Get Justin's support on your next selling engagement by visiting https://www.justinhitt.com/

By Justin Hitt at June 25, 2003 1:36 PM  Subscribe in a reader