Get a Grip on your Sales - Get your Sales Plan Ready Articles | Sales

By: Darren Williger

It is common knowledge that without a solid sales structure in place, no amount of effort to sell your products or services would bear any fruit. Sales would either be lost or sub-optimal.

One of the reasons why your own sales structure is not in place could be because you have always deferred this work as you have been too ‘busy’ or perhaps you always viewed it as a procedure which your sales force might perceive as yet another tool for controlling them. Whatever the reasons are it is time that you corrected yourself and started to work on a sales structure and proper plan. To do this, we must assess our customers first.

Instead of pondering how to close a sales deal successfully, you should be spending more time in devising ways of making the customers buy from you. Think more on giving the customer more reasons to buy your product. This change of thought process can impact on the way you look at the job of selling. Consider the points mentioned below:  

1. What is the buying process involved for someone to buy your product? What you should do to positively impact the process and who are the people who should be involved to make customer arrive at a buying decision.
   
2. Think of the position where the customer is at this point in time. Is he one or two days away from signing the deal or are they still ‘thinking about it’?
3. What is the next step the customer has to take to arrive at the purchase decision? If you know where they are and what needs to be done now to expedite the process, then a logical step forward can be taken in the matter.
4. What needs to be done to help the customer take the next step? If we are sure what the customer is surely going to do next, we could arrive at a logical step to fortify our sales process.

We must have a clear understanding that whatever we do in the sales process should really push the customer more towards our products. Whatever we do where we are not empowering the customer to come forward towards a purchase decision is a waste of time, money and effort.

The same principle applies when you are meeting the management of your client’s company. Decide beforehand what your objectives are and what you want to get from the meeting. Would you like the management to:  

• Agree on principle with your plan but however would like you to meet some other executives?
• Fix up another meeting with an affiliate or associate to explain further how your product is going to benefit them?
• Fix up another time to meet you and your team where you have to come up with further suggestions on how their need can be met with your products?

To manage time better, you must always have a plan of action ready before you meet your prospective customers. Otherwise you are wasting time, yours and theirs.

It might seem like a long process even before you have made any sale, but remember that unless we know their buying process, we can not make any successful sales also. To be professional in our approach, we ought to know what they are thinking so that you can act accordingly.