Selling in a Recession
Selling in a Recession
Do you have a clearly defined Sales Strategy?
A Sales Strategy is basically a calculated and tactical plan for acquiring new business, growing existing business and making and exceeding the company sales quota. As in all good plans you need to begin with the end in mind. What is it you want to achieve – be specific? Knowing what you want to achieve will allow you to formulate the necessary steps to achieve the results you are seeking.
• How Much?
• By When?
There are four basic parts of a sales strategy:
1. New business strategies
2. New business acquisition tactics
3. Existing business growth strategies
4. Existing business growth tactics
Four Parts of the Plan
Sales Quota: This critical element of plan sets the tempo of efforts throughout the year and provides quarterly, monthly, weekly and even daily sub-goals for you to achieve.
Sales Territory: Refers to the geographic area, list of named accounts or specific market niche you have been assigned to in which you are to sell products, services and solutions.
Strategy: The plan necessary to accomplish the company’s sales’ goal
Tactics: The steps necessary to carry out the plan.
Analyse your existing customers – who has not bought in the last three to six months – go after them and bring them back into the fold.
Stop being a hunter a become a farmer – look at the activities of the farmer and apply it to your accounts
With the farmer concept, you look upon your accounts the way a farmer would look at his land. The farmer cultivates, prepares, plants, seeds, waters, fertilises, weeds, protects, grows, develops crops, harvests and then starts the cycle all over again.
1. Cultivating – learning as much about your customer as possible to discover opportunities to see what you need to plant so that you can harvest the results.
2. Preparation – putting yourself in a better position to service the customer, building your relationship to understand his business at depth, asking questions to uncover and discover further opportunities.
3. Planting - using your skills as a problem solver to offer solutions for the further problems you have uncovered within the account. Helping the customer realise that he has further problems that you can solve.
4. Seeding – demonstrating how you can solve this problem.
5. Watering and Fertilising– showing how other customers have benefited by placing further business with you
6. Weeding – keeping your competitors out of your accounts.
7. Harvesting - requires that you get further business from the existing customer – you get more sales!
8. Continuous Harvesting - requires that you maintain excellent customer relations
And finally build and strength your relationships with your customers.
Build a relationship of mutual trust and respect with clients through rapport. Protect your accounts from competitors by adding value to the relationship by identifying opportunities that have a positive impact on their business. Today's customers have become more sophisticated and demanding of higher levels of customer service than ever before. They want someone they can trust who understands their needs and wants.
Customer loyalty should be what we seek to give rather than what we seek to get. As Zig Ziglar is famous for saying, “You can get anything you want in life if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
Selling in a Recession - To learn more about this author, visit Colly Graham's Website.
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With all of this talk of recession is that once people believe there is going to be a recession they start to feel negative about their selling prospects.
Do you have a clearly defined Sales Strategy?
A Sales Strategy is basically a calculated and tactical plan for acquiring new business, growing existing business and making and exceeding the company sales quota. As in all good plans you need to begin with the end in mind. What is it you want to achieve – be specific? Knowing what you want to achieve will allow you to formulate the necessary steps to achieve the results you are seeking.
• How Much?
• By When?
There are four basic parts of a sales strategy:
1. New business strategies
2. New business acquisition tactics
3. Existing business growth strategies
4. Existing business growth tactics
Four Parts of the Plan
Sales Quota: This critical element of plan sets the tempo of efforts throughout the year and provides quarterly, monthly, weekly and even daily sub-goals for you to achieve.
Sales Territory: Refers to the geographic area, list of named accounts or specific market niche you have been assigned to in which you are to sell products, services and solutions.
Strategy: The plan necessary to accomplish the company’s sales’ goal
Tactics: The steps necessary to carry out the plan.
Analyse your existing customers – who has not bought in the last three to six months – go after them and bring them back into the fold.
Stop being a hunter a become a farmer – look at the activities of the farmer and apply it to your accounts
With the farmer concept, you look upon your accounts the way a farmer would look at his land. The farmer cultivates, prepares, plants, seeds, waters, fertilises, weeds, protects, grows, develops crops, harvests and then starts the cycle all over again.
1. Cultivating – learning as much about your customer as possible to discover opportunities to see what you need to plant so that you can harvest the results.
2. Preparation – putting yourself in a better position to service the customer, building your relationship to understand his business at depth, asking questions to uncover and discover further opportunities.
3. Planting - using your skills as a problem solver to offer solutions for the further problems you have uncovered within the account. Helping the customer realise that he has further problems that you can solve.
4. Seeding – demonstrating how you can solve this problem.
5. Watering and Fertilising– showing how other customers have benefited by placing further business with you
6. Weeding – keeping your competitors out of your accounts.
7. Harvesting - requires that you get further business from the existing customer – you get more sales!
8. Continuous Harvesting - requires that you maintain excellent customer relations
And finally build and strength your relationships with your customers.
Build a relationship of mutual trust and respect with clients through rapport. Protect your accounts from competitors by adding value to the relationship by identifying opportunities that have a positive impact on their business. Today's customers have become more sophisticated and demanding of higher levels of customer service than ever before. They want someone they can trust who understands their needs and wants.
Customer loyalty should be what we seek to give rather than what we seek to get. As Zig Ziglar is famous for saying, “You can get anything you want in life if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
Selling in a Recession - To learn more about this author, visit Colly Graham's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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Colly Graham Video - Colly Graham discusses Creating Customers on the Telephone -The importance of the telephone in selling is now well documented. This training DVD focuses on getting in front of more prospects by teaching the skill of telephone appointment setting. The workshop demonstrates the connection between daily activities, the sales cycle, and the number of sales necessary for a consistent flow of qualified appointments. Based on practical skills that get results fill your diary with qualified appointments.
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