Is Your Sales Team Expansive Or Just Expensive

Why does an organisation need a sales force?

Is it because there is a constant demand being created by marketing efforts, and so the sales force is required to ‘meet the demand’? If so, the sales force is required to be ‘Order-Takers’. Or is the sales force, like marketing, supposed to help ‘cause demand’ in its own special way? If so, the sales force needs to be ‘Sales-Makers’.

‘Order-Takers’ are expensive and dispensable; ‘Sales-Makers’ are expansive and indispensable.

Sales-Makers are an extension of marketing efforts. They are good ‘Order-Takers’ and they are even better ‘Sales-Makers’. Sales-Makers operate in special ways:

• They think of customers as business people and not as customers (appreciating that they don’t go home at night to ‘customer-land’!)

• They understand that business people are only interested in one product or service - and that is their own. Accordingly, the key question on the minds of business people is ‘How can your product or service help my product to succeed?’ Only Sales-Makers have been taught how to answer this question!

• They appreciate that business people are not interested to ‘change’ suppliers; they are interested to improve business performance. And if improved performance necessitates changes in suppliers, so be it.

• They fully realise that every business has potential for improved results, and they also accept that while most business people don’t measure potential, they do know and hope that potential exists.

• They acknowledge that most sales people (‘Order-Takers’) attack the customer’s current supply needs, trying to get their share of the action. This insight further motivates them to separate themselves from ‘Order-Takers’, by accepting (and not challenging) the current supply situation ... and aiming to create new and improved results.

• They accept that their mission is not simply to motivate customers to buy their product or service; it is also to assist the customer to succeed with their product or service.

In these ways, Sales-Makers expand business with customers and in so doing they become architects of future business.

Sales-Makers learn to operate in such productive ways by being subjected to ‘business training’ rather than the ‘usual’ sales training.

This higher form of education and motivation starts with a clear understanding of the value of what is being sold by the company. In this way sales people ‘buy’ what they are aiming to sell. Business training then shows clearly where the gaps are in the customer’s/prospect’s business, and provides professional strategies for approaching and assisting the market.

Obviously, ‘selling’ is part of business training but sales people need to build a more credible business profile so that their selling expertise can be directed more effectively.

If you would like to know more about this form of training, most of which can be managed ‘internally’ by your own management team, please send me an e-mail and I will forward more information to you.

John Lees is a speaker, consultant, trainer and the author of 10 books...specialising in marketing & sales.

Website: www.johnLees.com.au email: info@johnlees.com.au





Is Your Sales Team Expansive Or Just Expensive - To learn more about this author, visit John Lees's Website.

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