What’s Your Sales Strategy?

by Sean Newman | Jan 5, 2021 | Art of Sales Weekly

Selling Involves Strategy

Like a good game of chess, selling involves strategy and paying careful attention to all the moving pieces.  I worked with a welding and gases distributor’s rep who was promoted from inside to outside sales and then was part of a company reorganization that put him in newly assigned territories, which included 10 well-established accounts. While these events were all positive, they were game changers. He sought my guidance on how to develop a sound sales strategy to deal with his new circumstances.

Maintaining Existing Customers

Here is my recommended 4-step strategy for maintaining and growing established accounts:

1. Assess – Talk to the previous account manager to analyze your current position. Find out what his specific sales objectives were. Was he in a purely maintenance mode or aggressively selling? How often did he touch base with the plant supervisor and engineering team? In each account, identify the decision makers who approve deals, the purchasing agents who clear requests, and anyone else who influences buying decisions.
2. Plan – Carefully consider the tactical sales plan that is in place when you take over an account. A transition to a new rep is a good time to consider alternative positions. Find out what may have changed in the account. For example, the rep in this scenario learned that one of his major accounts had brought in a manufacturer’s rep and an in-house company specialist to look for improvements in the production processes. These people would influence future purchases and needed to become part of his tactical plan to keep the account viable.
3. Devise – Once you have determined what alternative position(s) would best secure your objective, you need to devise an action plan.  In the example above, after examining the client’s current fabrication assumptions with the company’s team through a series of intense questions, a few significant efficiencies were discovered that led to a new sales plan.
4. Implement – The cost savings of the new plan were dollarized by the rep and presented to the customer’s decision-making team. After completing their internal engineering analysis, the company approved the rep’s action plan and it was implemented.

Knowledge Is Power

The newly minted outside sales account manager in the above scenario successfully used these 4-steps to continually reassess and refine his sales tactics. Knowledge is power and the basis of any good sales strategy. Today, you only win in sales if you know what you and your customers are looking for.

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4 Tips for Speaking Like a Pro

by Sean Newman | Aug 17, 2020 | Art of Sales Weekly

I received an email from an engineer inquiring about my seminar, “Speaking with Confidence.” He told me he had to give a five-minute presentation to 50 people in four days. He wanted to know if I had time to help him get over his fear of speaking and boost his confidence. Did I have any tips to help him get over his anxiety about speaking?

How do you feel about making a public presentation? Are you scared speechless?

Speaking Tips To Make You Stand Out

While nobody can become a confident speaker overnight, here are a few speaking tips that will move you in the right direction.

1. A five-minute speech is actually quite easy. Think about it by breaking it down into its separate parts. All you need is an opening sentence, three-points (with three stories), and a close. To get over the fear (and I recommend this for any length of speech), set a timer and stand in front of a mirror.  Using only your outline, rehearse your talk until you have it memorized. Your three points should “flow” from your stories.
2. While it’s important to memorize your opening and closing sentences, you don’t need to remember the stories word-for-word. Think of giving your speech like telling your favorite joke, in which the key elements are the setup and the punch line. The middle part supports the build-up to your conclusion. And by the way, a well-rehearsed joke can be a great opener!
3. Avoid using notes so that you can look directly at your audience while you speak. Look right into your listeners’ eyes and when you focus on someone, do so for at least three seconds. The words you say aren’t nearly as important as how you say them.
4. Don’t spend hours rehearsing details.  Keep voicing your ideas until you feel that the speech flows. Each time you feel a wave of anxiety, find a quiet space to go over your speech. Your confidence will build!

In my friend’s post-speech response he emailed, “It went better than I expected. I heard positive feedback from most people in the audience. There was, of course, one person who offered criticism.  He thought I looked “extremely tense.”  I replied, ‘Yeah…I was,’ but I thought to myself, I’d like to see him try and do it better.”

Get tips and tricks like the above in The Art of Sales books. Or subscribe to the FREE monthly articles here.