What is Sales Strategies?
Mohd Adil Gujjar
Digital Marketing Specialist | Specialist in WordPress | Web Design | Web Development | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Specialist
Introduction
The 19 important sales strategies are as follows:
1. Product knowledge + Product conviction= Sales.
2. Nail value preposition.
3. Lead scoring.
4. AHT ( Average handling time)
5. Purchase action ratio.
6. BANT sales technique.
7. Community partnership.
8. B2B MEDDIC sales technique.
9. MLM & Direct sales.
10. Research before reaching
11. Psychological Ninja technique
12. People buy emotionally and justify rationally
13. Assign top reps to High – value territories
14. Jab, Jab, Jab Hook= Give *ask
15. SPANCO
16. Renew old relationships
17. Outreach your potential customers
18. Follow up ka bhoot
19. Backward close approach
Lets Discuss Sales Strategies Points.
According to me.
A person who lacks product knowledge and conviction can never do sales.
Sales start as follows:
The following are the top 5 reasons for sales failure:
1. No Need
2. No Hurry
3. No Desire
4. No Trust
5. No Money
Customer will arrange money by himself. Arranging money is not so tough for him.
He will trust you when you have knowledge and conviction.
2. Nail value preposition
1. You need to quantify the value of the other person so that he buys the product.
2. The value proposition can be broken down into two things namely relevance and quantifiable value.
3. Therefore you need to sell a relevant product to the customer.
You need to do quantification of value creation. This is also known as the Opportunity cost close approach. You should explain to the customer that his cost of buying the product.
For example:
1. You have a software company and you want to sell your software to HDFC employees.
2. You can explain that your software is in Hindi that will help him is covering the extra market of the people who speak Hindi.
3. You can explain to him that your software will reduce the manpower cost through technology.
4. This software will also save his time and his turnaround time will this software will widen his customer reach.
5. Now the HDFC employee will think that software costs Rs 1 crore but it will provide him business worth Rs 25 crore.
6 This is known Total cost of ownership which means the cost will reduce for the client after some time.
It will provide benefits to customers such as saving expenses, increasing profits, introducing new customers, brand improvement, employee satisfaction, market share and improved productivity.
Selling involves creating value for your customer. The more you create value the more you will get benefits
3. Lead scoring
1. The approach is also known as the thermometer close approach.
2. You need to check if the customer us relevant for you or not. if the customer raises too many objections he is not relevant for you.
3. You can give a rating between 1-10 scale to your customers.
4. You can divide the leads into hot warm and cold. This will help in prioritising prospects and you will come to know where you need to put efforts.
5. SQL (Sales qualified lead) are prospective customers. You should invest time in them.
6. You can also mark leads in red, yellow and green colour in your CRM sheet.
7. Red colour means you have to stop giving time, yellow means you need to devote extra time and green means potential buyers.
8. It helps in your planning related the follow up the buyer.
4.?AHT (Average Handling Time)
You have to find the average time that you will spend on your one customer. You can calculate this time with the following formula:
Average handling time = Total talk time/ Total number of meetings
Your average handling time is 1 Hour if you spend 10 hours for 10 meetings.
You can set benchmark of giving time to any customer like 30minute on each customer. Some customers might take 10 minutes while some will take no time but there should be a standard for average.
When you optimise the Average Handling Time, you do not waste time on the wrong customer, you can handle more number of customers. Also your quality will not be compromised and you can move toward better customer experience.
For achieving this you should:
1. Give training to your employees about low AHT, You don not need to be very fast in explaining your point.
2. Record their meetings, calls, and listen to these recordings.
3. Prepare your employess in advance because if they talk about extra things, less number of customers will be covered and it will result in losses.
4. Recruit those people who can speak effectively.
5. Monitor the performance who can speak effectively.
6. Provide your employees all the marketing materials, necessary information in advance that will save time. it should not be there that they are searching for their brochures, email, and other materials in front of the client. if you prepare all FAQs asked by a customer in advance you will never face difficulty.
Golden Statement:
You dont get a second chance to make the first impression.
5. Purchase action ratio.
Most companies spend money on advertisement and creating awareness.
You Should understand the following 4 stages:
* Aware
* Appeal
* Ask
* Act
For Example
1. You are running ads and creating awareness about your product.
2 Act means that people are not buying the product.
3. You Should do following things:
4. Provide training to your sales team.
5. Content remarketing through Whats App and infographics.
6. BANT Sales technique
The main objective of the BANT technique is to find out if the customer is useful for you or not.
You Should check the following 4 things when you meet a customer:
* B-?Budget : Does the customer have a budget or not?
*?A:?Authority: Does the customer has the authority to make decisions or not?
*?N:?Need : Does the customer need the product or not?
*?T: Timeline: When will customers buy the product?
You Should ask questions to customers about the time when they will buy your product.
The BENT technique will help you in the following manner:
1. You Will come to know about your SQL (Sales qualified lead).
2. It will increase sales effectiveness.
3. You can work on common pain points of the customer.
Do not run behind different customers. You should work in a niche market. You Should finalise the same type of customer.
For Example
* Marg ERP entered the FMCG industry and start selling their products to all retailers because it was their BANT.
* Also, they entered in pharma because it was their BANT.
7. Community partnership
Community is a very powerful thing. There are several type of communities that include castes, religions, castes, professions.
You Should connect a community with you.
1. Initially, food lovers joined Zomato to give ratings and reviews. But later they converted it into a commercial business.
2. Apply focus on classy and upmarket community.
3. Starbucks also work for some communities. it provide free WiFi to the startup owners and youth.
4. So you should focus on the community that is interested in you.
5. For Hunting a lion, you have to visit the forest and not the zoo.
Golden statement:
If you want to lift yourself lift someone else. Everyone is moving forward together then success will take care of it.
8. B2B MEDDIC sales technique
This is a technique for the qualification process that is very helpful in complex enterprise sales.
If you want to sell your product to a company or a big brand you need to check the following things:
*?M– Metrics: You Should identify economic impact in terms of increasing profit and reducing loss.
*?E– Economic buyer: You Should check the economic buyer. In other words you have to find the right person or department which has a budget to buy your product.
*?D– Decision criteria: You should know their evaluation criteria for deciding about the vendor.
*?D– Decision process: You Should know their decision making process.
For Example:
1. In a Large company, you approach the wrong person for selling the product.
2. They have no idea regarding decision criteria and you fail in selling your product.
3. So you should identify their pain.
4. You should identify the person/ partner who can help you in selling your product in a big company.
5. So you Should identify the initiator, influencer, decider. buyer and consumer to sell your product.
9. MLM& Direct Sales
There are 4 types of people:
* Idea man: He is very creative. He sees a big picture, find a new solution and thinks new things.
* People man : He works upon relationships.
* Action man: He is a decision – maker ambitious, aspirational.
* Process man: He organises data information, process, and system.
In MLM, the following combination are useful:
* Action man + Idea man
* Action man + People man
* Idea man + People man
It is important to note that if you are a process man, you should not join multilevel marketing or direct marketing. It is so because will not be able to handle rejections.
You Should check the following things to achieve success in multi level marketing:
1. Number of daily calls
2. Number of daily meetings
3. Numbers of repurchases
4. Number of Hiring
5. Number of programs organised
6. Involvement in educational programs
领英推荐
You Should follow these points to achieve success in MLM:
1. Good behaviour
2. Behave like a businessman and not as a salesman
3. Continuous focus on learning
4. Conviction on product
5. Create your scoreboard
In network marketing the network comes first while marketing comes later. So you should build your network.
10: Research before reaching
1. You Should research about your customer before reaching.
2. Pre- called research is not tough.
3. You can check his Twitter, Linden, Facebook, blog to know his needs assessment and pain point. Do not go for meeting suddenly.
4. You Should be consumer empathetic and know the requirement of customer.
5. You can do design thinking to know at what points customers might face problems over a period of time in his journey.
6. So you can plan your product accordingly.
7. He might have technical impacted and his problem due to which he will be financially impacted and his personal life also be effected.
Golden Statement
Research is to see what everybody else has seen and to think that nobody else has thought.
So you need to sell the solution and not the product.
11: Psychological Ninja technique
These techniques affect psychology. They can be discussed will listen to the rest of the things with reference to your opening.
For Example:
* Salesman says I am not selling a tractor machine rather I am selling a note printing machine.
* It saves diesel so it will become free after some time and earn extra money.
So your initial statement should be very impressive and the rest of the things will be seen accordingly.
2. Confirmation bias:
* In this technique you accept those things that match with customer beliefs
* You should check their belief and match yourself with them.
3. Rhyming affect bias:
* Rhyming statements are recalled by the customers.
* For Example Lifeboy hai jahan, tandarusti hai wahan.
4. Peak and rule.:
* You need to wind up meeting with high energy.
* Customer recalls the most recent thing that happened to him.
5. Lass aversion:
* You should explain to your customer about his loss of losing the product.
* Generally people are not not interested in what they will gain rather they are more interested in what they will loose in their life
6. Survivorship bias:
For Example:
* OYO raised huge money other startup also feel the same. But this is not true.
7. Decoy effect.
* It is about choice management.
* If you want to sell something to a customer, first you should show him low quality products as expensive and high quality products as expensive and high quality products also expensive.
* Also you can show lesser quantity expensive and more quantity expensive and more quantity things expensive. He will buy it automatically.
For Example
* In cinema halls, a half liter cold drink is sold for Rs 80 while a one liter cold drink is sold for Rs 100. The customer buys 1 liter immediately.
* He thinks that he has made a wise decision.
So you need to confuse the customer by showing one poor product and one fine product that you want to sell. Customers will immediately buy the fine product and this called choice management.
12.: People Buy emotionally and justify rationally
1. People buy products out of emotions but give justification based upon logic.
2. There is an emotion not the logic behind the world most of the decisions.
3. Your sales message and presentation should impact upon customers emotion. Greed, fear, humanity, envy, shame pride are very strong emotions.
4. Mostly big brand use emotions
For Example:
* Mountain Dew presents emotion of fear “Darr ke age jeet hai”
* Similarly Surf excel uses the tagline ” Daag ache hein”.
Golden Statement
People do not buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.
One soul-satisfying emotional reason will ignore dozens of logical facts.
13: Assign top representatives to high value territories
1. Most people commit a mistake by sending best representatives to the place where sales is poor.
2. They send their best representative to the territory, distributor and customer where products are not selling.
3. You should send your best person to the best customer so that it will nurture and grow.
4. You Should use maximum man force to the territory with maximum sale. In other words for a heart operation you will send your best doctor.
5. You Should send the best person to the territory of the sales.
6. This is known as the Pareto principle. if your 20% of clients are giving your 80% revenue. You should use your best manpower of these 20% clients.
7. People commit a mistake by sending most intelligent person to the territory of no sales.
8. Instead you should send your normal manpower in this territory and when sales start growing you should use internet manpower in this territory.
9. You need capable manpower of your critical area.
10. You should give this task to an analytical person who can build rapport with your customers.
For Example
* If you sends intelligent people to the market where business is growing.
* They nurture their clients who are decision – makers.
* They hire capable manpower that has potential and skills.
14: Jab, Jab, Jab Hook = Give * Ask
1. A good boxer first does three times Jab ,Jab and finally hits the face of the opponent.
2. So first he create confusion.
3. Therefore first you should confuse customers by giving gifts to make emotional relationships.
4. Give him so much to build an emotional account.
5. As there is a financial bank account.
6. When you give something to the other person in return you will receive much more than what you gave. So you should build relationship in the beginning. You should give give, give, and ask.
If you are helping your customers you are helping your business. So you should solve your customers problem or help them achieving their goals.
15: SPANCO
SPANCO provides an idea about this stage if the customer it helps in planning and you should use should use it in your CRM software. These stages are discussed as follows:
1. Sunset: Make a list of people.
2. Prospect: Number of people you went to for a meeting.
3. Approach: Hold meeting with them.
4. Close: They are about to close but not giving the final order.
Some customers will be in the approach stage and they might not be talking about negotiation stage but not buying the product, while others at the closing stage but not giving the final order.
So you should bucket your sales funnel. it will help you making your communication strategy according to various stages.
16: Renew old relationships
1. Dealing with old customers is cheaper while dealing with a new customer is quite expensive. So you should revive the old relationship.
2. You Should build communication with them again.
3. You can ask them for references.
4. You need to quite the old lead that is not useful.
5. But salesperson should try to find the reason why did this customer uit and could not became a repeat customer for your business.
6. If old customer comes back to you it will be benefical but if you directly call the old customer to sell your product its huge turnoff.
7. So you need to roll on a conversation and build relationship with your old leads.
8. You Should communicate with them and ask them the reasons why they are not buying your product now.
9. You can also send him emails and whats up messages.
10. You Should revive the old relationship.
17: Outreach your potential customers
* This is also known as the list banao campaign.
* You Should make a list of prospects and make as many contacts as possible.
* It is the practical strategy of increasing the sales volume.
Remember
Making as money contacts as possible is the practical strategy of how to increase sales volume.
1. You Should gather leads through directory email opt in list or networking platform.
2. You are out of the business of you do not have a prospect.
3. Try to make customers and generate leads but do not try to sell.
4. Lead generation is the foundation for cumulative conversation.
18. Follow up ka Bhoot
* Just like a ghost follow someone you need to apply the same strategy.
* Make a rule to follow your customer.
* If you want to increase sales volume you need to be thought about follow up.
Remember
Agents who do not follow up with their customers are leaving a lot of money on the table.
1. Customers always retain for those who are always available to them
2. So you need to remain available to your customers.
3. Follow up is a customer service that means conversion.
4. So you should follow up like a ghost.
5. You can send thank you emails birthday anniversary wishes congratulations or condolence to create value in each follow up.
6. No Matter how good your meeting was but if you do not make an action plan about the next step of follow up your follow up be a waste.
7. Your SQL lead should reach with 24 hours to the customer.
8. Many salesperson commit a mistake that they discuss with customer but do not follow up.
9. Now the customer requires product he starts searching product online.
10. He Starts searching your competitor checking market checking online reviews and started discussing with others as well.
11. You Should follow up till you do not get a definite answer in form of yes or no
12. Do not leave him and follow him until you do not get a complete answer.
13. Not Following up with your prospect is like a bathtub where water is filled but leaking through a hole.
14. That means you are meeting with new customer but not following up and business in lost.
Remember
Either you follow up or you fold up
19: Backward close approach
1. According to this approach do not sell immediately as you reach customer rather talk to him for some time.
2. You should talk to them like a reference.
3. Start from the back, not the front.
4. Take a backward approach means reference it is a very easy way to enter.
5. Most people do a mistake they do not ask for reference.
6. Giving reference is not a favor because you give them special treatment in return.
7. You can give them something extra from your product protfolio.
8. Reference helps in powerful meetings. it also increase the trust.
Golden Statement
Do what you do so well that they will bring all their friends.
If you want to reach where you have not reached yet you have to do what you have not done yet. You should implement these sales strategies in your business to reach your goal.