Following a customer visit I always like to send a short e-mail summarizing our discussion and agreed next actions with timelines, good practice. I recall when I was new to Sales my summary e-mails were a full page long with multiple attachments. If my summaries had been in hardcopy, they would have required an index page and would have been beautifully bound like a thesis! My strategy was a visit, follow up with overwhelming evidence that we had the best product features and then wait for the order. I rest my case your honor!

There was no questioning my unfailing belief in our products, on its own a strong Sales characteristic. However, my summaries were largely based on product features and sending them all evidence or sales collateral available to me. I was failing to consider the customers required outcomes, and their requirement to evaluate the market, including our products in detail.

The reality is that our customers are busy, the half life of knowledge is short, and they have probably forgotten most of what we told them within a few weeks of the last visit. Added to this our competitors have probably also visited, used similar buzz words to cover their products features, leaving the customer confused in the market space, with no clear differentiate winner.

In Sales you need to become a valuable resource in the customers buying decision. To do this you will need to maintain regular contact with your customer during any evaluation period. Two resources that held you to maintain this partnership and deliver your collateral in bitesize chunks are;

Pool of Product Collateral

This includes product collateral, product publications, reference lists, relevant industry articles etc. Give some creative thought into what materials you can collate into a folder for all your key products.

By Delivering this in manageable chunks the customer has a reason to maintain contact with you, as any new questions arise. It also gives you a reason to keep in touch with them, aiming to always include new collateral with each contact.

The above forms part of your Wider Sales Toolkit

It’s important to ensure your give some creative though to all the items that should be in your Sales Toolkit for all your key products. These should also be agreed with your company to ensure you don’t over promise to your customer, and could include;

• Customer reference contacts, customer visits to reference contacts
• Customer technical evaluations, includes agreed format and evaluation criteria
• Product demonstrations
• Product workshops and conferences, industry presentations and meetings
• Pool of products collateral as above
• Remember, you! are the most important tool in your kit

 

Speed Kills in Sales. If budgets are approved and available, and the customer has trust in you and your product, take the order as quickly as possible. In high value sales the norm would be an industry lead time, during which your customer will need to submit for budgets and you will be required to act as a valuable resource guiding your customer through sales process.

Whenever you contact your customer always ask for something from them in return even if it’s just an acknowledgement of the collateral sent. This helps to form a partnership with your customer it also helps you to work toward referral selling which I will aim to cover in a future post.

Remember to always ensure you are the most important resource your customer has when making their purchasing decisions.

If you would like to learn more about building your Sales Toolkit and our Sales Process resources please contact SalesAde