Sales Strategy Development is a plan by a business or individual on how to go about selling products and services and increasing profits. Sales strategies are typically developed by a company’s Executive Sales Leader in concert with its Executive Team, sales, marketing, and advertising managers.
Your Sales Strategy will include Team and Management approach, Target Market along with
positioning from your Market Strategy Plan.
You will include your company’s position in the market and include items such as Market Condition, your Value Prop, Competitive Advantage, Pricing Strategy, and Competitive Analysis.
Your target market will be defined both by Industry and Geography. Identifying your ideal customer and which accounts you will not target.
Technology utilization and related startup cost and operating cost will need to be addressed as well.
How do you plan to prospect for clients must be closely scrutinized for both inbound and outbound prospecting.
Specific sales tactics need to be identified and noted. Then you must set a goal related to Revenue, Deal Size, Units Sold along with other applicable Sales Metrics.
Lastly, a realistic sales budget must take into account all costs related to the strategy you have laid out.
The most effective selling strategy, can be uncovering dissatisfaction. Both in your and your competitors services.
Yes, finding dissatisfaction with your services is a very effective selling strategy. Most companies will not ask the hard questions of their customers. Many are afraid of the answers. However, great companies ask penetrating questions of their customers and listen for the Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Why might you ask would someone want to uncover dissatisfaction within their own customer? The answer is simple, it cost less to retain an existing customer than to obtain a new customer.
Our experience tells us that uncovering the dissatisfaction that a client has with our services will lead to changes within the relationship. These changes can be either positive or negative. Controlling ones emotions and maturely listening to a client’s complaints takes some Emotional Intelligence or at least some biting of the lip.
Keep in mind that all complaints from a client may not be real but rather perceived issues. It’s important to read through the emotions that a client shares to
determine the “root cause” of dissatisfaction. Accomplishing this task takes a patient listener who understands when to interject probing questions about the dissatisfaction. Then the individual must be able to accurately repeat to the client the pertinent issues.
It can be as simple as not managing customer expectations. In today’s “Amazon Prime” World, an individual’s expectations of service can be “delivered at my door in two days”, or less. In some cases, they take these expectations to work and therefore have unrealistic performance expectations. Other times, your staff failed to provide enough details to the client so that the client’s expectations were in line with reality. Lastly, the failure of your company’s part of meeting its commitments.
