Introduction
Gone are those days where market research briefly ended up with acquiring business contacts of the domain where the salesperson needs to pitch and invariably ended up with cold calling. This was labor intensive wherein instead of zeroing in on the exact demand, they ended up targeting a greater audience before concluding to the real persons who were in need. This ended up with the consumption of lot of labor and cost, nonetheless the time, which stands as a primal factor in any kind of business. Following are the base modern rules a sales team have to follow given the competitive world it operates in and to make the maximum with thoughtful, but lesser efforts.
Do a background study on the prospect
With information at our fingertips, thanks to the Internet, getting information about a prospect is fair simpler than the hard labored pre-SM time period. However, getting data alone would not be suffice, but changing that to meaningful information and further processed through analysis is needed before contacting them. One need not be a Poirot or Holmes, but rather a strong statistical mind who can observe the situation through sheer cold data and not through any subjective means.
Identify problem area of the prospect
No one likes to listen to a list of your services or your product features and all their value addition that they can bring to their business without any need for them. In fact, the sales person might be shutting the door by not realizing that the client is in fact fire fighting a situation or sitting on a pile of operational problems and here he is made to listen to a service or product, which bears its own cost without addressing any of his devils he is fighting against.
Understand fully about the product you are going to sell
The sales person should know fully about what he is selling, the far the better. If the product he/she is selling is too technical or overwhelming for him to understand, then he is left with crutches – a strong operational person always in his kitty, who needs to accompany him/her. Successful sales people have the domain knowledge up to date. In fact, they are one step ahead and understand the products their competitors offer and drive back their own business unit by providing feedback to upgrade their products to stay in competition. They might not be able to work on it or create a product on their own, but they would be able to see a rather complete picture with all nitty-gritty at the back of their hand.
Match the problem area with your product convincingly
It is how the sales person brings the product to the forte in the event of knowing his prospect’s problem is a must know-how, which if not well briefed ends up making the sales person look like a con artist though he/she might have the best of the products in their kitty. Matching the prospect’s problem area with suitable solution is the most important phase in sales – a key stage ending up with conversion.
Understand your market fully
Today companies operate under a thin margin and considering the increased amount of price buyers in the competitive race, it is very important to know the market in terms of competition and their prices along with their USPs.
