Sales, The Offensive Game
 Has
a soft economy left you with sagging sales? You’re not
alone. Many companies are feeling the effects of a soft economy
and that includes your competitors. Inevitably, sales slow as
the economy recedes. As companies begin to feel the impact,
new sales and marketing initiatives appear and competition becomes
fierce. Sales people attempt to buy the business by offering
lower prices and new customer incentives. One common problem
companies face is holding on to current customers while sales
people from competitive companies begin to solicit their customers.
An aggressive competitor can have
you reeling in no time. As your customers begin calling you
with cancellations and you begin losing orders to your competitors,
you can soon find yourself in damage control mode. The directive
from the top – “get out and meet with our customers,
develop relationships and hold on to what we’ve got at
all cost”. The problem with this is that you are now in
a defensive mode. Your competitors have you on the run and you
have a new obstacle. Your sales people are all tied up doing
damage control, greatly diminishing their ability to bring you
new sales and customers.
You will never win a boxing match
by covering up! You have to throw a punch otherwise you are
nothing more than a punching bag. Your customers and competitors
can have their way with you at will and no matter how you slice
it; it’s a losing proposition. Sales is a game of offense,
not defense, and a reactionary strategy never works.
Your competitor may be vulnerable.
As they call on your customers, they begin to neglect their
own customer base. This is the Achilles heel you were looking
for. This is the time to develop an aggressive sales program
that targets your competitor’s large customers. You need
to hit the market hard enough for your competitors to feel the
need to retreat to their customer base thus putting them in
a defensive posture and you on the offense. Once this happens
the problem of them calling on your customers will diminish.
There are some minor problems with
this theory worth considering:
-
You may loose some customers/clients
while you are out proactively selling However:
a. If you continue on your present course you will lose them
anyways.
b. Meeting your customers now to try to develop a relationship
sufficient for them to stay with you is not the best allocation
of your sales staff. Besides, if your sales people have not
developed or been taught the human-relation skills necessary
to develop winning relationships with customers during good
times, what makes you think they will be able to develop them
now?
-
You will soon be in the driver’s
seat but don’t expect your competitors to take this
lying down. To win, you will need the following:
a. A well trained sales team and highly effective sales tactics.
This way you will actually make sales and take business from
you competitors while you battle.
b. Superior human relations skills to develop these new relationships
as well as the ability to maintain the current customer base
with the least expenditure of energy.
So what can you do about it?
-
Lead from the front. To create
and drive a proactive sales culture senior management needs
to take the lead. Presidents and sales management need to
reach out and touch customers and support their sales staff.
Nothing is better for customer retention than a meeting with
the big brass. Owners and Presidents are not generally sales
people and can more easily obtain casual meetings with senior
managers from within their customer base. These meetings can
give you a sense of how well you are taking care of business
while estimating the stability of the account.
-
Expect more from your sales
staff. Create a sales contest that compels them to perform.
Place a high priority on new customer acquisition while placing
additional incentives on net territory gains as opposed to
overall sales. Make contests desirable and achievable for
everyone. You don’t want your top sales person to be
the ringer here. If there are large swings in territory or
personal production, base results on increased percentage
of sales. Because you are expecting more, be prepared to give
more in the way of money, appreciation, respect, assistance
and of yourself.
-
Reinforce the importance of
customer satisfaction, loyalty and new customer acquisition
to the rest of your organization. Get your whole company thinking
about ways to acquire new customers through their own personal
relationships and contacts. Put a lead generation incentive
in place for your non-selling personnel.
At the end of the day, when the dust settles, the
market share swing will end up where the best-trained sales people
reside. It’s a battle of wills where the outcome is determined
by skill. There is no doubt that both you and your competitor
have the desire for success, but remember, sales is an offensive
game and if you want to win you must be proactive. In good times
you should reinforce the basics regularly, obtain the skills and
tactics that will allow you to sustain relationships through the
rough times. During slow periods you need to vigorously train
and motivate in order to beat your competition. There is one thing
in business you can count on; your competition won’t be
sitting still for long.
Paul William
Clarke, Power Learning Book series Author & Discovery Systems
International, Inc President, Syracuse, NY
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