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Marketing To and Through Your Sales Staff
By Paul Weber
Ingram’s Magazine
July 2005
For all the time, energy and resources we expend on building a
brand, the efforts can often be wasted if your sales force is not
adequately trained to support the brand. To complete an effective
marketing strategy, sales involvement must begin at the earliest
stages and end with effective sales training.
Second only to the customer, nobody knows your product and services
better than your sales force. When developing a comprehensive
marketing plan, research almost always involves customer input in
the form of surveys but seldom do we include the sales force this
early in the process.
An effective supplement to any marketing research is to include the
sales force as a critical audience. While customers speak in terms
of features and benefits, the sales team brings an entirely
different perspective. The sales force, and only the sales force,
can identify customer objections to the close of a sale.
The ability to overcome a customer’s objection is usually the
difference between success and failure in sales. If armed with this
important knowledge, a skillful marketer can craft product messages
that will address potential objections long before the sales call.
Armed with the unique perspective of a sales team, marketers can
in-turn better equip the sales force to carry the brand message.
Unfortunately, another gap exists when it comes to effectively
training the sales force to carry the brand message and close the
sale.
A sales training strategy that considers the core brand message will
pay dividends in increased sales and a stronger brand focus.
The need for sales force training varies widely across
organizations. However, most professional sales trainers agree on a
universal need to teach core selling skills.
These skills, combined with a brand emphasis, will produce
greater results:
Effectively Listening and Questioning: Listening and
questioning builds trust but also gathers valuable product
information from a customer’s perspective. Create a system whereby
the sales force is encouraged or required to report on customer
feedback accumulated during the sales call.
Building Rapport and Trust: While there are many ways to
build rapport, the quickest way to lose trust is to sell your
product inconsistent with other marketing messages. The most common
mistake; a sales force that isn’t properly informed of advertised
sales, discounts or promotions. Keep your sales force up-to-date.
Educating the Customer: In this era of consultative sales,
the ability to educate the customer improves selling effectiveness.
Sales training that combines traditional selling skills with tactics
used by teachers will also produce greater results.
Delivering Features and Benefits: The oldest and most
effective sales technique is the ability to sell features and
benefits. In today’s customer focused marketplace, the features and
benefits offered by the sales force must be the same messages
delivered to customers through other marketing channels. If your
brand position in the marketplace is speed, your sales force should
sell speed.
Prospecting: A good prospector is hard to find. One that
embraces cold calling and door knocking is even rarer. Help your
sales force become better prospectors using traditional role playing
techniques. But also teach your sales force to selectively target
their prospects using the same demographic and psychographic
profiling used by direct marketers. Help them cast a smaller, yet
more effective net.
Anticipating the Customers Needs: You can’t deliver features
and benefits without understanding the customer’s needs. The most
successful marketers in the world research customer needs
extensively. Yet many companies never share that research with their
sales force. Explain the research findings to your sales force and
teach them to translate this learning into a sales advantage.
Building Relationships: Find a successful sales person and
you’ll discover a great relationship builder. Too often we rely on
personality to build these relationships without offering the tools
to supplement personality. If your sales force is spread thin,
communication frequency lessens and relationships suffer. Adequately
train your sales force to communicate via all channels. Don’t
overlook solid business writing skills in the form of letters and
emails as a much needed training focus.
Demonstrating Product Knowledge: Sales training frequently
emphasizes “soft” techniques such as communication skills and
delivering the “close”. While these are necessary skills, time spent
teaching product knowledge is time well spent. Nothing ruins
credibility with a customer faster than not knowing the details and
intricacies of a product.
Although rather lengthy, this list of sales training techniques is
remarkable in its simplicity to address with your sales force. These
are core skills that tend to be learned rather than innate. Properly
implementing a sales training program that considers the heart of
the brand and the complete marketing process will greatly enhance
your sales force investment.
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