Selling Involves Strategy
Like a good game of chess, selling involves strategy and paying careful attention to all the moving pieces. I worked with a welding and gases distributor’s rep who was promoted from inside to outside sales and then was part of a company reorganization that put him in newly assigned territories, which included 10 well-established accounts. While these events were all positive, they were game changers. He sought my guidance on how to develop a sound sales strategy to deal with his new circumstances.
Maintaining Existing Customers
Here is my recommended 4-step strategy for maintaining and growing established accounts:
- Assess – Talk to the previous account manager to analyze your current position. Find out what his specific sales objectives were. Was he in a purely maintenance mode or aggressively selling? How often did he touch base with the plant supervisor and engineering team? In each account, identify the decision makers who approve deals, the purchasing agents who clear requests, and anyone else who influences buying decisions.
- Plan – Carefully consider the tactical sales plan that is in place when you take over an account. A transition to a new rep is a good time to consider alternative positions. Find out what may have changed in the account. For example, the rep in this scenario learned that one of his major accounts had brought in a manufacturer’s rep and an in-house company specialist to look for improvements in the production processes. These people would influence future purchases and needed to become part of his tactical plan to keep the account viable.
- Devise – Once you have determined what alternative position(s) would best secure your objective, you need to devise an action plan. In the example above, after examining the client’s current fabrication assumptions with the company’s team through a series of intense questions, a few significant efficiencies were discovered that led to a new sales plan.
- Implement – The cost savings of the new plan were dollarized by the rep and presented to the customer’s decision-making team. After completing their internal engineering analysis, the company approved the rep’s action plan and it was implemented.
Knowledge Is Power
The newly minted outside sales account manager in the above scenario successfully used these 4-steps to continually reassess and refine his sales tactics. Knowledge is power and the basis of any good sales strategy. Today, you only win in sales if you know what you and your customers are looking for.
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