5 Steps to Nurture Your Company’s Sales Instincts: Introducing a New Sales Strategy

In a tight economy, customers are less interested in meeting with salespeople, because they’re not yet prepared to buy. Thus, the opportunity for the salesperson to introduce value is lost.

How do you get around this challenge and still generate sales?  The answer is to better leverage your existing team — your customer service personnel, finance, technicians, etc. Training these employees on how to create value, how to ask the right questions, and how to make the right introductions allows you to continue a dialogue without the perceived pressure of a salesperson trying to arrange a meeting.

In a tough economy, every worker is concerned about keeping his or her job, and earning more, not to mention losing money, and all the rest of the concerns facing today’s worker. Your team members want to know how they can add more value and earn more (and retain their job) by learning how to create sales — even from a department that’s not involved in the sales process. So, how can you nurture this idea?

Each of your team members can and should learn how to design and ask questions to entice action from your customers. Selling comes in many colors; these are skills and best practices that your entire organization can adopt to convert their everyday roles into sales and marketing opportunities.

For example:

1. Customer service, while helping the customer, can ask targeted questions to learn more of what’s needed and not working in the long run, rather than focusing only on the current issue.
2. Administrative personnel — your organization’s first line of communication — can learn to be more engaging. Creating more touch points, the customer is more likely to engage in conversations that are more candid.
3. Logistics personnel can learn about additional needs and forecasting from the customer to show value and share this information with the sales team faster, and even identify a new contact to connect with.
4. If you’re a CEO, you can take the time to make visits to customers and get in the door easier, thus finding new paths to new business.
5. Invite your client to be your guest at an industry-related educational workshop or event that will help them learn more and help their customers. This shows them you care, you understand their needs and anchors potential new sales discussions.

This is just the beginning. In the coming months, I’ll explore these ideas in more detail to outline how to cultivate a greater level of awareness, anticipation and selling instincts within your team. Stay tuned for future articles where I outline the tools that give non-salespeople the ability to create and pursue sales or referrals.

Russ Riendeau, PhD, is senior partner of East Wing Group, Inc., a retained search firm, and author of the new audiobook  on psychology in selling and leadership titled: First, Hide The Poison Arrows: A New 3-Point Strategy For Driving Sales & Leadership Effectiveness In Our Post-Recession Economy (Eyecatcher Press) www.eyecatcherpress.com orwww.eastwingsearchgroup.com for more info.

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