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Boosting Tactical Sales Skills

Welcome to the fifth article in our six-part “You Can Always Sell More” series. More extensive versions of this piece and earlier articles in the series can be downloaded for free. Use your e-mail address to register and enter “issa” as your password.

In this article, we’ll look at the tactical or process selling skills of your sales team. Successful tactical selling skills include an understanding of how to maintain and grow a business, knowledge of how to manage the selling process, and effectiveness in maintaining and influencing customers. Honing your tactical skills is one of two critical drivers — along with “strategic” skills (see “Strengthening Your Sales Team” in May’s “ISSA Reports”) — that can actually increase your competitive advantage.

In general, the two most critical tactical revenue-generation areas to improve are how you maintain and grow your existing customers, and how you sell new prospects.

Current Customers
The stability of a sales territory (i.e., low account turnover) is directly related to the ongoing proactive support being offered to existing customers. It’s also directly related to how you maximize the use of your sales-support team (senior management, technical support, etc.) when solving problems. You need to ask yourself what can be done to improve the “best practices” of how you and your entire team respond to customers’ problems.

Are you able to identify and resolve problems before your customer even realizes that problems exist? The faster you can react, the less stressed your customer will be and the more loyal to you and your company. Also, talking to more people within important accounts can help you identify and fix problems more efficiently.

Additionally, you should consider meeting with your entire sales team to define your best practices of proactively managing and supporting your existing customers. Analyze scenarios where you have been successful and where you have failed in resolving customer problems.

Develop a multistep plan for the entire year for important existing accounts. Are you thinking and planning the entire sales year to maximize your impact and competitive advantage? What do you plan to do to continue to earn the customer’s business throughout the year? Specifically, what are the next three applications or business opportunities identified and available for you within each of your major accounts? What kinds of customer training and demonstration sessions do you want to conduct?

New Customers
There are two acceptable definitions of new-business prospecting. One is looking for additional business within an existing account by selling to other departments or locations, or selling additional business applications.

A second definition involves going out and finding new companies to sell. How many new-account sales calls have you made in the last 30 days? Successful new-company prospecting has to be an ongoing, proactive and continuous effort. What is your new-business prospecting plan for the next year?

Consider “grouping your work” for your new-business telephone prospecting effort. Don’t just sit down to call a single new prospect, sit down and call 10 or 20 at a time.

Also, consider organizing a new-business prospecting best-practices plan for the year. The plan should include “multiple moves ahead” for new-business prospects for the entire year (“What will I do different in January compared to April or September?”). Also include targeted industries or customer groups, sample voice-mail message scripts, and identified best individuals to approach with new-business ideas.

This article is adapted, with permission, from You Can Always Sell More — How to Improve Any Sales Force, John Wiley & Sons. Copyright © 2007, Jim Pancero, Inc.