There is an old expression and cliché called the “Spray & Pray” approach, which is essentially where you target everyone in a potential demographic(largely by email) in the vain attempt to “hook some prospects” to ultimately get you sales. There is no finesse to this approach as you blanket email everyone, little or no personalisation and just hope it works. This is also the approach adopted by “spammers and scammers” online to attract unsuspecting “victims.” Let’s be very clear and honest, this approach sometimes works for them and it does in the day to day sales environment too but this does not make it a good or right approach. People who tend to buy from this approach soon realise that the salesperson doesn’t care about them and just wants to make a sale. This is absolutely NOT a good approach.
When you are running a credible and sustainable business, you need to have a proper and good strategy for what, who and when you are offering to your client.
This short article looks at the key elements of your sales strategy and gives you some insight into what actually works. If you are looking for a “quick fix” for your sales planning, this is not it and is meant as a guide as every business has different objectives for what they are trying to achieve. These pointers are merely there to guide you to a brighter and better way of doing things.
It’s essentially the difference between having a strategy and the “spray and pray” approach.
So how and what should we look at in our sales strategy?
Well essentially we need to look at the 4 Ps…
Potentials
Who are we targeting our products at? If we don’t know who our ideal clients are then we minimise the chances of getting to them. When you play darts, you(mostly!) aim for the treble 20 or bullseye as this gives you the highest return. In sales, it’s no different, the key to being successful is not ringing or meeting the most people, it’s meeting the right people. So the first part of your strategy is to narrow down on and drill into who are your ideal clients. Get a piece of paper out and write down who and what is your ideal client and start there. Why are you targeting these people? How come they make most sense for your business and more importantly, why does your business make sense for them. In this day and age it’s much easier to identify your ideal clients by doing some simple research on your target market(LinkedIn is great for this) So rather than target 150 companies, target 20 companies but make them more relevant ones.
Strategy 1 – Do your research
Product
So now that you know your client base you need to consider how your product fits into their business and essentially why it makes sense for them. What’s your USP and why should they care? Does it make them money, save them money, save them time or what other advantage has your product that will make them interested and desire your product? For me, I do something pretty simple before every call or meeting. I simply write down 3 reasons on a piece of paper as to why what I am offering makes sense to them. It’s really effective and focuses the mind and confidence for the meeting ahead. If you struggle to know what these are yourself, how can you persuade your client? This approach also makes you more prepared and professional.
Strategy 2 – Know your why by writing it down.
Promotion
In this day and age of multiple sales platforms, social media, networking groups and all the other
promotional channels, it’s easy to get distracted by trying to do too much. The old expression “Jack of All Trades” rings true. I work with clients who try and do 10-15 social media channels and invariably have little success. It’s not good trying to do them all and nor should you be. It’s about
picking the right channels where your clients “live” and targeting these ones. By freeing up the mind you are giving yourself the headspace to be able to craft your message correctly and more
effectively. I get 95% of my business from LinkedIn so spend most of my time there. However I know
if I ignore the other channels, I’m leaving something on the table. For me it’s about being exceptional at one social media channel(LinkedIn) be reasonably good at another(Twitter) and be working on one more(Instagram) – Where’s Facebook I hear you say…aside from disliking FB with a passion, it’s just not somewhere my clients live…I have tried it and invested money in it but it was a complete disaster. If you are going to invest your hard earned money into something then make sure it’s the right thing.
Strategy 3 – Be selective where you target your promotion.
Presentation
In this day and age, less is more when it comes to presentations and with clients being far more time poor these days, it’s all about relevance and solving problems. Thankfully the days of big long PowerPoint presentations is becoming less impressive. In fact some big companies such as Google are actually banning PowerPoint from meetings. Not so sure I would totally agree as PP has its place and it’s more about how you use it, not if you do. In today’s selling, it’s more about what the client needs and not what we offer. It’s about solving problems…so we as sales people need to build solving not selling onto our presentations.
Strategy 4 – Build Solving into your Presentations
As a business, we work with companies every day on the whole area of sales strategy and sales planning and what is really obvious is that the ones who have a real strategy have a far higher success rate than those who don’t and build strong and sustainable businesses.
If you don’t have a sales strategy, don’t worry you are far from alone but you will be alone if you
keep it that way…
Get in touch at any stage…We are here to help….
By Stephan Murtagh,
The Exhibition Guy
- +353 86 7750420
- stephan@theexhibitionguy.com