Meetings or business contacts need a sales process.
Meetings and business co
ntacts are integral stages of the sales cycle.
The sales process is defined by the company once the sales cycle of the potential costumers is known. A general and useful classification of the different steps can be found in the presentation “venta centrada en el cliente” (client-focused sale), of Miguel Mejía.
As if it were a mirror, each stage of the buying cycle corresponds to one in the sales cycle. Every company must identify the stages of its sales process with specific rituals and milestones (general presentation, requesting a proposal from your client, gathering the data for the proposal, showing how the product works…).
Defining the sales process
Business processes can be defined based on 5 components:
- Succession of activities.
- Delivered/registered information on each activity. The support of such information can be physical support or digital media, images, recordings …
- Physical and electronic support tools. The unavoidable tool is the CRM software, but there can be others.
- Profile of the people who must execute the tasks.
- System of process control. Indicators and measurement mechanisms.
Goals of the meeting
A meeting and, in general, any contact that is intended to sell has only two goals: 1. To determine the stage of the buying/selling cycle of the client and 2. To reach the next stage.
Setting the stage of the buying/selling cycle
The seller will meet negotiators who are in different phases of the buying /selling cycle depending on the origin of this contact. You have to assume that the cold leads are, normally, in the first stages. On the other hand, when the buyer contacts the seller, he has usually already travelled part of the way.
Each stage of the buying/selling cycle has an associated probability of sale. This probability is inherent to the features of the seller’s offer and to the market where he operates. Experience helps calculating it. The probability increases as you move through the cycle. If the seller is looking for results in the short term, he will prefer to focus only on those companies that have already walked part of the way. Therefore, he will refuse cold leads and sales products/services that mean introducing new concepts. Once this attitude is taken to an extreme, the seller only devotes his resources to the clients who already bought a specific product/service (it happens often). We suggest a diverse source of leads. Otherwise, we would lose access to a big part of the market, reserved to companies with a greater capacity of commercial investment.
The stage of the buying/selling cycle establishes the optimum content of the visit.
Reaching the next stage
The product/service that we have to sell in each stage is the movement to the next stage. If we divide our sales objective into “the concept”, “features of our product/service” and “security as a provider”, we will quickly realize that the combination of these ingredients varies along with the commercial process.
E.g. We sell “innovation” consulting.
If the first step of our process is to arrange a meeting with a phone call –cold lead-, the concept itself is a “business meeting”. As it is something known, there is no need to sell it. What you need to sell is the meeting itself, explaining its content and making it more attractive than other meetings. You don’t need to sell security because the risk of being visited is minimal.
As a result of the visit we want to arrange a “workshop” with the directors of the departments involved in the process of creating new products and services in order to obtain conclusions regarding the innovation process of the company.
In this case, we should focus on explaining this concept and the benefits for the client.
We should not try to convince them of the features of our workshops, compared to the others, because it is likely that no one has proposed this idea as part of the buying/selling process. We must also explain why they should put their trust in us as secure providers, because the time of some directors and the prestige of our negotiator are starting to become increasing risks.
Selling concept, selling product/service, selling security
How can you sell each of these components?
- Concept. Relating it to other known concepts that are valuable for the buyer: cost-effectiveness, productivity, market share, … Using examples where the relationship between such concepts has already been proven…
- Product/Service. Describing its features, with the help of demos, sharing the experiences of other clients, with free or guaranteed trials…
- Security. Through recommendations from other clients. Showing references. Getting endorsements from well-known companies. With its own brand. Through the contacts of the company with the client. With the history and experience of the company and its members.
Filed under: Dirección marketing ventas, English, Presentación de productos/servicios, procesos comerciales, Prospección de clientes, Táctica de ventas, Técnica de visitas/contactos de ventas | Etiquetado: Marketing, sales, Sales process, Sales Tactics | Deja un Comentario »