What is the difference between a sales strategy that succeeds and an equally well thought out strategy that fails?
I was asked this interesting question by a CEO, the other day.
After some reflection, I was able to share with him, that the only outcome that matters is that a
good sales strategy works to visibly move the market.
At a micro level, this boils down to the successful strategy having created value in interactions with its clients to win the correct business. If this is sustainable over many such value creating interactions across many clients, the firm can win market share.
This is a simple concept that has powerful implications. Ensuring success points to a single question:
How do you ensure that the greatest number of client interactions create value, whether online or face-to-face?
What the top sales people do differently by Prof. Neil Rackham (Sales guru)
The answer lies in creating a strategy built on a client agenda that is fully aware of which previous client-centric strategies failed, because they did not recognise value.
Value is tied directly to the client’s perceived need: The more urgent the need, the higher the potential value a firm can create. To create more value, a firm must help develop a wider array of needs that the client wants to act on. Needs that the firm is best placed at satisfying.
In this era of digital disruption, the client’s voice has more power than ever. To counterbalance the recent seismic shift in client buying behaviours, firms have to reverse a culture of paying lip service to “walking a mile in their client’s shoes”.
Merely, ‘pushing’ products or services onto clients is counter-productive. We have to move on from interruption marketing that damages our brand. Instead, consider using permission-based marketing whereby client’s opt in to engage with you – to move the target market in your favour.
