About Lesson
Implementing a clear and precise selling strategy allows salespeople to plan for future customer acquisition, work on problem-solving and goal setting, and focus on time and customer management.
- Provide Direction and Focus
- Having a strategic plan that is shared with your managers and fellow sales reps allows everyone to align their goals and ensure they are obtainable. Developing strategic selling plans leads to improved productivity and efficiency.
- Consistent Messaging
- Consistent messaging across the company increases trust with customers and bolsters the effectiveness of our message.
- Optimize Opportunities
- Utilizing selling strategies will allow sales reps to better target prospects and refine their approach. Following their selling strategies will reduce the amount of lost opportunities and better educate sales reps on what good opportunities look like.
- Resource Allocation
- By outlining priorities and available resources in a sales strategy you are able to better focus your time, effort and resources to the tasks that are pertinent. Allocating your time effectively can boost your efficiency and allow you to focus more directly on the task or deal at hand.
How Build A Sales Strategy
- Develop organizational goals.
- When developing personal and company-wide goals it is important to get input from all those involved to ensure accuracy and accountability. Make sure your goals are S.M.A.R.T.
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
- By setting goals using the S.M.A.R.T. format you are able to better track your goals, reduce confusion and improve clarity among the team.
- When developing personal and company-wide goals it is important to get input from all those involved to ensure accuracy and accountability. Make sure your goals are S.M.A.R.T.
- Create a customer profile that is tailored to a specific product offering.
- Creating a customer profile or a buyer persona can help initiate the conversation and provide some general background about their likes, dislikes and buying habits.
- To develop this persona you must analyze previous customer’s habits and combine them into an aggregated generalization.
- With a combination of market research, analyzing industry trends and SWOT analysis buyer personas can be easily developed.
- Create a plan to generate demand.
- Developing a detailed plan to target customers is an imperative part of sales strategy that helps narrow our focus to specific objectives.
- It’s important to choose the correct channels and tactics for individual marketing objectives.
- Include your marketing goals and potential leads as part of your plan.
- Developing a detailed plan to target customers is an imperative part of sales strategy that helps narrow our focus to specific objectives.
- Measure performance.
- Tracking your performance is important to analyze if the plan or strategy you have in place is working effectively. By tracking and measuring your performance you are able to better optimize your processes and be more efficient in the future.
- Identify metrics that align with your goals and your ability to reach them. Examples of these would be:
- Revenue targets
- Sales quotas
- Conversion rates
- Pipeline velocity (length of sales cycle)
- By tracking your metrics and measuring your performance towards goals you are able to better understand your market, customer segment and align organizational goals with your own.