Tag: sales process

Sales

SIMPLE Framework – The Most Important Step in the Sales Process

In an earlier blog post, I had introduced the “SIMPLE” framework to increase your sales effectiveness. I had elaborated on the 1st step which was about how to “Surprise” your customers to initiate their engagement. The second step in the process was to “Inspire” your customers, which entails that you paint a picture of possibilities.  The third step in the process is to be able to “Motivate” your customers to take action. The biggest competition to any sale being concluded is not your competitors but the “inertia” in your customer organization to change.  We need to understand that every significant purchase […]

Customer Engagement

How to increase customer loyalty? First, Stop annoying them !

Everyone in sales knows the importance of customer loyalty and the importance of repeat business. Still, we go out and make it difficult for the customer to do business with us. Worse still, we downright annoy the customers. I had one such experience with a start-up: myPNRstatus.com. They had a novel idea which they are trying out. You can enter the PNR number of the railway ticket and they claim to send you SMS’s on the status of the PNR (if wait-listed, they claim to send you an update everytime there is a change in the status) and also keep […]

Sales

Measuring sales-force effectiveness

One of the key challenges that I have seen in senior leadership is to measure the sales-force effectiveness. This becomes even more important if we are in an environment where revenue growth is difficult to come-by. So how does one measure the effectiveness of their sales-force. I think there are a few key indicators that show if the sales force is doing a good job or not: Revenue growth: The easiest and the most measured variable is the revenue growth. If the revenue is growing month-on-month, quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year, the sales-force is considered to be doing a good job. This shows […]

Sales

To sell more, stop selling

This may sound counter-intuitive but if you want to improve your sales, you need to stop selling and start to solve problems – known and un-known. The following process has really worked well for me: Listen to your prospect or customers. Ask them some probing questions around what is troubling them now or could trouble them in the near future Listen to what they tell you. In my experience, customers usually start by telling you that everything is great and there is nothing troubling them. Once this is finisher and still you do not interrupt them, then they will come […]

Customer Engagement

Relevance of our products/services to customers

I received a comment on my previous blog on sales process that if there is no demand for a product/service, improving the sales process might not have any benefit. True. But how do you know if the decline in sales is due to lowering demand for your product/service or is it due to some other reason. My belief is that as long as your product/service is able to solve a key challenge for your customer, the demand for your product/service should not decline. If it still declines, the culprit lies in the process. A follow-up question is, how, when and how often do […]