Sales Jobs: Making Appointments |
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| By John Bult - UK Careers | ||||
| The fact is that my experience as a sales manager tells me
otherwise. Sometimes folk in Sales Jobs can be very good in
front of customers, and yet struggle to meet their sales
targets. While, on the other hand, those who perform only
moderately well in front of the customers can sometimes get
consistently good sales figures. The explanation, I think, lies in the fact that in Sales Jobs you can't sell anything if you cannot get the customer's attention in the first place. It is the salesperson with good "access skills", who is able to routinely generate sufficient appointments, who is best placed to succeed. This is partly because he/she will get more opportunities to sell, but probably also partly due to the fact that when face to face with the customer he/she will be under less pressure to sell "every time". In Sales Jobs, therefore, it is worth looking carefully at one's technique for making appointments. I'm on the other side of the fence, now, managing my own company, and I receive sales calls all the time. Time is an absolutely critical factor for anyone running even a small company in today's market place. But I try to always accept sales calls from people in Sales Jobs. This is not because I harbour some sort of altruistic feelings towards salespersons, but because I know that their calls may be of direct benefit to my business. If they are able to supply the goods or services that I need more cheaply, or if they are able to help me sell more of my good and services, then they will increase my business profits. Therefore, when people in Sales Jobs telephone me to ask for an appointment, it is essential that they tell me straight away how their product/service may benefit my business. If they fail to do this, it won't be in my best interests to give them any more time. Quite early on in my Sales Jobs career I went on a training course that described the idea of opening a sales call with a 'general benefit' statement. This would be a reason why your call is, or could be, of benefit to the customer. It could be something quite simple, like "I'm marketing a product that will help to reduce your business costs, or help your business sell more of its goods/services. And, nowadays, this is the only kind of sales call opening that would get my attention. Its pretty pointless in Sales Jobs, of course, to open with this kind of statement if it is only going to become apparent later that you don't really have anything of value to offer. Sales persons need to be very familiar with the benefits associated with their products, and be able to exploit those benefits. To summarise: I would advise that one of the initial objectives for folk in Sales Jobs, making sales calls, should be to offer the customer some sort of 'general benefit statement' that will make it worth his /her while to listen to what they have to say and possibly agree to a sales appointment. Doing this routinely has great potential. |
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| Article Source: http://artico.co.za | ||||
| About The Author John Bult runs an internet jobs site for sales jobs in the UK |
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| © 2010 artico.co.za |
