You've Just Taken over a Tarnished Territory
The Tarnished Territory (Part 3 of series on new territories)
Tarnished Territory - The Action Plan
Over the last couple of weeks, we have spent some time exploring the amazing revelry and rigors of being assigned to a new territory. We've outlined some of the strategic data tied to better understanding your situation. In the case of a seller assigned to a formerly neglected territory, our journey has touched on who might help us better focus on accounts capable of generating faster results for our efforts; most of our discussion might be summarized as strategic lots of thought but nothing tied directly to sitting face-to-face with a customer.
Let’s get tactical
Before we start, what we are laying out is not an all-inclusive list for selling. Allow me to share a bit about my own experience so many years ago. I had experience in sales. I started selling tires and batteries for my fathers business at age 14 and I sold encyclopedias in college. When I started in this industry, I thought I knew how to sell. I made tons of mistakes. It was only after thrashing around for a few years, that I came to the realization – I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Sadly, I discovered most of the books and courses on selling aren't appropriate for our kind of work. Instead, they are focused on selling real estate, capital goods and even cell phones and waterbeds. But, there are a few notable examples. If you haven't read, Dave Kahle's book How to Excell in Distributor Sales or my personal book, Plan on Breaking Through – Customer-Based Strategic Planning for Sellers, I would encourage you to buy them. My guess is your boss will let you "expense them" and the pointers you receive will accelerate the growth of your sales volume and take-home pay.
Think about your territory
Let's start with a few things that will make your life easier. Here are a couple of points to think about:
• Do the customers you plan to call on have established accounts with your organization? This is a pretty simple thing. Bad credit standing complicates your work. If you invest time with the customer and convince them to buy something, you will find the sale in jeopardy before the ink dries on the purchase order. If the account is "good pay" but not set up, you will need to quickly and efficiently get them set up with your company. Do you know who to talk to to make this happen and how long the process will take? It might be a good idea to check with your boss or credit manager so you can set customer expectations at the time of your first new order.
• Are there Special Pricing Agreements (SPAs) in place for the customer? Our industry is filled to the brim with SPAs
and other special deals. Many times neglected territories have SPAs which are expired, forgotten or simply extended without updating the customer. Without understanding the situation on each of these you may find yourself face to face with embarrassment or worse yet, in the position of quoting the wrong price to the customer. This isn't a best practice for demonstrating your worth to a new (to you) customer.
• Where is the account located? It's a simple concept, but many people ignore locations and find themselves wasting countless hours crisscrossing their territories going from one account to another. Salespeople are in the service business. Time spent in the car doesn't provide the same return on investment as time spent at the customer.
• What time do your customers start work? Again, it's a simple but important question. Most people assume business hours are the standard 9-5, but experience says otherwise. Many manufacturing facilities start their first shift at 6:30, so if you are calling on maintenance people, business hours are 6:30 till 3:00. The bad news is this means you aren't working the standard 9-5 hours. I have known salespeople who launched their day at 9:00 each day only to discover they had issues with making the right number of calls to truly be successful.
Appointments Rock
Customer appointments work better than just dropping by. Why? First, in many instances, it's difficult to just drop in and get an audience with your customer. Second, dropping in gives the impression you place no value on your customer's time. There are far too many "drive-by" salespeople in the world and many customers view the practice as a nuisance; just another guy distracting from their busy day.
Here are a few pointers for getting the appointment:
• Know what you are going to say. Strangely, many salespeople make calls for appointments which are poorly planned. There’s lots of stumbling and stammering and a lack of confidence. I recommend jotting down a short script for your message. To get your juices flowing here is a sample: "Good morning, this is Frank from River Heights Consulting. I have been newly assigned to servicing your organization and I would like to stop by to introduce myself and gather a few thoughts from you. This will definitely not be a sales pitch."
• Never start your conversation off with “how are you today” or some variation. Nothing signals a sales call coming like the words, "Hi Frank, how are you doing today" coming from a complete stranger. Skip this and just talk about what you want to do.
• If you get voicemail, always leave a message. You will note, the “script” above works equally well as a message for
voicemail. This is a good thing because, in today’s environment, you will find most of your calls end up in voicemail. Extending this further, I know many sellers who don’t leave voicemails. I have two words for them – caller ID. Assume your customer will know who is calling based on the caller ID system.
• Call at the best time for catching customers at their desk. It’s not about your schedule, the best time to catch customers at their desk is a few minutes after start time, lunch and a few minutes before they go home. Try calling them at these times and increase your chances of connecting.
• Back up your call with an email. If you have the customer’s email, don’t just leave them a voicemail message, follow-up with an email restating who you are and why you want to see them.
• Don’t be afraid to use text messaging if you have the contacts mobile number. A few years ago I would have cautioned against sending text messages. but times have changed. My work with Millennials n particular, indicates they prefer text messages to phone calls. I start with a phone call but flip over to text messages after a couple of calls.
• Expect to call multiple times. Many salespeople make one or two calls then just write the customer off as not being interested in talking. Nothing could be further from the truth. Research done by River Heights Consulting indicates it takes between five and seven calls to reach many people. Be persistent, it’s nothing personal.
Work on appointments all the time
Setting appointments isn't a one and done deal. Constant nurturing is required. Many salespeople create a list of people they want to talk to and make calls at random times during the day – mostly from their car or customer lobbies. They typically start the call off with this phrase, “I was between calls and thought I would give you a quick phone call to check into our meeting.”
Now, on to the meeting
First-time calls should never be seen as a selling event. Your prime purpose is to better understand the customer. If already doing some business, you might ask about the application, whether the product has performed successfully and if the customer has received good service from your inside or technical support team.
Other questions to consider might include:
• What is your company's primary product and how is it used in the market?
• How do you manufacture these products?
• Are there products you use regularly?
• Do your people need special training to be effective?
• Are trained people hard to find?
• What do you look for in a supplier?
Don't rapid-fire like an interrogation, wrap them into a conversation.
Don't be tempted to launch into a sales pitch on your products. Instead, gather information, take notes and look for opportunities.
Always find a reason to come back
Look for a reason to come back. If the customer requests a new catalog and you have 200 of them in your car, don't provide one on the spot. Instead, commit to bring one by next week (or some other time in the future). This provides a new opportunity – and this one will be a selling opportunity.
Accelerating Relationships
Repeated interactions are the critical steps in building a relationship. Don't make the mistake of thinking sales calls are your only opportunity to interact with your customer. Here is a list of other possibilities:
• Send the customer a thank-you note for meeting with you following your first visit.
• Create a Google Alert for their company and forward any interesting articles from trade publications.
• Make a call shortly after their next order to make sure the order was handled correctly.
• Send personal notes when you see the customer celebrating a birthday or workplace anniversary on LinkedIn.
Wrapping this all up
Appointments, meaningful calls and accelerating the relationship will set the stage for you. Finding additional customers is critically important as well.
Stay Tuned
In our next installment, we will take a look at the guy starting a territory from scratch. A big part of this is prospecting for people. We'll share some tips for finding your kind of customers even when they're hidden in a confusing maze of companies and locals.
If you want to get a head start – Send us an email and we’ll send you a copy of our newly revised customer finding tool. We named it Stalking Customers for Fun and Profit. Yeah, goofy name but a great guide and… best yet, it’s free.
Tarnished Territory - The Action Plan
Over the last couple of weeks, we have spent some time exploring the amazing revelry and rigors of being assigned to a new territory. We've outlined some of the strategic data tied to better understanding your situation. In the case of a seller assigned to a formerly neglected territory, our journey has touched on who might help us better focus on accounts capable of generating faster results for our efforts; most of our discussion might be summarized as strategic lots of thought but nothing tied directly to sitting face-to-face with a customer. Let’s get tactical
Before we start, what we are laying out is not an all-inclusive list for selling. Allow me to share a bit about my own experience so many years ago. I had experience in sales. I started selling tires and batteries for my fathers business at age 14 and I sold encyclopedias in college. When I started in this industry, I thought I knew how to sell. I made tons of mistakes. It was only after thrashing around for a few years, that I came to the realization – I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Sadly, I discovered most of the books and courses on selling aren't appropriate for our kind of work. Instead, they are focused on selling real estate, capital goods and even cell phones and waterbeds. But, there are a few notable examples. If you haven't read, Dave Kahle's book How to Excell in Distributor Sales or my personal book, Plan on Breaking Through – Customer-Based Strategic Planning for Sellers, I would encourage you to buy them. My guess is your boss will let you "expense them" and the pointers you receive will accelerate the growth of your sales volume and take-home pay.
Think about your territory
Let's start with a few things that will make your life easier. Here are a couple of points to think about:
• Do the customers you plan to call on have established accounts with your organization? This is a pretty simple thing. Bad credit standing complicates your work. If you invest time with the customer and convince them to buy something, you will find the sale in jeopardy before the ink dries on the purchase order. If the account is "good pay" but not set up, you will need to quickly and efficiently get them set up with your company. Do you know who to talk to to make this happen and how long the process will take? It might be a good idea to check with your boss or credit manager so you can set customer expectations at the time of your first new order.
• Are there Special Pricing Agreements (SPAs) in place for the customer? Our industry is filled to the brim with SPAs
• Where is the account located? It's a simple concept, but many people ignore locations and find themselves wasting countless hours crisscrossing their territories going from one account to another. Salespeople are in the service business. Time spent in the car doesn't provide the same return on investment as time spent at the customer.
• What time do your customers start work? Again, it's a simple but important question. Most people assume business hours are the standard 9-5, but experience says otherwise. Many manufacturing facilities start their first shift at 6:30, so if you are calling on maintenance people, business hours are 6:30 till 3:00. The bad news is this means you aren't working the standard 9-5 hours. I have known salespeople who launched their day at 9:00 each day only to discover they had issues with making the right number of calls to truly be successful.
Appointments Rock
Customer appointments work better than just dropping by. Why? First, in many instances, it's difficult to just drop in and get an audience with your customer. Second, dropping in gives the impression you place no value on your customer's time. There are far too many "drive-by" salespeople in the world and many customers view the practice as a nuisance; just another guy distracting from their busy day.
Here are a few pointers for getting the appointment:
• Know what you are going to say. Strangely, many salespeople make calls for appointments which are poorly planned. There’s lots of stumbling and stammering and a lack of confidence. I recommend jotting down a short script for your message. To get your juices flowing here is a sample: "Good morning, this is Frank from River Heights Consulting. I have been newly assigned to servicing your organization and I would like to stop by to introduce myself and gather a few thoughts from you. This will definitely not be a sales pitch."
• Never start your conversation off with “how are you today” or some variation. Nothing signals a sales call coming like the words, "Hi Frank, how are you doing today" coming from a complete stranger. Skip this and just talk about what you want to do.
• If you get voicemail, always leave a message. You will note, the “script” above works equally well as a message for
 |
| You know they know you called, make the most of it. |
• Call at the best time for catching customers at their desk. It’s not about your schedule, the best time to catch customers at their desk is a few minutes after start time, lunch and a few minutes before they go home. Try calling them at these times and increase your chances of connecting.
• Back up your call with an email. If you have the customer’s email, don’t just leave them a voicemail message, follow-up with an email restating who you are and why you want to see them.
• Don’t be afraid to use text messaging if you have the contacts mobile number. A few years ago I would have cautioned against sending text messages. but times have changed. My work with Millennials n particular, indicates they prefer text messages to phone calls. I start with a phone call but flip over to text messages after a couple of calls.
• Expect to call multiple times. Many salespeople make one or two calls then just write the customer off as not being interested in talking. Nothing could be further from the truth. Research done by River Heights Consulting indicates it takes between five and seven calls to reach many people. Be persistent, it’s nothing personal.
Work on appointments all the time
Setting appointments isn't a one and done deal. Constant nurturing is required. Many salespeople create a list of people they want to talk to and make calls at random times during the day – mostly from their car or customer lobbies. They typically start the call off with this phrase, “I was between calls and thought I would give you a quick phone call to check into our meeting.”
Now, on to the meeting
First-time calls should never be seen as a selling event. Your prime purpose is to better understand the customer. If already doing some business, you might ask about the application, whether the product has performed successfully and if the customer has received good service from your inside or technical support team.
Other questions to consider might include:
• What is your company's primary product and how is it used in the market?
• How do you manufacture these products?
• Are there products you use regularly?
• Do your people need special training to be effective?
• Are trained people hard to find?
• What do you look for in a supplier?
 |
| This first meeting is not the place for your sales pitch. |
Don't be tempted to launch into a sales pitch on your products. Instead, gather information, take notes and look for opportunities.
Always find a reason to come back
Look for a reason to come back. If the customer requests a new catalog and you have 200 of them in your car, don't provide one on the spot. Instead, commit to bring one by next week (or some other time in the future). This provides a new opportunity – and this one will be a selling opportunity.
Accelerating Relationships
Repeated interactions are the critical steps in building a relationship. Don't make the mistake of thinking sales calls are your only opportunity to interact with your customer. Here is a list of other possibilities:
• Send the customer a thank-you note for meeting with you following your first visit.
• Create a Google Alert for their company and forward any interesting articles from trade publications.
• Make a call shortly after their next order to make sure the order was handled correctly.
• Send personal notes when you see the customer celebrating a birthday or workplace anniversary on LinkedIn.
Wrapping this all up
Appointments, meaningful calls and accelerating the relationship will set the stage for you. Finding additional customers is critically important as well.
Stay Tuned
In our next installment, we will take a look at the guy starting a territory from scratch. A big part of this is prospecting for people. We'll share some tips for finding your kind of customers even when they're hidden in a confusing maze of companies and locals.
If you want to get a head start – Send us an email and we’ll send you a copy of our newly revised customer finding tool. We named it Stalking Customers for Fun and Profit. Yeah, goofy name but a great guide and… best yet, it’s free.
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