Salesmanship: Enterprise Manager's Guide - Softcover

Rachan, Wilfred

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1490771166 ISBN 13: 9781490771168

Verlag: Trafford Publishing, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Salesmanship: Enterprise Manager's Guide has been developed based on experience over the last twenty years in sales of capital goods and software solutions to improve performance. The book came out from the need to train our sales managers. In the information age, it is no longer sufficient to hire sales people with sales and marketing qualification. There is a paradigm change in the function of sales in an enterprise. On the one hand, the sales manager has to be transformed into an entrepreneur. On the other hand, the sales manager has to be trained to become a knowledge worker, i.e., an engineer and a problem solver. The sales manage need to think in terms of commitment and at the same time be able to comprehend and document the processes and workflow (i.e., supply chain and value chain) of the customer during his sales visits. Salesmanship is about relationship management, i.e., relationship with internal and external customers, suppliers, contractors, agencies, etc.-relationship brings us into politics. The sales manager needs to have situational awareness and be sensitive to the cultural factors present during the sales cycle. Salesmanship is about leadership, i.e., the capacity to translate vision into reality. The sales manager is motivated and guided by principles, i.e., he is a soldier and a gentlemen. The sales manager being of strong character will be able to overcome adversity during sales without resorting to con schemes or misleading the customers. The book is a summary of the practical sales knowledge acquired over the last twenty years.

Über diesen Titel

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Salesmanship

Enterprise Manager's Guide

By Wilfred Rachan

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2016 Wilfred Rachan
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-7116-8

Contents

Important Note, v, 
Acknowledgments, vi, 
Preface, ix, 
About the Author, x, 
01. Introduction, 1, 
02. Landscape of the Business, 3, 
03. Intense Market Competition, 8, 
04. Conflict in the Organization, 11, 
05. Profile of a Sales Manager, 14, 
06. Understanding the Customer, 21, 
07. Politics of Deal Making in Sales, 24, 
08. Prospecting, 27, 
09. The Role of Social Media in Sales, 29, 
10. Need Engineering, 32, 
11. Stimulating the Customer to Act, 35, 
12. Target Price vs. Cost Plus, 38, 
13. Segmentation, 40, 
14. Qualification, 43, 
15. Sales Call, 46, 
16. Relativism in Sales, 51, 
17. Beating the Competition, 53, 
18. Timetable, 57, 
19. Giving Evidence, 60, 
20. Objective Avoidance, 66, 
21. Confronting the Prospect, 69, 
22. Top Down vs. Bottom Up, 73, 
23. Leadership in Sales, 76, 
24. Relentless in Sales, 78, 
25. Numbers Are the Language of Sales, 82, 
26. Problem-Solver Mind-Set, 84, 
27. Action Learning in Sales, 86, 
28. Entrepreneurship in Sales, 88, 
29. Positive Mental Attitude in Sales, 91, 
30. Adversity Quotient (AQ), 93, 
31. Conversations in Sales, 96, 
32. DIFOT (Delivery in Full on Time), 98, 
33. Sales Measures, 100, 
34. Data: Intelligence of Business, 102, 
35. Get a Customer, Keep a Customer, 104, 
36. Customer First, 107, 
37. Sustainable Competitive Edge, 110, 
38. Seven Deadly Sales Roadblocks, 112, 
39. Ethics in Sales, 115, 
40. Conclusion, 118, 
Appendix A: Sales-Process Flow, 120, 
Appendix B: Breaking into the Account, 121, 
Appendix C: Solution to Exercise in Chapter 16, 122, 
Appendix D: Sales Cycles, Criteria, and Concerns, 123, 
Appendix E: Sales Trials, MoU's, and Handshakes, 127, 
Bibliography, 129, 

CHAPTER 1

1. Introduction

"Nothing happens until somebody sells something!"

— Arthur "Red" Motley

Sales as a function in all businesses are pervasive throughout an organization. Although there are functional departments with a primary responsibility for sales, it is the goal of a business to sell and report revenue and profit.

"Salesmanship is the practice of investigating and satisfying customer needs through a process that is efficient, fair, sincere, and mutually beneficial, aimed at long-term productive relationship" (www.businessdictionary.com).

It is no longer enough to hire salespeople with sales and marketing qualifications. The salespeople usually have to be recruited from the technical department and trained to do sales. This will enable a sales manager to engage a customer's technical team with a degree of competency. This will ensure that a proposal put forth will be first technically sound and second commercially viable.

There is a shift in the sales process from a transaction-only buyer–seller relationship to a collaboration on framing a problem and then making a proposal for a solution. In this collaborative sales approach, unlike in the past, a sales manager has to interact with a customer's team quite intensively over a longer period of presales cycle. The envelope of participation in a customer's team by a sales manager is broadened and goes beyond the transaction-type-sales process. Further, this interaction will continue after the sales and into the delivery process and beyond.

This guide is an attempt to structure the sales function of a commercial enterprise toward the paradigm shift — from a buyer–seller relationship to a collaborative relationship of doing business. This shift dictates that the old style of sales will no longer be productive in sustaining sales and securing new customers.

This text is intended for the business managers and executives having sales and nonsales roles to give them a better understanding and appreciation of the challenges of sale making in the information age.

This text should also provide good guidance in the development of new hires for sales, marketing, and management roles.

For the experienced sales manager, this text will be a good revisit to the mind-set, methods, and means of the sales trade.

The guide should also provide a good text for students learning about sales, marketing, and management.

2. Landscape of the Business

I have found in the course of my career that an awareness and study of people, history, and political issues, social and technological trends all lead to a better understanding of the dynamics of the marketplace.

— Regis McKenna

The concepts of supply chain and value chain are fundamental to the understanding of the landscape in which a business is operating. Once he has mapped the supply chain (i.e., external-facing) and value chain (i.e., internal-facing), a sales manager can start making sense of the operating environment of a business. This approach enables the players and factors to be identified (i.e., partners, competitors, legal issues, compliance, safety, and others).

The sales manager needs a situational awareness of the business-operating environment before any attempt at problem solving can be initiated. One common approach to creating this situational awareness is by means of a SWOT analysis. The strengths and weaknesses of an organization are internal-facing and identify what are working and what need attention. The opportunities and threats are external-facing and alert the organization on what to focus its resources on and what risks need to be mitigated. During a SWOT analysis, the focus is always the prospective customer.

The sales manager needs to know his competition. What is the competition doing? What are their price points? What are their strengths and weaknesses? These will be useful during the lobby process to position products and services to the customer. The sales manager must always keep in mind that the competition is also not sleeping. They are also engaging in SWOT analyses and strategic marketing efforts. They will harness their network to get competitive data on you as you are doing on them. In the end, the key competition comes down to data or data processed to become information. When such information is used for competitive advantage, it is called intelligence. This is one reason why business intelligence and OLAP (online analytical processing) software have become significant.

Time is of key importance. Competitive information becomes obsolete and outdated in a short span of time. When decisions are based on obsolete and outdated information, the results can be detrimental to the business. Checks and balances need to be put in place to filter, segment, and authenticate the data being processed for sales decision-making. The sales manager must, on a daily basis, scan the landscape to see the movements/shifts in the activities of the competition.

The sales manager must also be aware of the people movement. When a sales manager moves from one competitor to another, what is the likely consequence, and will it provide an opportunity or create a threat to the sales pipeline? People are a key element in the network of business transactions. Relationships are important in maintaining and servicing accounts. Likewise, if we lose a team member to the competition, what will be the consequence?

The sales manager needs a good...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Trafford Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1490771166
• ISBN 13: 9781490771168
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 144
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland