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Sales: reminders of best practice

Existing customers

80% of your business will come from existing customers. The relationship between customer service and sales is intimate. Satisfied customers will come back for more. Invest in and maintain the very best of relationships with your existing customers. Ensure that they get what they want, when they want it to the standards they require. Ensure that they can call on you for help with delivery, specification, invoicing or credit issues. Never think that this is someone's else's job. It may not be your job in a formal sense but it is your customer - and your customers are your stock-in-trade. Represent your customers to your company - and remember if you ever want to leave your current company for one that gives you better terms, satisfied customers will often come with you. Remember also that 80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers. Look after this 20% as if they are delicate china!

Other people or departments in existing customers.

If you have a satisfied customer, ask them if they will introduce you to their work colleagues. Everyone likes to be seen as someone who knows and if you do a good job for your customer's colleagues, they will get the reflected glory. Remember, if you do make a sale to a customer's colleague, your performance will affect your relationship with your initial customer.

Past customers

You will lose customers when their needs change. There is not a lot you can do about this - but stay in touch. People who are your ex-customers (and do think of them first as people) may well change companies or jobs in a way that they may want to buy from you again. If you have maintained a relationship of trust and friendship, they will invite you to tender first. Remember also that the needs of companies change and an ex-customer may find that they have new needs. If you are still in their mind - and they still trust you - they may well call you.

Competitors to existing customers

If you have added value to a company in a specific business sector (and selling is primarily about adding value), you can use this as an introduction to other companies in the same or similar sector. Remember that prospective customers need a reason to invest their time in talking to you. The fact that you have had success with a competitor is a good reason.

Be careful! Customers often want you to be an expert in their industry or business sector but to work only for them. The two desires conflict. You can only be an industry expert if you work for many customers in the same industry. If an existing customer appears worried, you have two options (a) to offer them an exclusive contract in return for greater sales or better prices or (b) to explain the nature of industry expertise and the complete confidence in which you hold customer's data.

You should never talk about one customer's affairs with another.

Referrals

Often referred to as third party referrals - people who your customer knows and who might buy your product or your service are a good source for business. If you have established an excellent working relationship with a customer, and if he or she appreciates that you have gone out of your way to help him or her on many occasions, there can be no harm in asking whether the customer will refer to you to friends or acquaintances in other companies. Remember the warning given above - if you do make a sale on the basis of a customer's referral, your performance will affect your relationship with your initial customer.

Active research

The most difficult way to sell is to cold call. Trying to sell to people who do not know you, or worse do not know your company, is hard work. At least use brain power before leg power. Don't start calling until you have researched the industry, the company and their needs and aspirations.

You need a reason why someone who does not know you will talk to you. The fact that your product is new is unlikely to be a sufficient reason. You need to show how your product will help prospective customers - and to do this you need to know in what areas they may need help. Find someone who knows the industry. Talk to them about it. Check the trade press and the business pages and select an approach that will interest a prospective buyer. Then find out the name of the right person in the target company. Sometimes information is available in the trade press, in company publications or even on the internet (though fewer and fewer companies publish the names of operating directors or managers.)

There is a definite skill to using the telephone to get information. Handled the right way, telephone receptionists may tell you who you need to talk to. Often they will respond better to a female than a male voice. (The assumption is that it is a secretary or PA who is calling and people are more willing to help people like themselves. This is not sexist - just fact.)

Appointments

Calling to get appointments can be a tiring business. Again it is best done by a someone who might be a secretary or PA. Avoid scripts They sound like scripts (!) and give an impersonal impression. Remember the reason you want to give them for seeing you - the one that you have researched. Keep it short. Even if you do not have third party references, you can at least mention relevant companies who have bought from you. Be ready to send supporting material if asked. Use email if you can. It is quicker and very easy to reply to. Fix another appointment. Getting appointments is a numbers game. The more calls you make, the more appointments you will get. (Remember also that this tip is number seven on the list. There are more effective ways!) Don't be affronted if people cancel appointments. They have other things to do.

Meeting people

Attending conferences or business meetings and handing out business cards is OK but it is not likely to generate many sales leads. More effective is networking - creating a circle of acquaintances with whom you feel able to chat and with whom you can exchange assistance and information. If you can get a role at a conference, by volunteering to help, this will improve your chances of people listening to you. The essence of this approach is not to be seen to be selling. Sales come as if incidentally from networking.

People who have said 'no' in the past

Prospective customers may have said 'no' in the past but this does not mean they said 'never.' Try again but have a new story - customers who have bought from you, new products, references, publications and so on. Watch what happens to companies who have said no in the past. Try to identify what it is that they need now. Create a new reason for them to see you again.

The market's awareness of your expertise

Become an expert if you can. If you are the speaker at a conference, the author of a key article or book, the subject of a newspaper or magazine interview or quoted as an expert in the media, people may well seek you out. This will not happen very often but when it does it is very pleasant. Ensure that whenever your name appears in the media, your contact details also appear.