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Being self-motivated as a leader is one thing, but how do you get your sales teams to work just as hard to keep customers happy and business growing?
There's no doubt about it — to be a salesperson, you must be a people person. Some of the world's most renowned businesses achieve such high success simply because they put their customers first.
How salespeople interact with a customer, from the acquisition stage right through to the final transaction, is the difference between making a sale and losing an opportunity to control the narrative and build your reputation.
Customer experience, teaching your sales teams to understand context and pricing, and reinforcing your point of difference will arm your team with everything they need to take your business to the top.
Related: 5 Actionable Ways to Improve Your Customer Experience
Sales and marketing strategies
Reinforce to your sales team that they are a welcome guest, not annoying pests.
Sales representatives often get a bad rap for being too pushy or disingenuous. People's time is valuable, and the last thing your teams should do is make prospective buyers feel like they're being conned or forced into purchasing something.
If you don't have customers, your business has nothing. Treating them as people rather than a source of profit is the only way to make authentic client connections that provide mutual benefit.
It's a leader's job to inspire their sales teams to want to get to know their potential clients — to really care about providing them with something that can change their quality of life.
Leaning on your marketing to inform your audience about your brand is also crucial. Tell them who you are, what you're about and what you can do to solve their problem.
By having a strong marketing strategy that sends a clear message about your business to potential clients, half the convincing will already have been done before they even get the sales pitch.
Related: How to Define Your Product and Set Your Prices
Context and pricing
When talking to your team about the pricing of your product or service, context is everything.
Leaders and their sales teams should always be aware of how people consume their goods based on factors such as market, business climate, price and demand.
This is where price elasticity comes in. If the demand for a product or service increases based on a change in its price, it's considered elastic. If there is very little or no change in demand with a price increase or decrease, it is deemed inelastic.
Let's take fuel, for example. This resource is widely considered a necessity, making it inelastic. Without it, drivers can't get from A to B using a fuel-powered vehicle. While consumers may choose to go to one fuel station over another, say, based on the cost per gallon, they still require fuel.
The same goes for things like bottled water in areas with limited access to clean water, electricity, housing, etc. Price elasticity can work in your business's favor when pricing is presented in the right context.
Much like price, so many things can influence a person's decision and ability to consume certain goods, so emphasizing the importance of context to your sales teams is crucial.
By encouraging confidence in pricing and assertive fee strategies amongst your teams, the sale is much more likely to land.
Related: How Not to Be A 'Me-too' Brand: Brand Differentiation in a Crowded Market
Differentiation
There are billions of dining furniture brands out there, just like there are billions of different toothpaste brands, formal wear brands and even gardening tool brands.
If your sales team spends their days searching for leads, whether through cold calling, emailing or door-knocking, they should know how to market your brand well.
Telling a potential customer about your product or service is one thing, but convincing them that your product is better than the next requires sales representatives to understand your business's points of difference.
If a customer is going to ask, "Why would I buy your product over this product?" that sales rep better have a compelling answer. In fact, they should have a list of 10 reasons why your product is superior to your competitors' products. If they can't do that, quite frankly, they're wasting their time.
Arming your sales team with the knowledge they need to make customers see that your business offering is the only choice out of a sea of options is how you go from making a few sales a week to thousands per day.
Hosting brainstorming sessions with your teams, workshops and welcoming feedback are transformational ways to encourage creative thinking around your sales model and establish a set of unique value propositions and market positions.
Getting the sale
No matter what industry you're in, getting your 15 minutes of fame as a brand, let alone being a market leader, is not easy.
There will always be competition, but with a well-prepared, motivated and tactful sales team backing your business, the rewards will always be there to reap.
As a leader, reinforcing the values of client care, understanding the relationship between context and pricing, and what makes your product or service the best of the best is the surest way to make your sales team impenetrable.
Nurture your sales teams at all costs — your future business will thank you for it.
