Selling in two directions

by John Carroll

It’s unanticipated among those new to professional selling. It’s rarely listed on the job description of a sales position. It’s often welcomed with less than enthusiastic feedback.

What is “it?” It is the role of the sales professional to sell, not only to prospects, customers and clients but also to the boss, the team and the company of one’s employment.

Can’t you just hear the objections now? “Wait a second. I’m already working hard to make my sales numbers and now you expect me to sell back into the organization? What does that mean?”

Here’s what it means: the sales role is, by nature, on the front lines of an organization. Even if the sales force is tied to desks and handles all sales and orders via computer, fax, phone and other communications technology, without seeing customers face to face, this is most often the role that has the greatest prospect/customer/client contact. You may, unknowingly, hold the key to your own company’s development of new products and services in anticipation of customer needs and desires.

How will they know?
Let’s say that you’re selling for an industrial products distribution company, one that buys and resells products to businesses. You have responsibility to keep your customers buying from you and to find new customers who can and will also buy from your company. As you are engaged in a sales and service relationship with the customer, you’re often the first to hear complaints, suggestions, questions and whatever else is on the customer’s mind. Your true role includes carrying this valuable customer and market information back to your company and communicating it to the relevant parties.

Here are just a few things you can learn and pass along:
• Your competitors’ pricing and delivery
• Your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
• Your customers’ new projects
• Your customers’ new people, particularly new decision
   makers
• Your customers’ biggest challenges
• Your customers’ new approaches
• What your customers love about you and your company
• What your customers don’t love about you and your company
• Your customers’ latest results – are they growing,
   downsizing or steady?
• Your customers’ perspective on industry trends –
   where they see their industry headed and what that
   means to them
• Your customers’ competitors and whether they’re gaining
   or losing ground to your customers

If you don’t ask about and listen closely for these items, how will you and your company know what’s really going on in the marketplace? If you don’t know, how will you know how to respond to market changes, increased regulatory pressures and a change in competitive tactics? For example, if you wait until you have a significant, open invoice to learn that your customer is struggling a bit with its receivables or cash position, you may put your company in a difficult position to continue to sell to your customer.

Use your relational value and your best selling tool
Note that your company is counting on you to focus on your customer and keep up with both customers and market forces on that customer. Further, you should want to know many of these valuable pieces of information yourself so that you know what and how to sell to your customers.

Depending upon your relationship to your customer, you should be able to ask questions that others wouldn’t dare. By showing your commitment and dedication to your customer’s best interests over the long haul, you may have access to more valuable insight than you thought. In many cases you simply have to ask. Asking good questions, which are truly your best tool in selling, becomes invaluable.

Keeping that relationship in mind, you want to make sure that the knowledge and information you gain from your customers remains at the level of confidentiality that customer would prefer. If something is for your ears only and represents no harmful effect to your company, respect those wishes and keep it under your hat. Remember that trust is the key element in any buying relationship. If your customer learns that he or she cannot trust you to keep critical information confidential, you risk losing much or all of that business. This is one of the hallmarks of consultative and relationship selling and one that you want to practice without exception.

What to do with what you learn
If you take seriously this role as your company’s eyes and ears out in the marketplace, where do you take and what do you do with the information you collect? Here are some tips to consider:

• Deliver information to the relevant party in your company – Provided that you can share the information, touch base with those in your company who need to know what you’ve learned. A heads up to the accounts receivable specialist in your company could generate a proactive call to the customer’s accounts payable department and allow the customer to ask for temporary, extended terms while addressing some short-term issues. Similarly, when you learn of delivery difficulties of your product at the customer’s receiving area, you can update your shipping team on specific changes required to meet customer needs.

• Consider the implications of what you’ve learned on your company’s planning – When you learn that your customer may be moving into a new technology which would render one or more of your products obsolete in that customer’s production flow, take that to your sales manager. There, you can decide whether upper management needs to know as well as begin to brainstorm what products and services you can deliver to add value to the customer’s new process.

• Remember that you’re selling to those inside as well – It’s likely that everyone in your company keeps plenty busy with the current workload. To stop and consider new requirements often causes consternation among some. Rather than deliver an ultimatum such as, “You’d better come up with an answer this week or we’ll lose that customer’s business,” sit down and help those in your company understand why it’s in their own best interest to address this issue and opportunity now rather than later. In other words, sell to accomplish the desired response, much as you would to external customers.

• Do some of your own good thinking to offer alternatives – Many managers, whether they’ve mentioned it or not, appreciate those who, when they bring a problem, deliver with it one, two or even three options on how to solve it. When you can present the challenge with three alternatives and you have one that you particularly recommend and can back that up with a strong reason, you’re likely to gain or continue to hold that manager’s admiration. Just as you would make recommendations to your customers based on your product and application knowledge, so, too, you should be prepared for the “sale” back into your company.

• Treat your internal customers as you would those outside the four walls – Remember that courtesy and professionalism will carry the day with your external customers. The same is true with those inside. Rather than demand, complain, whine and act impatiently, bring the same manners to that internal conversation and request that you would to your most valuable paying customers. That can and should include expressing your appreciation with a note or e-mail message when you get the help you need.

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