Well folks, it’s been 13 months now (next week) since I took the job of Workplace, Portal, Lotus and Collaboration Software Sales Specialist (that’s my actual title in the employee directory). From my (short) experience, there are three pillars to being a successful salesman, regardless of the industry or LOB you’re in. Guess I didn’t invent the wheel, but after being Lotus Sales dude in Israel for 12.5 months, here’s my view.
- Your (existing) customers. Many people told me this, in various scenarios, but the end game is the same: if you are not talking to your customer, the competition is talking to your customer. Plain and simple. Talk to your customers at least once a week, be their friend, not their vendor. When they’ll need something, they’ll let you know. And not the competition.
- Your market presence. One might argue that when you’re selling Mainframe, what’s the use of putting up a blog, or a viral video, but in today’s environment of something 2.0, everyone’s online. The market MUST know who you are and what you sell. Your customers (#1) will buy more solutions, if you work smart and treat them well, but you need to increase your market share, and the market needs to know what you’re up to. Meet with people, attend trade shows and conferences, speak, share, mingle, network, schoomze, blog, tweet, FB, Flickr, LinkedIn, FriendFeed. ‘It’s not what you know or who you know, it’s who knows you.’ Susan RoAne.
- Your support team. Sometimes we tend to dismiss post-sale support. Why should we bother, we already have that one in the bag… Well, guess again. Your post-sale support is crucial. Crucial. Because your customers will evangelize your solution if you’ll respond to their issues and put the weight of your company behind them. They might not always get the solution they wanted (you know gmail is still Beta, right?), but at least they’ll know you did your best, and they have someone to turn to.
As I said at the begining, it’s not new stuff, haven’t invented the wheel. The trick, as always, is managing your time.
You need to prioritize the three pillars, every single day – there are days you’ll put 90% to support a customer, and other days you’ll spend visiting customer locations, all day. Why am I saying all this? Because finally, after lots of testing and piloting, I think I got it right. The mix. I hope.
[photo by theamazingshrinkingman]
