Six ingredients of Sales Elixir

Once a man said "Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is the success", that man is none other than Henry Ford, the man behind assembly line and modernization of manufacturing process. 

This success philosophy applies to manufacturing cars, which Henry Ford did very well, and also perfectly fits in achieving "Sales-success". But companies fail to follow this simple philosophy and fail to achieve sales success because of one disease, known as “Sales Phobia”..!!

Many companies are suffering from sales phobia, which may be caused due to a bad experience in convincing customers to buy their products, or may be due to inefficiency in managing their sales force. But there is an Elixir which will cure sales phobia and will also prevent this phobia to develop in future.

This Elixir is prepared by mixing unique six ingredients, which are:

Know your customers

The first ingredient for the potion is to know about your customers. Since the customer is the reason for the existence of any company, sales success cannot be achieved without knowing your customers.

This can be done by conducting market research to understand:

• The wants of your potential customers,
• Their preference for product quality, price and service and 
• Their buying behavior, purchase pattern and frequency of purchase 

Know your competition

Once you know about your customer, second thing which has to be considered is the evaluation of competition. Competitors are already present in the market with their offerings and you are the one who is going to eat their market share, the intelligence of each of your competitor is necessary. You should know their strength and weaknesses to effectively beat them on the playground.


Know your offering

After you know about your customers and the competition you have to deal with, the next thing you have to focus is on your offering.

• Don't sell what you made, but make what will sell.
• Know your unique selling proposition and make it available in the market.
• You have to choose what to offer, at which price to offer, where to offer, and to whom to offer. 
• Either to enter in red-ocean or identify the blue-ocean and quest for it.

Know your sales process

The next thing which comes into the picture is the sales process you choose for making your offering available to the customers. 

The type of sales process is selected according to 

• The product or service you offer 
• The industry norms 
• The process used by competitors 

According to above points, you have the following decisions to take

• Whether to focus on channel sales or direct selling 
• Whether to use brick and mortar stores or online sales or go for Omni-channel 

Know your sales force

Sales process and channel lay the foundation for next level which is the sales force you appoint.
Companies make mistake of hiring more sales force and flood market with their sales force, and have perception that this will give them good sales, but the things that really should be done are:

• Hire fewer people and train those people according to your requirements. 
• Identify the potential of the present sales force, motivate them regularly by giving training and incentives in cash and kind. 
• Work on increasing individual productivity rather than increasing number of people by using technology and reduce the complexities of the sales system 
• Increase customer facing time by reducing time wastage by a better division of sales territories. 

Know the perfect fit in all five

All the above five ingredients are equally important and none of them could be neglected. Where most companies fail to prepare their potion is when they overlook the importance of one or more ingredients.

This last ingredient is the base which is necessary to bind all the other ingredients together and without this all the other ingredients will be ineffective.

Having all the six ingredients and matching them perfectly will cure sales phobia and will lead the company to sales success.