Give your people the right kind of sales training

It is hard to fully recognise the value of a customer until they are gone.

You might know what financial contribution they make to your business but their value goes beyond the accountability of money and the bottom line.

It is harder to put a value on referrals, advocacy and positive word of mouth.

For some businesses it can be more expensive to acquire new customers than retain and the general rule should be that the harder it is to find a customer then the harder you should work to keep them.

It is always worth remembering that the person you employed to win the new customer may not be the person needed to nurture that account.

Very obvious maybe, but there are many businesses who do not make that distinction within their business development team structures.

Sales people just sell.

That’s it, right?

In some industries the sales people never actually sell – they just administer orders and manage relationships.

Industries where there are many repeat transactions on a daily basis require different sales strategies to those where the sales cycle runs into months and the product or service is of a higher value.

Companies that fail to differentiate internally between the need for a hunter / farmer will fail to optimise at the recruitment stage and will fail again when it comes to training.

Account managers (Farmers) ‘tend’ to be more dependable, team players and have greater eye for detail but can be more pessimistic than their business development (Hunters) counterparts and more often than not will be less comfortable selling on value against cost.

Hunters need to be more resilient, optimistic and self-motivated and need to be clear on how best to communicate value over cost.

One-size fits all training doesn’t work.

Your customers deserve better and so do your staff.

Shift Control is a business development consultancy specialising in sales training and marketing strategy. To find out how we can add value to your business development team, please email info@shift-control.co.uk