Introducing dramatic tension into your sales pitch – advice from a sales coach

It’s the time of year replete with new years resolutions and from the sales perspective, the determination to surpass the sales and business development activities of the previous 12 months.

Last year + 15%.

Stretch targets.

Crush the budget.

For many businesses with the intention to grow, the path is normally through new customer acquisition, targeting new segments, new geographies and territories.

Business development strategies should however always cater for both customer acquisition and customer retention.

There are industries and sectors where repeat business is less relevant but in truth I can’t think of many.

The reality is that getting new customers can be expensive from lengthy sales cycles, to the cost of customer acquisition.

We work with so many businesses where it seems that focus on new business is greater than existing customers.

Enter the new trading calendar with 80% + of your existing customers in the bag and the picture for your business development team is a very different one.

I liken the thought process to the medical profession and the Hippocratic Oath – the idea of “first do no harm’ should resonate with any Sales Director when it comes to the 2020 sales target.

Keeping customers is much harder than it sounds and certainly goes well beyond, holding rates, the odd bottle of wine, a game of golf and a new diary.

Customers ultimately want to feel valued, professionally and in some cases personally and that you care about them and their business.

It should all start with saying ‘Thank You’, but that is becoming more and more infrequent – certainly in my experience as a buyer and perhaps also as a seller.

It’s way too easy to take things for granted and no one likes being taken for granted.

Words and actions.

Actions and words.

The Hegelian Dialectic is based on the philosophy of the German philosopher Hegel.

It has a simple framework that satisfies the needs of writers, story-tellers and conspiracy theorists alike.

A ‘problem’ is countered by a ‘reaction’ resulting in a ‘solution’

The ‘new solution’ is then countered by a ‘new reaction’ leading to a ‘new solution’ and so it goes…

The simple storytelling example is where the original ‘thesis’ is countered by the ‘antithesis’ and that which is created between the two is ‘tension’.

I’m no philosopher nor do I pretend to be but as a sales coach and sales trainer I am curious about finding better ways to add the right kind of value to business relations to increase sales.

If you consider the customer as the problem, the sales person is the antidote or reaction then what results is the solution.

The key to customer retention is then surely ‘the solution’ or that tension which exists between the buyer and the seller.

The longer the tension exists the more the seller is engaged with the buyer.

The tension that I am taking about is not the nervous or anxious variety rather the dramatic tension you hope to find in a good movie, play or novel.

The type that keeps the interest sustained in the plot and the outcome of the story – excitement and drama.

The kind of tension that keeps everyone involved in the sales process interested and curious.

To make that happen in the context of sales and business development, takes a little bit of thought and effort that goes beyond season gifts.

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Shift Control is a sales training and coaching consultancy – working with individuals and teams throughout Ireland and the UK. For more information email info@shift-control.co.uk