Selling Deeper

Often organisations have a breadth and depth of products within their portfolio.

The objective of the sales process is to sell as many of these products to customers as possible.

However, many sales people struggle with selling the depth of products.

We will explore some fundamentals of human behaviour and develop strategies for overcoming what I call product resistance.

The problem for the organisation is that sales are not realised in products that the sales person is not comfortable with.

However, the sales person maintains his budget by selling more of what is comfortable.

This is what I called de-facto specialisation; we sell more of what we are comfortable with and avoid what we do not know.

How do we address this issue and reach the true potential of the product offering.

Firstly we can use joint calls with product specialist; this requires the sales person to uncover the needs of the customer.

Often salespeople struggle with discovering the total needs of the customer.

This requires the development of a greater understanding of the customers business as well as the customers customer..

So how do we develop a greater confidence in the sales force of product awareness and the feeling at ease with selling the portfolio?

We need to look at the 4 stages of competence.