Developing Your B2B Sales Skills
Unique Skills for Business to Business Selling
Ever get curious as to why customers leave your business? It is a question I get from executives, sales managers and sales people on a regular basis. So I began to track the reasons customers leave a business to business relationship.
There are five major events – or lack of events – that lead to a customer moving on to a new supplier or relationship. Here are the five reasons for your review…
Several of my clients – and myself – have been involved in the complex sell with both good and bad results. One of the key variables regarding the “bad results” category is the number of first time buyers in this group. After doing some personal research on this topic, I discovered an interesting antidote for improving your success with first time buyers.
The key is to build massive amounts of trust before attempting to move forward in the sales process. The reason is the first time buyer has no experience to relate with during the process. They have to figure it out on their own. A daunting task for the uninformed and possibly risk averse corporate type.
This is an interesting question because most people will tell you to track sales results. Okay, it is true you need to track sales results to keep score on your progress and sales skills development. However, this a “lagging” indicator meaning it is after the fact and tells you nothing about the future.
Others will tell you to track activities necessary for sales results. Again, this is something you may need to track – especially if you are selling small or one call impulse purchases. Tracking things like number of phone calls, contact with decision makers, appointments with decision makers, presentations to decision makers and sales closed. These are great for transactional selling – making a sale – rather than gaining an account.
So what should a B2B sales person track? How about this…