Sales Effectiveness Lesson 3: What is your Objective?
July 2010

Sales Effectiveness: Lesson 3

What is Your Objective?

  In our April 2010 newsletter we challenged you with a sales effectiveness quiz to support your success in our recovering economy.  Subsequently, we are looking at one question in depth every month. Question three was, "Are you focusing on a single sales objective with each prospect so that you are offering straightforward value for a specific need?"

You might wonder why this matters, since you hope to sell as much as possible if you have a prospective client that really needs your product or service.  The primary reason is that each sales objective ought to target one concern and the value you can bring to that concern.  It's easy to believe you can lump together a number of problems or concerns that are unrelated to one another.   It is even easier to have some of the details of your different solutions get watered down or lost when you do so.  This can dramatically detract from the overall value you are delivering to your new client.

Let's look at a simple example.  If you are selling landscaping services for ongoing         lawn and garden care, it's pretty easy to stay focused on what your customer really wants.  If they also want you to build stone steps and a walkway on the front of your home, then you are more likely to get excited by the bigger opportunity and pay less attention to the way your customer wants their lawn cared for.  The irony is that the steps are a large sale that will be completed in a month, but the lawn care maintenance could become an ongoing stream of revenue for many years.  The total value of the smaller sale exceeds the value of the larger sale, but the worst outcome of losing focus trying to do it all at once is not the lost revenue.  If you do not provide superior value on both assignments, your customer will be dissatisfied and remember you as a disappointing provider - after they cancel your lawn service. 

So, your best approach is to focus on one sales objective at a time and make two distinct proposals.  Clarify the value offered in each proposal based on the variables that will determine your customer's ultimate satisfaction.  Then you will be providing your delivery people with the most precise conditions of satisfaction possible.  If they are able to manage two distinct sets of expectations carefully at the same time, then all of this can occur simultaneously.  If not, it'll be a disaster.  You break your customer's heart and guess what?  You damage your opportunity for future sales success and obtaining repeat business.   If you know someone who wants to improve their sales effectiveness, pass this article along to them!

Check out our previous articles in the Newsletter Archive at www.lionhrt.com