Sales Strategy

When I did my first draft of this blog and sent it to the person who checks it for mistakes, she didn’t seem to be able to read it all the way through. I ascertained from this that the blog was just a little boring and so I revamped it with my favorite subject “Fishing”.

Strategy means a lot of different things for different people in different situations. Today I’m going to discuss strategy as it refers to big ticket, long sales cycles, complex sales, but first I would like to talk about fishing strategies. You might not think that fishing requires a strategy but I would beg to differ.

You need to:
1. Decide what type of fish you are going to fish for. (In Sales this relates to defining your target market.)
2. Decide where you are going to fish. (Define your territory)
3. Decide what you are going to fish with. Are you going to use live bait or artificial? If you decided to use artificial bait, what type are you going to use and how are you going to display it to the fish?
4. Determine how deep you are going to fish?
5. Determine if you are going to troll?  If you decided to troll, how fast and deep are you going to troll?
6. Determine what kind of fishing poles you are going to use?

All of these decisions are very important and interrelated if you expect to catch fish. If your focus is just to relax then you could just put a hook in the water and hope that a fish runs into the hook. Trying to sell without a strategy is like fishing with a hook in the middle of the lake with nothing on the hook or like an 80 year-old-friend of mind says “fishin’ on credit”.

When it comes to complex sales, I like to break down strategy into 4 different types: Direct, Indirect, Delay and Divisional. Many sales methodologies use different terms for these four strategies but they are very similar when you drill down into each strategy type. While I think it is important to understand what these four strategies mean, I think it is just as important to execute your strategy to the best of your ability. I have seen a few unsuccessful sales people who were good at developing the strategy and poor at execution but I have seen many more unsuccessful sales people who just didn’t have a strategy. Keep in mind that there is no silver bullet in sales and a sales strategy isn’t the silver bullet. In fishing you are always being offered the magic bait but as someone who has purchased many magic baits, there is no magic bait. Being successful at complex sales is a combination of Strategy, Tactics, Product Knowledge, Client Knowledge, Politics, Identifying Pain, Establishing Value and Execution.
Four strategy types:

1. Direct Strategy: This is the strategy that most sales people use even when they don’t think about strategy. You should only use a direct strategy if you have an overwhelming competitive advantage. This includes both a product advantage and a relationship advantage. If you have this overwhelming advantage, you want push straight ahead and close it as soon as possible before the competition has a chance to catch up or change the rules.
If the fish are biting where you are and you have the right bait, you want to catch as many fish as fast as you can before the fish stop biting.

2. Indirect Strategy: If you don’t have an overwhelming competitive advantage then you need to change the buying criteria to your advantage. Many sales methodologies suggest that you do this at the 11th hour so that the competition doesn’t have time to react. While I somewhat agree with this, I must caution you that if you do this too late, the deal may already be done. Timing is important and I would suggest that you have to decide when is the best time to change the buying criteria based on your customers’ situation.

An example of an indirect strategy in my world: many potential clients come to us wanting to purchase a CRM product to improve the efficiency of their sales team by managing their contacts, activities and forecast. We would normally use an indirect strategy and try to change the buying criteria to focusing on making the sales team more effective. If we can get the customer to make this the buying criteria, then we will win the business because that is what Salesnet is all about.

The fishing analogy here is if you don’t have the right bait or if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, you may have to change the bait you are using and how you are presenting it to force the fish to bite. You may even have to move to a different location.

3. Delay Strategy: This is where you can’t win the business now but you could win this business if the project were delayed. For example: if you have a new product coming out in six months that would give you a competitive advantage but today you would likely lose, you may want to try a delay strategy.

If the fish are biting but just not on something you have to fish with, you may want to delay your fishing until you can get the right bait.

4. Divisional Strategy: This is where you know you can’t win the whole project but you could win part of the business. Sometimes this means taking on a partner to take part of the project. This is also the strategy to use if you decide to go after a small division inside a larger company. You know it is unlikely that you can get the larger companies business, so you get your foot in the door with a small division and work up from there.

If you don’t have the right bait or tackle to fish for striped bass today but you do have the right bait and tackle to fish for largemouth bass, then maybe you should just try to catch the largemouth bass and leave the striped bass for another day.

We could spend much more time on each of these strategies but as this is a blog and not a training session, I would just like to say that if you’re in complex sales and you haven’t thought about strategy, you are at risk of losing to someone who has.