This afternoon, I received a call from my wife’s friend (will refer to her as Rina – a fictitious name) who works for a popular private bank in India. She asked me to open a bank account with their bank. I refused citing the reason that I do not need to open another bank account with a private bank since public sector banks ask for lower minimum balance which is my present need.
She persisted that since it is a new branch of the bank that she is heading, it would be good (for the bank) to open a bank account with their bank. I can easily shrug off this incident as a one-off sales call from a very “popular” bank.
However, I chose to relate this event with my last three years of sales experience as an entrepreneur.
The main reason I was afraid of sales is because I hate rejections. I looked at sales as a three-step process.
- Customer Call
- Presentation
- Sales Acceptance / Rejection.
We found our first sales person at Fragrochem – Paresh Raghuwanshi. He was working under the guidance of our mentor – Richard Price and our Sales Director – Narendra Rami. These three persons (along with the whole entrepreneurship ecosystem) were instrumental in explaining me that Sales consists of the following six steps:
- Get Customer Contact Via Trusted Network.
- Build Relationship And Understand What Customers Need.
- Decide Your Own Niche And Structure Marketing Around Gaps.
- Help Customers To Solve Their Problems.
- Wait For The Right Opportunity For Your Sale.
- Pounce On The Opportunity When It Arrives.
Analyzing Rina’s Sales Call, she did the following:
- Get Customer Contact Via Trusted Network: Rina did the correct thing by getting my contact through my wife (a trusted contact).
- Presentation: She presented her case as to why she wants to sell instead of looking at things from my perspective. (We have a new branch and seek your support to grow this branch).
- Sales Acceptance/ Rejection: Will you open an account with our branch? (Yes/ No).
In my opinion, Rina should have employed the six step process as follows:
- Get Customer Contact Via Trusted Network: Rina did the correct thing by getting my contact through my wife (a trusted contact) instead of a cold call. The likelihood of a cold call to get rejected is very high.
- Build Relationship And Understand What Customers Need: The next step should have been to understand our needs by possibly delegating the sales team to schedule a phone call at a convenient time or even better – a face to face meeting. This would enable the sales team to understand our present conditions. Two of the most beautiful networking questions – “What do you do?” followed up by “What are your main challenges?” usually work wonders. This meeting would lay the foundation for understanding the Customer’s situation and also evaluating the customer for the sale.
- Decide Your Own Niche And Structure Marketing Around Gaps: If the bank’s target customers are financially un-savvy individuals and they are looking for persons with extra cash who do not worry about where their money goes, it would be evident in a meeting or two. However, if the bank’s marketing plan is to reach out to the masses and get customers loyal to public sector banks, they would need to restructure their offerings. Sales team could do a wonderful job in providing feedback to the marketing team and work hand-in-hand towards a common goal. We do see some marketing campaigns that are doing precisely this – “offering 6% interest per annum instead of the 4% offered by the public sector banks” is one such example.
- Help Customers To Solve Their Problems: Sales persons can do a great job if they do one thing – “Treat everyone whom they meet as the most important person they have ever met and try to see things from their perspective”. Only if this is done, the sales team can solve customers problems (a lot of times unrelated by referring them to other individuals or companies from their network without any material gains or commissions) and build a long lasting trust relationship.
- Wait For The Right Opportunity For Your Sale: Successful sales persons do one of the two things a. Convince marketing and technical departments to structure products towards the Customer’s needs or b. Help the Customer rise up to the value of the offerings by building a long and a sustainable trust relationship.
- Pounce On The Opportunity When It Arrives: Through either route, once the offerings match the need, the sales team needs to put in all the efforts to close the sale.
What do you feel about these six points? I look forward to hear your comments and suggestions in the comments section below so that we can incorporate some more innovative points in our next sales and marketing campaign.
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