Marbles In Your Pipe

Marketing Triangles and Selling Aspects Many years ago I was involved with a company, which was owned by an extremely clever businessman. As part of my training he taught me the Marketing Triangle and I would like to take this opportunity to present it to you. You might find a use for it somewhere in your career. Basically, there are always three elements that comprise a business, namely Product, Marketing, and Administration. Let’s look at each aspect in a little more detail. Product – In order to have a business you need to have a Product or Service to sell. In our industry that product could be anything from computers, cabling, network equipment, or holistic solutions. Services can include labour, training, Internet Service Providing, or the provision of Engineers or Technicians to a client’s site (also known as Labour Broking). You must have a product to sell otherwise you have no means to make a profit. Marketing – People must be aware that your product and business exists so you need to advertise your product and your business. It’s not enough just to build a shop in a shopping mall. You might catch shoppers walking past, but in order to be a success you cannot rely just on this type of buyer; you need to make more people aware of your existence. Administration – Right you have your product, and you have your marketing in place, but you need a background to your business. You need somebody (or some people) who work in the wings concentrating on processing orders and managing the company’s finances. These people are also responsible for paying your salary and your commission. This element is extremely important to ensure the success of the business. These three basic elements work hand in hand together to ensure a business thrives, and many failures occur as a result of the owners neglecting one or some of these elements. Now, as a sales person, how can you adopt these concepts to your career? Well, product is necessary because without it you will have nothing to sell! You also need to know that product in order to sell it. Later on in this chapter I will discuss Product Knowledge in a bit more detail. Marketing is also very important, and as a sales person you need to ensure that as many people are aware of your product as possible. Without proper marketing you will never hope to make any sales. Where you become involved in the Administration side of things in ensuring that your quotations and proposals are designed correctly, and that, once they are accepted, the orders are processed properly. You also need to ensure that your client affects payment for those goods and services they have received otherwise you will lose out on your commission. Product Knowledge You cannot sell what you don’t know! This might seem an obvious statement but I have come across so many sales people that tout their products and when questioned further, they flounder, with many ums and ahs, leaving you with an impression of disgust and distrust because that person knows nothing about the product they are selling. When you start your career in a new company your very first task is to get to know the products that you will be selling. If you are more technically minded then you probably would like to get into the mechanics of the products, but at the very least you need to have at least a working knowledge of the product in order to get by and to handle some of the more technical questions that will be thrown at you by the consumer. When I am introduced to a new product range I always take at least a day or two to get to know the product better. If I have the opportunity I play around a little with the merchandise to see first hand what it does and what it can do. I also gather as much information as I can about its benefits and advantages, and then I start strategizing as to where I can promote those benefits to prospective buyers. When you actually sell your products to a buyer, concentrate on what you have learnt about the products and use that information to impart to your client. If necessary, try to take a trained technician along with you to your meeting so that they can assist you in dealing with any technical questions that might be asked. In some cases you might even need to take your Sales Manager with you to assist in making the deal, especially if there are questions that you do not have the authority to answer, such as when dealing with profitability. However this might not always be possible and you need to prepare yourself for the onslaught of questions that will be thrown at you. So how do you deal with this? I have come across so many Sales People that, when they don’t know the answer to the questions that have been posed to them, they attempt to lie their way out of the confrontation. In my very first position as a Computer Salesman (and I’m now talking about fifteen years ago) we had an altercation with our Technical Department, and in this they were very correct with their protests. They accused us of “selling the client a Volkswagen Beetle and telling them it could fly!” Now what they meant by this is Sales People tend to embellish the benefits of various products, and lead the prospective buyer to believe that it can produce various kinds of miracles. When the deal is sealed and the time comes for the technicians to implement the solutions into the clients’ sites, the users become extremely irate when the system does not do what the client wanted, because the sales person sold an incorrect solution in the first place just to get the sale. In order to save yourself these embarrassments adopt the following policy always: “I don’t know but I can find out for you and get back to you!” If a buyer asks you a question and you don’t know the answer, be honest and frank with them and tell them that you do not know the answer to their question, and then offer to find out and let them know in due course. And make sure that you do follow up on this and do the necessary research. The prospect will respect you more for your honesty, and it will give you time to confer with your Technical Department to find out the correct solution for your client’s needs. Never be too hasty to make the sale until you are absolutely sure that what you are offering is what the client wants and needs. A hasty sale now might end up a lost sale if you have sold an incorrect solution, and might also lead to a sense of distrust between you and your client, which will hamper future sales with that company. There is another little saying that I learnt whilst I was involved with Industrial Engineering, and I think it is time that I impart this to you now. “Do it right the first time!” Whatever you do, whatever you endeavour to do, take the time to make sure that the job is done correctly the first time around. My son, who is nine years old, has a chore of washing dishes in the house. When he started this chore about a year ago, his attempts were not very good. He would only half-wash the dishes, leaving grease and grime on them. Inevitably he would have to repeat the process all over again, ad it has taken me a year to teach him this little idiom. If you take a little more time and make sure that all your “i’s” are dotted and your “t’s” are crossed, then you will not have comebacks and you can be proud of yourself of having done a job well. Too, your technicians and your client will also be happy with you because they will not have wasted time in having to redo the job. 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