Martin von Wolfersdorff, Chicago early morning
If you work in a typical chemical company, chances are that you might not have a formal sales process identified. Often discovered after manufacturing excellence and supply-chain excellence, commercial excellence has been only been developed in the last 5 to 10 years. Public companies with corresponding pressures in quarterly intervals have been especially motivated to get commercial contribution to their share objectives. However, many smaller & medium size companies and family owned businesses rely on the experience of their sales force without providing them a more formalised sales process framework.
The beauty of having a sales process is that you can analyse it at every stage and sub-stage, define team responsibilities & KPIs, do benchmarking, best practice and continuous improvement approaches (e.g. six sigma), just like your manufacturing colleagues. In my last sales process discussion, my client changed their distributor and agent structure because it became obvious that channel partners did not contribute much to advancing the sales process towards closing. Having a sales process is definitely a good start and it might just be your secret weapon for accelerating sales and growing revenue!
The next stage is to define an ideal sales process where everything would happen to your favour as if you could lead the customer through the stages of your sales process. Reality is, of course, rather a zig-zag struggle between your ideal sales process and the customer's ideal purchasing process. However, for your sales force it is a competitive advantage to have their ideal sales process in mind so that they do not get lost in negotiation tactics but maintain an eye on the strategy.
Sticky points at any point of the sales process are annoying and prevent closing. However, if the sticky point is that you choose an inappropriate and unqualified prospect, you will waste a lot of valuable resource. Same as the ideal sales process, it is good practice to have an ideal customer profile in mind. A customer whom you would like to clone over and over.
The next hurdle is often called "getting past the gate keeper". This is a one-sided view as you cannot close without the purchaser. Often purchasers are gatekeepers, but they can also open doors for you. Clearly, if you only talk to the purchasing people, you will only talk about low prices. Your other contacts at the prospect company need to be carefully chosen to balance purchasing and your price discussion. You better appoint a strong "jury" at your customer, who will all be in your favour.
Do you want to accelerate your sales? Are you interested in growing your revenue?
If so, contact me on my Skype ID martin.von.wolfersdorff, call me on my mobile +49 176 44 76 75 68 or email me atvonwolfersdorff@googlemail.com and I will show you 3 things you can do today to accelerate sales & grow revenue!
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Martin von Wolfersdorff is principal consultant at WOLFERSDORFF CONSULTING. He helps chemical companies optimise sales & strategy and connects OEM companies with innovation providers. Martin also has expert knowledge in titanium dioxide, custom colour masterbatch, carbon black and tyre recycling materials like recycled carbon black and devulcanised polymers. He has held various roles from R&D engineer to commercial director EMEA at ICI, Huntsman Pigments, Americhem Europe Ltd and Cabot Switzerland GmbH.
For more frequent updates, follow him on Twitter @m_v_w and on LinkedIn.
