of industries. Now, says Barnes, “We do the same basic types of repair, but on a larger scale. And we also added salespeople to focus on different market segments – people who call just on utility customers and others who call on the municipal market. We used to cross-sell to different indus- tries, but now we have people who go just to power plants, for example, and understand what it takes to run power plants.” Rather than astronomical growth for a year or two, the company has grown sales consistently at around 12 percent per year.
The biggest challenge, says Barnes, “was to find the right people to add to our team. We continued to diversify – not just our markets but our services. Then we looked at new regions and, instead of doing just repairs, we started to do asset- management programs. We said we were an account-5,000 manager, which was the account that compa- nies used for repairable items. We could track warranties and deal with vendors. For instance, we could have a customer representative on site who was integrated with the cus- tomer’s maintenance supervisor and engineering supervisor.
SELLING TIP Enthusiasm Can’t Be Beat
What does “enthusiasm” mean to you? Merely loud talk? Extravagant statements? Wordy effervescence? Is it something to be put on when occasion demands, like the gold-braided coat and epaulettes of the man who leads the band – only to be discarded when the show is over? If that’s what enthusiasm means to you, you’re not in line for success as a salesperson. However, if your enthusiasm is genuine, you can’t help but make sales. The world is tired of lukewarm people. It gives its favors to the red-corpuscled, dead-in-earnest, zealous folk – to the enthusiasts.
The salespeople who get a hearing are the irre-
pressibles. The men and woman who are chosen by their comrades as leaders are not always the ones
An Expert’s View
Think of the diversification challenge as identifying the white-space oppor- tunities in the same area or category in which a company sells its product or service.
The first thing you have to do is identify who you are going after and understand who the potential buyers are. Then you need to know what needs are unmet in the potential market. The best way to do that is to talk to potential buyers. These should be qualified buyers. If you are selling to businesses, it will be the decision makers. Do this in several stages. First, do a preliminary analysis of the business situation. What is the posi- tion of the client? What are the positions of its competitors? Second, conduct exploratory conversations with focus groups of 30 to 50 potential customers to understand what needs are not being met, what their problems are with current products, what their motivations are, maybe even sometimes what their dreams and hopes are. In a B2B market, it might be a smaller number of representative potential customers. Then you will know what the gaps are and how these can be filled. These first steps can take time. Then comes the development of new
products or new services to complement the product. This can take just as long or longer. And, later, the sales force must be transformed to handle the new types of accounts.
The most common mistake is rushing too quickly into a new strategy. Some firms do not want to invest the time, patience, and resources. Or the CEO may make a decision because it feels good and smells right. That can be a mistake. Sound management means using rigorous data. You can’t just sit in a room with two or three close advisors. You have to get the market to tell you what it needs. Once you have market information, you can meet those needs and expand your offerings while training new reps to sell them successfully.
who know the most or are best fitted for leadership; they’re generally the people whose intense faith in themselves and their fitness has inspired others’ faith. A person of mediocre ability but of mighty enthu- siasm rises to an emergency better than the person of great endowments who lacks the power to put his whole soul into his purposes. Without enthusiasm, a person is like a watch without a mainspring. It isn’t so much what a person knows but the degree of energy with which he or she applies knowledge that counts for results.
Enthusiasm is a principle in business-getting. You
don’t spend your money with the merchant who sends you a formal impersonal letter saying he has goods to sell and expects you to buy. Unless you are interested yourself, you might as well try to thaw out a frozen pipe by applying an icecake, as to interest a customer in your proposition.
– SELLING POWER EDITORS SELLING POWER SEPTEMBER 2018 | 15 © 2018 SELLING POWER. CALL 1-800-752-7355 FOR REPRINT PERMISSION.
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