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We have explored in recent articles extending the life of the products we sell, reducing the operating costs for our customers, attracting and retaining the best people possible for our businesses, providing unbeatable customer service, and developing operational excellence.

This is a very extensive “to do” list for any business. Yet all of it will go for naught if we can’t sell.

Can you imagine that? Sales is a meaningful and worthwhile part of every business, yet many operational people, the employees who look after customer needs, don’t look upon sales as something they either can do or want to do.

Selling is not the “door-to-door peddler” of the old days, nor is it the telemarketer who calls during dinner.

The sales person is the individual who ensures the customer has what they need and want and is happy with it when they get it.

We have explored the four “P’s” of marketing—product, price, place, promotion—and segmented the marketplace. So what is it we need to do to become good at selling?Well, as with most everything in life, it is a series of things that require hard work.

First, let’s prepare ourselves to be able to sell. Here is the first series of things we will need to learn to become good at selling.

• Do research.
• Set objectives.
• Ask questions.

Do Research

Research is one of the most important aspects of the task. We have segmented our customers into groups of people who have similar needs and wants in their use of our products. But we need to get individually specific now. What does each individual customer want?We need to become extremely knowledgeable about each customer.

But that isn’t all. We also need to understand the relationship that exists between the customer, the distributor, and us.

But we’re still not finished. We need to know everything and anything there is to know about the competition—who they are, what are their competitive advantages, why do customers choose to work with them, and much more.

Pretty soon we’ll begin to understand this sales game is not for wimps. It is for serious people who want to satisfy their customers each and every day. But there is one last thing. We must know all about the parts and services we have available to support our products.

Set Objectives

So we know the customer and we know our products and we know the competition. What are we supposed to do now? Well, a good sales person—and that is what we are all about to become—will know what the customer needs and translate that into specific goals and objectives.

We must set an objective for each and every customer for each and every part and service we have available to support the products they own. This objective is determined by what is required for the products in order that they be kept in good operating condition as designed by the manufacturer.

This also includes inspection services, preventive maintenance services, and repairs required to have low operating costs.

Fundamentally, this is the same as what we should do with our own health—annual checkups, good nutrition, exercise, and good medical care as needs arise. The problems we have with our customers are similar to what we do with our health. We don’t exercise as often or as regularly as we should, we don’t eat as nutritiously as we could, and yes, we have habits that sometimes “spend” our bodies faster than what is good for us. We do the same with equipment. We need to determine what needs to be done customer by customer and product by product and try and see to it that our customers do the right thing.

Ask Questions

The next step is making sure our understanding of the needs and wants of our customers is correct. We need to listen to our customers and make sure what we thought was going to happen is in fact happening. We can’t be with every customer all of the time, so when we are in communication with them we need to get information. We can only do this if we get the customer to talk about their application of our products and the products themselves.

It’s the same as visiting the dentist. We provide information annually or on a schedule (regular checkups), during our preventive maintenance (the cleanings), during the repairs as required (filling cavities), all of which is aimed at achieving good dental hygiene. We need to learn how to ask questions that will be answered by the customers and reveal things we can’t see because we aren’t there all the time.

Are you starting to get a picture here? This is hard work. And it is work that can’t be overlooked or skipped over if we want to serve our customers. It is the hard work of selling that most people don’t see. They see a salesman as a smoothtalking, friendly person who doesn’t really work that hard and makes a lot of money. But can you understand that it clearly is much more? It’s about being good with people. I think most of us understand that, but yet we are only halfway there.

This first series of things we must do completes the preparation stage of selling. Tune in next month and we will get at it with the presentation stage.

See you then.