Marketing To and Through Your Sales Staff

by Paul Weber

For all the time, energy and resources we expend on building a brand, the efforts often can be wasted if your sales force is not adequately trained to support the brand. To complete an effective marketing strategy, sales involvement must begin at the earliest stages and end with effective sales training.

Second only to the customer, nobody knows your product and services better than your sales force. When developing a comprehensive marketing plan, research almost always involves customer input in the form of surveys, but seldom do we include the sales force this early in the process.

An effective supplement to any marketing research is to include the sales force as a critical audience. While customers speak in terms of features and benefits, the sales team brings an entirely different perspective. The sales force, and only the sales force, can identify customer objections to the close of a sale.

The ability to overcome a customer’s objection usually is the difference between success and failure in sales. If armed with this important knowledge, a skillful marketer can craft product messages that will address potential objections long before the sales call.

Armed with the unique perspective of a sales team, marketers can, in turn, better equip the sales force to carry the brand message. Accordingly, a sales training strategy that considers the core brand message will pay dividends in increased sales and a stronger brand focus.

The need for sales force training varies widely across organizations. However, most professional sales trainers agree on a universal need to teach core selling skills.

Effectively Listening and Questioning: Listening and questioning builds trust but also gathers valuable product information from a customer’s perspective. Create a system whereby the sales force is encouraged or required to report on customer feedback accumulated during the sales call.

Building Rapport and Trust: While there are many ways to build rapport, the quickest way to lose trust is to sell your product with inconsistent marketing messages. Keep your sales force up-to-date.

Educating the Customer: The ability to educate the customer improves selling effectiveness. Sales training that combines traditional selling skills with tactics used by teachers also will produce greater results.

Delivering Features and Benefits: The oldest and most effective sales technique is the ability to sell features and benefits. In today’s customer-focused marketplace, the features and benefits offered by the sales force must be the same messages delivered to customers through other marketing channels. If your brand position in the marketplace is speed, your sales force should sell speed.

Prospecting: A good prospector is hard to find. One that embraces cold calling and door knocking is even rarer. Help your sales force become better prospectors using traditional role-playing techniques. Also teach your sales force to target their prospects selectively using the same profiling used by direct marketers. Help them cast a smaller, yet more effective net.

Anticipating the Customer’s Needs: You can’t deliver features and benefits without understanding the customer’s needs. The most successful marketers in the world research customer needs extensively. Yet many companies never share that research with their sales force. Explain the research findings to your sales force and teach them to translate this learning into a sales advantage.

Building Relationships: Find a successful sales person and you’ll discover a great relationship builder. Too often we rely on personality to build these relationships without offering the tools to supplement personality. If your sales force is spread thin, communication frequency lessens and relationships suffer. Adequately train your sales force to communicate via all channels. Don’t overlook solid business writing skills in the form of letters and e-mails as a much-needed training focus.

Demonstrating Product Knowledge: Sales training frequently emphasizes “soft” techniques such as communication skills and delivering the “close.” While these are necessary skills, time spent teaching product knowledge is time well-spent. Nothing ruins credibility with a customer faster than not knowing the details and intricacies of a product.

Paul Weber is President of Entrepreneur Advertising Group. He can be reached via e-mail at pweber@eagadv.com or by phone at 913.825.9292.