On all large projects or potential orders, a salesperson should prepare and execute a game plan to enhance his chances of success. Large jobs usually do not come up every week or even every month. In some industries only one or two huge projects present themselves each year, so that the success for the entire year hinges on the closing of very few large potential orders. For these reasons it is vital that a salesperson plan early and well in this crucial area. He should prepare his plan and review it with his superior to make certain it is thorough, attainable, and covers all aspects of the job.
8 L ARGE P ROJECTS
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A salesperson should never wait until the inquiry is out.
By then it is usually too late.
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As early as possible, the salesperson should identify the products he will be quoting so he can tailor the plan to the specific models he will be offering. This is usually necessary since a salesperson will be stronger in some areas than his competitors. On the other hand, the salesperson’s products may be substantially weaker on some models than his competitors.
He will usually need all the time available to execute his plan, so he should not delay in the preparation. Furthermore, some of his tasks will take a lot of time and effort.
A salesperson should never wait until the inquiry is out. By then it is usually too late. The customer’s people will be too busy to spend much time on plant visits or other meetings. Also, by the time the inquiry is out, the competitors will have already made a lot of headway.
Here are guidelines for a salesperson to follow as he prepares his strategy:
1. The salesperson must determine which person or persons will evaluate the bids and make the decision. He should analyze these people and make a note of their likes and dislikes and should concentrate on these people individually, if possible. If the salesperson knows that one of these individuals likes a certain feature, he should do his best to accommodate that preference in the products that he bids. If one of the group favors the competition, then he knows he must do something to neutralize or overcome this. Sometimes there have been problems with the salesperson’s products. If this is the case, then he must be sure to point out what design changes or corrective actions have been taken on what he will be quoting.
2. A salesperson should find out if there are any partners, and if so, to what extent they will be involved in the decision. This may require asking a lot of different people in order to obtain a complete picture. A salesperson should think carefully before approaching these other partners. He should ask for guidance from the people in charge of the project so as not to alienate the customers. The salesperson should keep in mind that many times more intelligence and feedback can be obtained from minority partners than from the primary contact.
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3. A salesperson should make a list of all of his competitors. He should not assume he knows who will be bidding. He should determine this by asking the customer or others involved who will know.
4. The salesperson should tabulate the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor as specifically related to this project.
5. The salesperson should study each major competitor’s strengths and weaknesses and decide how he will discreetly counter the strengths and exploit the weaknesses.
6. A salesperson should look very critically and objectively at his firm’s strong points and weak points. He must decide how he will utilize his company’s strengths to his best advantage on this project.
More importantly, he must decide what he will do to overcome any weaknesses or shortcomings. This exercise should be thorough and objective. However, a salesperson should not rely too heavily on his company’s strengths. The customer may not give the salesperson as much credit as he expects for these strengths. On the other hand, the salesperson should not become obsessed with his company’s weak points. He should keep them in mind, however, so he can do everything possible to offset them or render them meaningless.
There are many factors for a salesperson to consider in arriving at his lists of pluses and minuses for his competitors as well as for his own company. He should make a list of factors he feels his customer will take into consideration while arriving at the purchase decision, such as the following:
• price
• delivery
• experience
• the salesperson’s plant location
• product performance or quality
• labor relations in the salesperson’s plant
• the customer’s perception of the salesperson’s firm
• the customer’s perception of the competitors
• the financial strength of the various vendor organizations
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A salesperson needs to consider these factors along with the strengths and weaknesses of his firm and those of his competitors. He should thus be able to prepare a game plan of what he will do to overcome any of his company’s shortcomings. What he will do to implement his plan depends on his company’s strengths and shortcomings compared to those of the competitors.
• If the salesperson thinks price will be a problem, he must make sure he selects and offers his most cost-effective product. Also, he should start early to work on his pricing people to convince them that he must quote his very best price so as to be competitive. If this customer buys strictly on price, the salesperson must make certain his pricing authorities know this.
• If delivery will be a problem, the salesperson must identify the bottleneck and/or pacing factors and then insist that his manufacturing people do something about them to enable a competitive delivery time to be quoted. The salesperson can offer to provide monthly charts and progress reports documenting that he is on schedule.
• If one of the salesperson’s competitors has built more units, he cannot change that fact. What he can do is to demonstrate that although his reference list may be shorter, his company has been successful with what it has done. He should explain why his shorter list is adequate.
• If the salesperson’s company has a more favorable plant location, he must be sure to point this out. On the other hand, if a competitor has the salesperson bested in this category, he should do what he can to overcome this. For example, he could offer to have all coordinating meetings at the customer’s offices. If travel expense will be a problem, the salesperson could consider paying the travel expenses of the customer’s people who must travel to the salesperson’s facilities for meetings.
• If there has been a product problem in the past, especially with this customer, the salesperson must point out what his company has done on subsequent units to correct these shortcomings. He should provide a list of satisfied users together with individual names and telephone numbers.
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• If the products have had a quality problem, the salesperson should get management to agree to do extra inspections on this order. The salesperson can provide up-to-date information on his company’s current quality program and make sure the decision makers are aware of his company’s quality assurance manual and guidelines.
• If the salesperson’s company has a longer running union contract than his competitors, he should be sure to point this out. If the union contract with the salesperson’s company will shortly expire, he should not announce this. Instead, he should become familiar with the status of the current union negotiations. Then if the question arises, the salesperson can reveal how good his company’s labor relations are and that he expects no trouble signing a new contract.
• If the salesperson has a credibility problem with this customer, he should zero in on what caused it and what he has since done to correct the situation.
A salesperson must determine if formal presentations will be allowed. If they are, he must do his best to be scheduled last. Being last has the following advantages:
1. The customer’s representatives will remember more of what was presented when they later meet to make a purchase decision.
2. Since the customer will have already heard other vendor pitches, he will be in better shape to evaluate the salesperson’s presentation.
3. The customer will have more questions, because he will have been exposed to so much information about competitive products.
4. If others have mentioned a certain appealing feature, the customer is more likely to ask the salesperson if he can also provide it. This will reveal a particular customer interest on which the salesperson can capitalize. On the other hand, if the salesperson was the first presenter and he did not mention this feature, the customer would most likely not bring it up, and might assume his products do not have that feature.
If a salesperson gives a presentation, he must be extremely alert to the customer’s reaction and respond in depth to any area of keen interest.
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The salesperson should also write individual sales letters to all of the key people giving a thorough list of his product’s features and benefits, explaining why they should buy his products. Even if this was covered in a formal presentation, he should confirm it in writing.
The salesperson must take care to implement his game plan and obtain regular and continuous feedback from his customer. The salesperson then can expand on any areas of keen interest or in areas where he learns that his competitor is making headway. This will also enable him to stay on top of the job and to quickly detect competitive moves. The salesperson will be able to give current and accurate reports to his superiors as the job unfolds.
A salesperson should not be afraid to repeat what he has related before.
He should keep mentally going over his entire game plan as he implements it. This will help stimulate his thoughts towards discovering any additional information to cover.
As soon as the customer has had time to analyze the bids, the salesperson should ask for the order. This can flush out objections to his products before the buying decision has been made, and hopefully will give him time to do something about them.
As the salesperson executes his game plan, he should not be misled by favorable reactions he receives from the decision makers. It is very easy at this particular time for a person to hear what they want to hear. Instead, the salesperson should ask strategic questions, such as, “Will you recommend our products?” “Can we place this product on order?” “Do you have any misgivings or objections to our products or our firm?” and “Do you think we can meet our quoted delivery?”
Too often a salesperson gives presentations covering all of these items and assumes, since they voiced no objections, that the buyers are completely satisfied. A salesperson should ask questions to flush out any objections.
S UMMARY
A salesperson’s game plan is successful only if he receives the order. He should prepare a good plan and execute it well. To do this he must ask questions to uncover any objections, overcome those objections, and close the sale.
How well a salesperson handles a large new inquiry can be decisive, and therefore it deserves very careful attention. There are a few suggestions a salesperson should follow. First, he should quickly pass the new inquiry on to his application group. This is especially important if he has a tight deadline to meet and if the application engineers are located in another city.
The salesperson should then confirm that it has been received.
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