A vendor sells mobile phone scratch cards in Nairobi. Shrewd businesses
know when and how to market their products. PHOTO | FILE
By JOHN KAGECHE
In Summary
- As is tradition, here are the highlights of the Sales Pitch year.
2015 promises to be the year you want it to be, this column
assured us in January. And it has panned out exactly as you worked on it
to. If it hasn’t, remain open to possibilities your product can offer —
as did the mkokoteni (hand cart) seller in Malindi who was quick to
adapt to this buyer’s need, unlike his colleague.
They both sold whole pineapples. I wanted mine
sliced. One insisted he only sells them whole and the other was quick to
call me over and while slicing it up said, “utaongeza shillingi kumi tu
ya karatasi”. All he needed was an extra Sh10 for the wrapping paper
which he had to buy at a shop nearby.
In February, we spoke of selling to how the
customer buys. Being stumped on a sale because procurement has “sat on
your order” is not productive. Understanding how the prospect buys is
more useful. The discovery that procurement will not move until finance
department approves the cost gives new insight as to where to direct our
focus.
March warned that using the word convenient when
selling could be losing you sales. Show the customer how your solution
dovetails his problem, instead of just saying it’s convenient.
The question, “So?” we observed in April, unclogs
many sales blockages. Asking yourself “so?” will force you to find
points of convergence between the buyer’s need and your product’s
solution.
And why, “So?” Because, that’s exactly what the
buyer is asking himself when you rattle on about how your bank is 30
years old (So?), you’ve financed this and that project (So?) and how
disbursements are done in 48 hours…So?
Research and explore to derive and address buyer’s
latent need we saw in May. Needs differ across individuals and cadre and
are rarely overt. And so we explore with insightful questions to
unearth the them.
June warned us that prospecting is the most
important skill in selling. Not closing. And why do I insist its
prospecting: because all other skills are useless if you have no one (a
prospect) to work them on.
While hitherto fully fledged charitable
organisations strive to embrace a quasi-commercial outlook because of
dwindling donor funding, it is imperative for their salespeople (or
whatever title they call themselves) to morph into their new role at a
faster rate. Otherwise, they’ll be out in the cold just as the month of
July.
August told us that most internal trainings are
product oriented, with a technocrat say, an engineer or underwriter,
called in to drive home the product knowledge yet, success in selling is
buyer oriented. The training thus sabotages the company sales efforts.
Companies should interrogate their training methods against how the buyer benefits.
We lamented in September that the tragedy of the
sales profession is that most salespeople fall on wayside and many grow
into inefficiency.
For a worrying number of “experienced” salespeople
their 10-year experience is in fact one year’s experience 10 times.
Their experience is a matter of duration not merit.
To arrest this anomaly is a joint effort which
pools together (foremost) the salesperson’s attitude and enabling
support structures
October reminded us to make a customer not a sale. Enough said.
With the Pope in town in November, we said that growth in
selling requires risk taking. Many traders at the beatification in Nyeri
were disappointed by the dismal sales experienced, but didn’t stop them
trying with the masses pulled with the Pope’s arrival in Kenya.
And finally, remain dumb, December humbled us. Stupidity takes you places in selling. See you in 2016-that’s tomorrow!
Mr Kageche is lead facilitator, Lend Me Your Ears, a sales training and development firm. Email:lendmeyourears@consultant.com
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