Maximizing account penetration is one of the most critical
functions in sales. Why? The depth of account penetration
has an enormous impact on revenues and profitability.
Think about it – if every one of your company's salespeople sold
every product and service in their portfolio to every business
unit, department, and division of every account, what kind of
number would they produce? Something huge, right?
From a sales management perspective, few things are more
frustrating than having a bunch of "one trick ponies" on a sales
team. These are salespeople that have developed a comfort level
with one product or service, and that product or service makes
up 80% to 100% of their sales.
I used to work for a computer distributor that had numerous
salespeople that fit this mold. They would congratulate
themselves for selling servers to an account, completely
oblivious to the fact that the very same account was also buying
storage, networking equipment, software, and professional
services. The distributor's salespeople only scratched the
surface of the total available opportunity in most accounts.
Here is a second huge frustration for sales managers and
executives -- salespeople that don't produce "traction"
with new products and services.
When your company introduces a new product or service, you make a
pretty sizeable investment to train your salespeople to sell the
new product or service, right? Doesn't it drive you crazy when
only a fraction of your salespeople actually sell the new product
or service? The return on your sales training investment stinks,
and your company never sees the revenue boost it expected to
receive from the new product or service.
Why do I bring up lack of account penetration and lack of sales
traction for new products and services in the same article?
Because the same problem is often at the root of both issues!
That problem is an excessive focus on technical details.
Many managers and salespeople believe that salespeople need to
become EXPERTS in order to sell a product or service effectively.
To develop this understanding, companies invest enormous amounts
of time and money in exhaustive training to educate salespeople
on product features and benefits, performance characteristics,
industry information, pricing guidelines, promotional activities,
available collateral material, etc.
Unfortunately, when salespeople leave these training sessions,
they often have no idea how to FIND or QUALIFY opportunities for
the product or service they were just "trained” to sell! This
leaves the salespeople frustrated, as they feel the time spent in
training was wasted. Management is equally frustrated with their
sales team's inability to gain traction with new products and
services, and their inability to learn to sell their company's
entire portfolio of products and services.
This mutual frustration results from a lack of recognition of
one very important fact:
When a salesperson identifies a qualified opportunity,
there is usually no shortage of knowledgeable resources
that can assist the salesperson with converting the
opportunity into a sale.
These resources may include technical or other specialists from
the salesperson's own company, or similar resources that are
employed by suppliers or channel partners.
If salespeople have access to product/service experts, why
should they spend time learning technical details? Instead, why
don't they laser-focus their learning on how to find and qualify
opportunities?
Your company can facilitate this kind of focused learning by
redesigning product and service training curriculums to address
the following topics:
* Product/Solution/Service Overview: What does the product or
service do (in plain English)?
* Differentiation: What are a few KEY differences between this
product or service and competitive products or services?
* Business Problems: What business problems does the product
or service solve?
* Qualifying Questions: What questions should salespeople ask
to determine whether a prospect or customer has the business
problems that the product or service can solve, and to
QUANTIFY the impact of these business problems?
* Expert Resources: What expert resources are available to help
salespeople manage technical details?
If your salespeople have access to product/service experts,
you can turn them into prospecting and qualifying machines by
focusing your company's product/service training curriculums on
how to find and qualify opportunities. This strategy will help
your organization maximize account penetration and jump-start
sales for new products and services.
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