Seven Key Areas Of Selling

You could make a plan to improve in the seven key resolved areas of selling which are:

• Prospecting
• Establishing rapport and credibility
• Identifying needs presenting your product or service
• Answering objections
• Closing the sale
• Getting resales
• Referrals from your satisfied customers

As you improve in any one area, you will begin to improve in other key areas as well. As a manager, if you become a little bit better in any one area of planning, organizing, staffing, delegating, supervising, measuring, and reporting, you will improve in each other areas. And generate more profits as you get better in any one step of your value creation chain or the 7P’s of the marketing mix. You will find yourself automatically improving in other areas as well. The first step in increasing your profitability is for you to determine exactly where your profits are coming from at present. Earlier, I mentioned that many businesses are unclear about which products and services are most profitable. After all, direct and indirect expenses have been deducted. Sometimes it is a product that no one pays attention to. That is the most profitable of all. In every business, there are products that are referred to as cash cows. These are usually a staple of the business. Very often, the business started and grew due to the success of this particular product or service. It sells consistently and predictably like hamburgers at McDonald\’s. Customers like it. The customer produces and delivers it continuously and effortlessly because it is a no-hassle problem, a free product or service to sell and deliver. It\’s often taken for granted while the business owner is preoccupied with developing and selling new products and services.

Chris Zook of the Bain Consulting Group wrote an excellent book in 2001 called Profit from the Core. After examining hundreds of companies, he concluded that each business has core products and services that it is built around. These are the heartbeat of the company, what I call the jelly in the jelly donut of your business. The company is known for these products. They achieve high levels of customer satisfaction. They sell easily and consistently. The companies are geared up to produce and present these products at a high level of quality. They account for the largest and most predictable profit stream of anything you do. What\’s up found was that these products often get ignored in the shuffle. The company takes them for granted. The company gets busy offering other products to other customers in other markets at other price points. In the worst case, a competitor comes along and steals away the core business while the company is looking in the other direction; you must make sure that this never happens to you.

• What are your core products?
• What are your core services?
• Who are your core customers?
• What are your core markets?
• What are your core methods of marketing and advertising?
• What are your core sales methods?
• Who are your core salespeople?

You must never take your eyes off the core business. This is often where the greatest improvements in profitability are possible. These are the 20 percent of elements that account for 80 percent of your results.