New
Product Sales
Starting
over for success
By
Jeffrey Hansler, CSP
Even
for an experienced sales staff, new product sales need
special attention. A company that has been selling
products successfully often forgets that there are years of
experience behind selling that product.
With
established products, your salespeople know the questions
that buyers will ask. They are sensitive to the
benefits that are of interest to the buyer. Your
salespeople know who the decision maker for that product is
and the approval process necessary for that level of
expenditure. Your salespeople can also be sure that
the product literature and catalogs are correct - no typos
or glaring specification errors.
On
the other hand, new product literature often has errors -
errors the customers always seem to find, much to the
embarrassment of the salesperson. Sales calls for new
products take much longer, as the salesperson experiments
with the value of possible benefits. Additionally,
there always seems to be missing elements necessary to
convince buyers of the product's value. As a result, a
much greater element of risk exists for buyer and
salesperson alike. Although every additional contact
required with a customer to sell a new product costs money,
an incorrect purchase of a product through incorrect or
missing information costs a great deal more.
Achieving
rapid success with a new product is important, especially
now. To hasten through this period of learning,
role-playing is vital. It's like a scrimmage in
football. It provides a place to work out the bugs and
feel the excitement of play. It captures a glimpse of
strengths and weaknesses without waiting for the day of the
game.
The
"scrimmage" could be structured like this:
Every question posed by the customer where the salesperson
must ask "the office" is worth 6 points to the
customer team. Every benefit accepted by the customer
team as fulfilling their needs (whether they like it or not)
is worth 6 points to the sales team. Reward the
winning team on the point spread or each team on their
score. In either case, you will be amazed at how
quickly each team will learn, and more importantly how much
information they will uncover.
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Jeffrey
Hansler is a professional speaker, author, and consultant.
He is a frequent speaker at association events and is the
author of Sell Little Red Hen! Sell! He can be reached at jhansler@oxfordco.com.
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2004 Jeffrey Hansler All rights reserved |
