Do you have a sales strategy checklist - a number of questions, or challenges, your strategy needs to address? Writing a strategy for selling, whether for a market, a team, or even an individual deal, can be tricky. There's a danger of building incorrect assumptions into the thinking. Testing every assumption avoids that danger, or at least highlights any risks. A checklist will help you make sure every angle is covered.
In this blog you'll find articles describing the importance of your sales strategy, and even a template you might use to develop yours. In our sister site Successful Sales Management we've published more articles relating to the same topic. These explain some less obvious aspects your strategy might include. Here, we put them forward as 10 thoughts for your checklist.
What's the difference between sales strategy and sales tactics discusses how strategy addresses market wide factors, and tactics address ways in which the strategy is deployed in individual sales plans.
In Is your strategy easy to buy we describe 'easy to buy' in three dimensions - your internal teams need to believe in it, your prospects need to understand how it benefits them, and the buying process needs to be frictionless, with no barriers to give the customer cause for delay.
Organise your sales funnel into Targets, Suspects and Prospects explains how categorising names in the sales funnel helps with sales forecasting, and prioritising schedules when there are conflicts.
Everybody needs a sales coach highlights the importance of having somebody in the prospect business coach you in how to win the deal.
The role of value proposition in the sales strategy discusses what that proposition should be, how to describe it, and how to use it in your sales process.
The role of process in your sales strategy quotes a real life case study of how an insurance broker plans his sale in a number of steps, then executes the plan in the same way, every time.
Are you selling to the personal agenda positions the various decision and selection criteria involved in any buying process. The personal agenda doesn't necessarily surface early in conversations, but will have an influence once the short list is selected. Uncover the personal agenda to recruit your coach.
The role of questions in your sales process responds to recent articles suggesting the point of asking questions is in creating conversations. We agree, but there's more to it than that and explain what.
Avoiding Death Valley warns of the dangers of playing all your cards too early. Always keep a reason to go back to the prospect until the decision is made.
Buying Permission to Sell suggests there's a step which comes before all the questions - some kind of opening statement which tells prospects they're talking to the right people and buys their permission to sell.
If these thoughts get you questioning the status quo, watch this space. We'll soon be publishing a new tutorial on the subject of sales strategy - why you need one and how to get one.
In the meantime check out our library of Selling and Sales Management coaching tutorials.