Heritage

Think like a business owner for success in sales and excel

sales pix

While pitching for a sale, look at the bigger picture of helping the prospect’s business to grow. PHOTO | FILE

One of the major challenges many sales people face is the ability to think like a businessman. In most cases they get by without having to but in some they struggle when they don’t.

Sales representatives in oil companies and fast-moving-consumer-goods (FMCG) plus corporate and wealth managers are examples of sellers who find themselves in this dilemma.

This happens because their buyers are businessmen and they are employees. An employee’s thinking is as different from a businessman’s as day is from night.

The employee works in a structured environment, with a regular income and his financial horizon is usually 30 days to the next salary; the businessman is focused on the success of his business, a comparatively unstructured environment, erractic income and a long-term financial horizon. He is not a buyer you will ‘push’ a product to that does not make business sense.

For instance, in addition to overseeing the supply of the contractual amount of fuel, say 10,000 litres to the dealer, the oil company’s rep’s job is to ‘push’ more sales with every depletion. Phone calls, visits and e-mails insisting on this rarely help.

Understanding business, banks have premier business clubs as a platform for their businessmen clients to network and FMCGs have aggressive marketing campaigns ‘pulling’ customers to ask for their product.

The salesperson though must ‘push’ with business sense. This starts with a genuine interest in the buyer’s business and, therefore, gaining his trust. I once read in Forbes that to be useful to an organisation, find out what keeps the CEO (who is a businessman) awake at night and make it your business during the day.

To succeed in selling, understand what the businessman wants and make it your business to help him succeed. The typical employee response I get whenever I ask this question is, “it’s just money he wants”, as if to suggest the employee would work for free. It could be he wants recognition or to plug an income leakage for his fleet of lorries.

Remember he’s depositing Sh10 million as security with your oil company was not for lack of an alternative avenue to invest in.
With genuine understanding, it becomes easier to help him achieve his goal and easier to present a business case to your employer (the other business you represent) why pay delayed and how it will be settled in a win-win fashion.

Bereft of such a case, credit control follows what the policy says, and the account is suspended or closed and your selling is impeded.

The businessman’s frame of mind is solution oriented. He wants to know how it can be done, not why it cannot. Company policy is, therefore, subject to interpretation for the progressive seller. This does not imply unethical practice.

No. It implies not wearing blinders in the application of the policy and using policy as a guideline not deadline to protect your employer while growing and retaining business.

The progressive representative, therefore, visits the dealer’s clients with him and even presents credible cases to him on how to increase traffic to his fuel station.

Thus, he can justify to the dealer why he should replenish when he requests him to, because there is business sense to it. And the more the dealer replenishes, the more the oil company sells and the more the salesperson sells too.

All because he thought and acted like a businessman.

Kageche is lead facilitator, Lend Me Your Ears, a sales training and speech writing firm. Email:[email protected]