Appco Group India: Leading ways to form Sales Strategies

While there are many definitions, strategy usually refers to organizational processes involving the determination of goals and the means to attain those goals. This entails the marriage of two factors- external factors relating to the environment and industry, as well as internal factors, such as capabilities, values, motivation and trust.

The most effective sales strategy opens the door in a direction where the professionals achieve their targets with minimum risks. Industry leaders have listed out many such approaches to sales strategies which can be the ultimate solution to trigger hard hitting sales.

1.   Determine your target: Never underestimate the potential of target audience especially in sales. Analyze the demographics and be always clear about the target. Once you have determined your target, create a list of the same and calculate the potential of the target group. This will form the basis of your research.
2. Determine your mode: Once you are clear of your target, now is the time to determine the mode of approaching the target; be it cold calling, direct marketing, networking, promotions or a mix of approaches.
3. Know your questions: Always prepare yourselves for the sales appointment/meeting with the client or prospects. Always pre determine what would be the winning questions that you can question the prospects so that they are attracted or triggered to buy. Always understand- Preparation is the key.
4. Build relationships: Once you engage with the prospect, try to build a relationship with them. Don’t go overboard yet try to mingle more with an interesting conversation and make your product/service the centre of your conversation. Be a pitch initiator.
5. Monitor your sales performance: This is one of the critical steps that the professionals miss out. Always self monitor and correct yourself from each failure and analyze an alternative solution. Take a look at the previous month’s sales and measure your growth. This will help as a motivating factor too.
6. Small motivations: Always motivate yourself and your team through the general small motivational factor that you may come across in daily life. Seek motivation in the one deal that worked rather than the 5 pitches that didn’t. Ultimately your hard work will be defined by the number of deals acquired, not the deals that didn’t work.

And the most important point is REPEAT. Repeat this process and cultivate it in your strategizing activities. Adopting it over and over again will not only bring in good numbers but will also enhance the strategic abilities in an individual.

Appco Group India: Role of Strategy in Business

For large and small business, Strategic innovation is the need of the hour! The pressures on the strategic front has off late increased and expanded to an extent that growth is being associated with the outcomes of planning. Earlier companies put emphasis on the short term goals and objectives to meet the business targets. This ideology, in today’s demanding ecosystem, doesn’t fit enough and why? The reason behind many business failures today has been a lack of vision and the proper direction to execute the same.

Take the example of product launches. The automobile sector in India is the perfect example of businesses struggling to make a blockbuster impact on the consumer. In India, on an average, 3 different models of the same company are launched in a year. Yet how many of them succeed in registering sales. The lack of vision and future sustainability is the result of such poor strategic direction. The real essence of Strategic planning comes with a blend of innovation, operational planning, directional planning, growth forecast and risk/crisis management. Many a times, due to growing market competition and change in market trends, some of the aspects of traditional strategic planning gets lost. In the wake of budding entrepreneurial environment and unplanned acquisitions and mergers, the company objectives fail to get conveyed to the expanded team. This creates a huge gap in understanding the real motive of having a strategy in business planning. FMCG/consumer goods industry has been a classic example where the throat-cut competition has generated some great products and equally led to the failure of the classic age-old brands.

The mantra for successful strategic planning comes from having a clear understanding of the business plan and defining the objective clearly to the managers and the consumers. And a clear and crisp understanding of the objectives comes from strong research and analysis. And it is no surprise that companies are now investing in research and business intelligence to tap the potentials the market has to offer.