Your Sales Strategy

5. Selling Resources

5.1 Use sales tools to increase efficiency.

• A good database or paper ordering system such as a card index is essential to manage information on customers. Where possible, link information held on different databases.
• Consider what equipment could make your sales people more productive (eg mobile phones or portable computers).

5.2 Give sales personnel any standard documents they need.

• Include call sheets, standard contracts, proposal forms and promotional material.
• Use sales report forms to record relevant information for each customer contact. For example, customer name, reason for contact, issues covered and follow-up action required.
• Consult a lawyer to draw up major legal documents, such as long-term contracts or exclusive distributor agreements.

5.3 Organise and support your sales team. See Managing your sales team.

• Make sure sales people understand what sets your product or service apart from those of your competitors, and get them to communicate this to customers.
• Give sales people key information, for example about pricing, profit margins and negotiable areas.
• Get sales people to record their activities and produce weekly sales reports. These should give scores out of ten for each customer, reflecting the potential value of sales and the likelihood of conversion. Monitor the accuracy of sales people's scoring procedures.
• Train your sales people, to improve product and market knowledge as well as selling skills (see Selling technique and Negotiating a sale).
• Monitor and drive progress in supportive, weekly one-to-one meetings.