Sales tactics are precious. We’d should always keep one or two in our back pocket, ready for action when we really need them. A bit like playing cards, we’d should never declare our entire hand, always keeping one “up our sleeve” to keep the other players wondering and guessing.
(For the record this isn’t me suggesting we cheat at cards – just a helpful illustration.)
Inspiration for this post came from sales veteran and friend, Ivan. We were struggling around Royal Dornoch golf course in the wind and rain (well it is April) and discussing an on-going dispute one our businesses is enjoying(?) A client closed down an arrangement with us and broke the contract in the process. We have a number of tactics in play between us and our lawyers in an effort to persuade the other side’s lawyers that we have bigger guns and more ammo. We also have a couple of real Gotchyas in the back pocket – real kick in the nuts attacks just in case they don’t see sense.
“That’s what you learn in sales” said Ivan, “always keep some ideas in your back pocket for when the going gets tough”.
By ideas Ivan meant sales tactics – not tricks, and more like chess moves, sales tactics are the things we’ll do or say to get the sales process working for us rather than against us. Sales tactics are our ideas for executing our sales strategy, for this particular opportunity and this particular customer.
Ivan says always keep one or two back. Never use all your ammunition early in the sale. Do that and you’ll spend the rest of the campaign fighting off the competition. Keep some sales tactics back and bring them into play when the competition starts to control the customer’s conversation, or when it’s time to close the deal.
One word of caution for new sales guys. Be very careful how you use your sales tactics. It’s easy to fall into the trap of gaming the customer. Prospects can usually spot tricks of the trade and resent manipulation.
Sales tactics need to be serious moves, not tricks, and transparently in the customer’s interests.
What tactics do you employ in your sales campaigns?
We’ve written some our own thoughts here. You might enjoy one or two of these:
- Call As High As You Can
- Sell Your Delivery Process
- Don’t Concede, Negotiate
- Find Out What the Customer Really Wants with Conditional Close
- Never Discuss Price Until the Customer is Ready to Sign
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