The information gathered to this point contributes to defining your customers, including where they are located on supply chain, what are their reasons for purchase/expectations, and where can you reduce your costs. Think about different types of customers, how you reach them, and to whom they interact with in your supply chain. Additional sales opportunities arise when you look at usage of your product and importance of it to your customer; these areas further refine your classifications. Finally, look at ways you can reduce costs by making it easier to acquire your product, increase your value or your support abilities.

Bring all this information together by mapping your distribution channels; start by outlining relationships between partners and customers, then define how your customer get your products, and lastly any customer interaction points inside this system. Using a simple workflow diagram bring together your supply chain and customer category information to produce a single simple drawing. This drawing describes how customer gets your products including key players, delivery methods, and each categories preferred method of acquisition. Another useful tool will be to clarify customer interaction points, which are, any communications between your customer and your organization – it is a means to gather additional usage information, and in many cases develop new sales opportunities.

In a couple of brainstorming sessions you could easily classify customers, describe your supply chain, and create a high level view of who your customers are in respect to distribution of your product. Study this information looking for new ways to sell and service your customer. Have fun with it, talk with customers, gather accurate information, and your profits will reflect your efforts.

Copyright © 2002 Justin Hitt, All rights reserved.

While working phones, he continued to tweak and refine script. The first thing to be dropped from his script was Pepsi vs. Coke question. He had learned from school of hard knocks that this technique created more problems than it helped to solve.

"How are you doing today," was just as effective as Pepsi vs. Coke question, and it did not carry with it baggage of deception.

With some tweaking and trial-and-error, my friend had managed to increase his closing ratio by 50%.

With his success in hand, he approached boiler room managers and shared with them secret of his success --- his new script.

THE MANAGERS KNEW THEY HAD FOUND A BETTER WAY

The new script was employed immediately and sales of entire team rose in accordance with results that my friend had accomplished. Within days, my friend was offered a position with management team. Although my friend turned down promotion --- a new town every 90 days did not appeal to him --- lessons learned were taken with him into his other sales positions.

THE DIRECT MARKETER ALSO CARRIES THE DECEPTION BAGGAGE

If you were to anwer email concerning Pepsi vs. Coke question, you would be asked for ALL of your personal information and told that you were "entitled to these great deals from our partnering sites. Simply check this box and you'll get dozens of daily FREE offers; coupons, special discounts and more sent directly to your email address."

Oh, I see. You did not care what my response was. Instead you really want me to give you permission to send me daily advertising from dozens of other online companies! Yeah, right.

A DIFFERENT PLAIN WHITE WRAPPER

During everyday, I see promotional campaigns like this all of time. Over last year, I saw several companies use same technique, but change question to something that people felt more strongly about. Instead of asking about a preference in soft drinks, they instead asked about opinions about Iraq War.

All of these companies use this technique to get people to sign up to receive advertising by email. Who would have thought answering a question such as this could generate so much email?

It is no wonder that direct email marketers have such a bad reputation.

TWO LESSONS IN OUR STORY

A really talented telemarketer is able to talk to people and quickly create a dialog with consumer. The utilization of Pepsi vs. Coke question seeks to overcome fact that most telemarketers are not talented in creating a dialog. No matter how you phrase question, a stupid or deceptive question will never permit salesperson to overcome initial hurdle of creating a promising or productive dialog with consumer.

Sales and marketing lessons taken from books are good, when they are utilized properly. As our examples show, a lesson that has value can easily be implemented badly. And, a badly implemented sales technique can actually cause more damage that having no technique at all.

IN CONCLUSION

I hope my examples have shown you not to take sales techniques out of context. Don't just jump into your sales campaigns with some half-baked scheme that is based on something you may have read somewhere. If you are going to expend resources to try to develop sales or leads, then make sure that you are going to get best bang for your bucks.