Some time ago, I went to a well-known logistics company to do training, and chatted with the CEO and the sales director of key accounts in the office.
The CEO said to me, "Teacher Sai, you must add some successful learning content to your class!" I asked him why, and he told me: "The key to doing sales is to stimulate the wolf spirit of the salesperson and mobilize the morale. The sales people on my side are all screaming, and their motivation is obviously up! ”
Then, he turned to his key account director and asked, "Does Mr. Wang feel like this?" Mr. Wang smiled and nodded: "It does play a great role in improving the morale of employees." But I can clearly feel that Mr. Wang's smile is a little "dry".
Sure enough, when I was alone together, Mr. Wang whispered to me: "Teacher Sai, don't mix anything that you have learned successfully, can't you take us to shout slogans and dance!" ”
Why? Isn't that hilarious? I asked him in feigned surprise.
I can't say very clearly, anyway, that set of things is somewhat useful for express delivery and express sales, and it is useless for us to do big customer sales! ”
Why does Mr. Wang feel that the blood-boiling "success course" is useless for improving the morale of the sales team of key accounts? Is there any difference in selling to large accounts? How can we effectively motivate key account salespeople?
Let's take a look firstWhat exactly is the difference between large account sales and small and medium-sized customer sales:
Let's say I'm a printer salesperson and I face two customers: one is a roadside shop and needs an inkjet printer; The other is a retail enterprise with more than 1,000 branches in China, which needs to purchase printers and a nationwide networked printing system, and has very high requirements for information security and company printing cost control.
It is clear which of these two customers is big and which is smaller, and the customers are different in size, different order volumes, and different requirements, and their purchasing behavior characteristics are naturally different, and the sales methods of salespeople will be very different. Table 1-1 shows the following tables.
Table 1-1 Differences in the purchase behavior of large and small customers.
Table 1-2 Differences between sales behavior for large and small customers.
From the comparison in the above two tables, we can see that there is a significant difference in the purchase behavior of large customers and small customers, and there is also a huge difference in the corresponding sales behavior.
And the problems that this difference in sales behavior brings to key account salespeople are:
1. The sales cycle of large customers is long and the speed of performance is slow. You can know whether a small shop can use your express products if you visit once or even only one **, but if you want to get a leading customer in the industry to sign a logistics contract for you, it may take a year and a half.
2. It is impossible for a salesperson to go out to visit customers every day, and he needs to spend a lot of time doing internal collaboration.
3. The sales of large customers is often a project to the end, whether it is pre-sale, sale, or after-sale, he must be deeply involved, and the project is difficult to handover.
And this difference in sales behavior determines that our motivation for key account salespeople is unique.
First of all, it is difficult to "give more money" to form an incentive for large customer sales
A high commission ratio and a sufficient salary are of great help to "recruit" and "retain" talents, but it will be difficult to use it as a means to motivate large customers to achieve better sales.
The reason is that the company's high commission ratio will make sales work harder to run customers, for example: as a salesman, when I am facing a small business that needs express products, I was tired to run 5 customers a day, but now the commission ratio has increased, and I can run 8 stores a day for money.
However, if you are facing a large customer who needs a warehousing solution, and I used to visit once a week, but now the commission ratio is high, I will visit once a day, do you think this is effective?
This is equivalent to a person who has graduated from elementary school and is doing the work of moving bricks, if you give him more money, he can move a lot more every day, but if you ask him to solve a high school math problem, I am afraid that no matter how much money you give, it will be difficult to do it.
Secondly, it is difficult to motivate the sales of large customers by "diligent supervision".
Because the sales cycle of large customers is long, it is impossible for you to visit the customer today, and the customer will tell you whether you can sign the contract tomorrow, and it is likely that there will be no major progress in two or three months.
As a sales manager, is it useful for you to "plate" or "fight" in the daily meeting? Not only is it useless, but it is likely to be counterproductive, because the sales of large customers, especially new salesmen, feel that it is far away to take down a customer, and if you continue to "urge" him, the frustration will be stronger, and the result may be resignation.
Finally, "more" is not very useful for motivating large customers to sell
Have you ever seen the IT team of a scientific research institution or company line up at the front of work and shout "Come on!" Come on! Come on! "Yes? Isn't this kind of inspirational method mainly used in supermarket employees, insurance salespeople, direct sales team salespeople, and so on.
There is absolutely no disparagement of any profession here.
"More" is the same as "give more money", they can make an employee work harder, but not make him do things smarter. Being able to make an employee obey orders to do the right thing cannot teach him to think for himself and do the right thing.
So how can we effectively motivate our key customers to sell and boost their morale?
1. Formulate reasonable phased goals
Yamada Motoichi, who won the international marathon world championship in '84 and '86, said that his secret to victory is to "defeat his opponent with wisdom". Ten years later, the mystery was solved, and Yamada wrote in his autobiography: "Before each race, I take a car to look at the race route carefully, and I don't draw any eye-catching signs along the way, such as the first sign is a bank, the second sign is a big tree, and the third sign is a red house--- so I draw it until the end of the race." ”
Everyone may know this method of "phased goals", but not many can really do it well, especially when the phased goals are not obvious and difficult to quantify.
This is the case with sales targets for large customers, and we can't set targets based on how many customers we visit in a day and how much we earn in a week, as we do with small and medium-sized customers. We need to set process goals: for example, 1. Face-to-face visits to customers; 2. Have a clear understanding of the needs of customers and the reasons behind such needs; 3. Meet the customer's decision-maker; 4. Demonstrate the ability for customers and recognize our company's solutions by decision-makers; 5. The decision-maker orally agrees to sign a business contract with our company, etc.
These milestones in the sales process can not only make the sales clear direction, but also motivate him to move towards one milestone after another.
Second, the sales manager in advance counseling
Managers of key account sales teams need to focus on "coaching" rather than "post-supervision", for example, if the sales person makes an appointment to visit the customer next week, the manager needs to see what he knows about the customer, how he prepares the success story, how he is prepared to ask and answer questions, etc.
Because a salesperson with a large account can't have too many leads, losing any of them can have a big impact on their morale. Therefore, if sales managers can coach in advance to help improve the success rate, it will play a good role in motivating salespeople.
3. Managers help key account sales personnel to do a good job of "internal collaboration".
Be a grandson outside, be a grandson in the company", the most unbearable thing for many sales, large customer sales because they need the cooperation of various departments within the company, so there are more places to "be a grandson". And this kind of "resentment" can cause a lot of damage to the motivation of salespeople.
Sales managers need to channel this emotion, actively assist or lead the internal collaboration work, and at the same time improve the awareness and ability of sales personnel to "internal collaboration".
In short, for the incentive of key customer sales, we need to start from the characteristics of key customer purchases, fully realize the difference in the sales methods of key customers, and on this basis, focus on the "ability" of the sales staff, not exactly on the "effort", we can effectively improve everyone's morale and achieve better performance.
ps：Mr. Li Saisai's latest course"The Road to Gold Medal Sales in the Logistics Industry".It's live! Click [Read the original article] at the end of the article to learn more.
Author |Li Saisai
** Logistics Salon
Li Saisai (*13502035992): Senior Consultant of Sales Management, Senior Lecturer of "Key Account Sales" course, 20 years of sales management experience in the logistics industry, successively worked in Walmart China, COSCO Logistics, and JD Logistics. MBA of Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Exchange Scholar of ESSEC Business School in France, Special Lecturer of the Department of Management and Economics of Tianjin University, Graduate Tutor of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, and Columnist of "Logistics Salon".
This article is the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of Logistics Salon.