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主题: 销售巨头的秘密
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作者 销售巨头的秘密   
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加入时间: 1970/01/01
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文章标题: 销售巨头的秘密 (2057 reads)      时间: 2003-4-26 周六, 02:21   

作者:狼协海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com

If there’s one thing we love, it’s an underdog. Bruce Willis against a legion of terrorists, or a local Mom-n-Pop’s Burger Bun against a fast-food giant: it’s an American tradition to root for the little guy. Related Information
· Caution: Lanes Merge Ahead


And while there are plenty of illustrations of monolithic entities on the path to disaster – just look from Enron to United Airlines, for starters – most large sales teams do a lot of business because they’re doing something right. In the examples below, we pull together the top sales secrets of business-to-business giants and tell how smaller companies can adapt those secrets to improve their own sales performance.
Secret # 1: Formalize Communication. When you get hundreds of email and phone messages a day, or are responsible for orchestrating a sales meeting for 5,000 people, effective communication becomes nearly overwhelming. But whether they’re disseminating the latest product information, sharing customer data or trouble-shooting an account, the best large sales teams devise systems to support two-way communication throughout the organization.

Paul Gerrard, vice president of the central region for HP’s enterprise and commercial sales, says the company’s sales managers rely on a variety of methods to reach the 1000-plus field salespeople in its Americas Enterprise Systems Group. “Town meetings” via telephone, regularly scheduled conference calls to discuss forecasting and staffing, and frequent email communication – Gerrard says he gets 200 messages a day – all contribute to keeping in touch.

In addition, sales management believes in the power of face time with the field. “I’m in a different city literally every day of the week. And in every single city I go to, I do a coffee talk first thing in the morning,” says Gerrard, whose region has 340 individuals. These informal get-togethers are a great way to disseminate information, but “more importantly, I get to hear my people’s concerns,” he says.

Sales-exclusive intranets are also popular among larger teams. Boise Office Solutions’ “Sales Edge” Website consolidates all the information its salespeople might need in one spot. “Everything from training to presentations to initiatives – everything sales repS would really want to get their hands on that can be put online is out there,” says Larry Roesel, Boise’s vice president of sales. With a field sales force of 1,200, “we get about 15,000 hits a month,” he says.

TAKE-AWAY: Instead of letting communication arise on the fly, the most effective sales forces make communication happen. Don’t rely on elevator chats; formalize the communication process with regularly scheduled meetings, phone calls and emailed updates so communication becomes the norm. But remember that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line – not one routed through layers of bureaucracy. Sales reps need direct access to the people who can get them answers, fast.

Secret #2: Invest in Technology In the 21stt century, every company is a technology company, regardless of its industry. Just ask Boise. The $4 billion company’s sales organization is committed to keeping at the forefront of technological innovations so it can deliver the service and personalization customers demand: “$25 million over the last 18 months – that’s a pretty significant investment,” says Roesel.

One of the latest initiatives Boise has implemented is PIN technology. By assigning a unique PIN to each of its customers’ end users, Boise can take personalization to a new level, allowing salespeople and call-center reps instant access to customers’ order histories, service issues, preferences and more.

Being on the cutting edge, though, doesn’t mean jumping at every gadget and gizmo that’s waved under your nose. “Our biggest challenge is staying in front of the technological advances that are out there, but at the same time not overwhelming our sales organization,” says Roesel. Initiatives must demonstrate worth to the customer and the sales organization before Boise will bite.

TAKE-AWAY: Sales teams of all sizes must budget for sales-force productivity tools – laptops, cell phones, pagers and assorted software programs – as well as for cross-department customer service and relationship management solutions. While smaller companies may think they can’t afford to invest in technology, the reality is, if they want to run with the big dogs, they can’t afford not to.

Secret #3: Don’t Be Just Sales-Driven, Be Field-Driven You’d be hard-pressed to find a company to admit it isn’t sales focused. But there’s a difference between holding sales intrinsic to the company’s success and merely talking the talk.

As head of Boise Office Solutions’ sales support organization, Larry Roesel says it’s critical for his employees to be part of the field, not part of a “corporate staff.”

“They stay very, very close – I call it umbilically connected – to the field,” he laughs. And that field focus goes all the way up the management chain. “We don’t really do anything without considering the impact on the field,” he says.

Take the company’s sales-force automation initiative. “We had a field user group that helped us not only to test the original product, but also to form the design for the ultimate product that we’re delivering to the field,” Roesel says. Field members also helped with deployment and training decisions. This level of involvement not only ensured that the initiative was useful for the sales team, it also created advocates in the field. “They build an anticipation with the sales organization so it’s not another top-down, corporate-initiated-without-field-input sort of event. It’s one that’s orchestrated in such a way that they feel they own it,” Roesel explains.

Clear Channel Communications, a global leader in radio, television and outdoor advertising, is also concerned with anticipating and responding to its sales force’s needs. Vice President of Communications Diane Warren says ideas for much of the company’s popular intranet come from its 6,000 field salespeople. She issues one of her weekly email updates. Does the volume of communications bother her? Not at all. “That feedback from them is what keeps us fresh and exciting,” she says.

TAKE-AWAY: It’s tempting to make decisions at the top, especially when the sales force is “out there,” and soliciting input from the field takes time and effort. But companies making that effort soon find that some of the best ideas come from the people closest to the customers.

Secret #4: Couple Centralized Support with Field Autonomy “When you have a really large sales force, there are processes. They are better equipped. They have better tools,” says Linda Richardson, an instructor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and founder of Richardson, a sales-training company. Whether it’s corporate intranets; dynamic, applicable sales training; or other processes, policies and programs; centralized resources can arm salespeople to focus on what they do best: selling.

But successful giants resist the temptation to control more than is absolutely necessary. Instead, they give their sales teams autonomy to respond to the customer’s needs, taking the best of what the corporate structure may offer, customizing it, and leaving the rest.

The importance of autonomy is particularly apparent in industries in which business is localized. Clear Channel tries to let its 6,000 field salespeople operate as independently as possible. “If you were to buy radio advertising in Atlanta, in Cincinnati, and in Los Angeles, the presentations and proposals that our salespeople might bring you are going to vary a lot, because they’ll customize whatever you need in that market to move product,” Warren says.

That’s not to downplay the importance of having a larger organization to fall back on. “We certainly have standards,” says Warren, including an extensive training program offered through Clear Channel U. “But we aren’t really determined to have everybody come out of the box the same way,” she continues. “The resources of being a large company help our salespeople to be able to service their customers, but they still have to take them a campaign that works specifically on their radio station moving product in their city.”

Yellow Corporation shares that philosophy. Chief Marketing Officer Greg Reid echoes the importance of creating some level of consistency for the $3 billion company’s 700 field salespeople. With Yellow’s transportation division, larger customers often deal with sales staff in several of the company’s 300 different locations as goods are moved from one geographic area to another. “The goal is to have a customer experience that is very common and very seamless between one piece of geography and another,” he says. Yellow Corporation has created “a system of processes and guidelines that allow people to operate with some level of autonomy,” but also provides the seamless customer interaction the company strives for, says Reid.

TAKE-AWAY: Effective sales organizations need a balance between a strong corporate structure and a strong field. Smaller organizations – often skewed toward the field – can beef up support by consolidating sales resources, by standardizing training programs, and by setting policies and procedures in place so customers can recognize the company’s “look and feel,” no matter which part of the organization – or which part of the country – they’re interfacing with.

Does Size Matter? All this talk of what the “big guys” do well may leave the impression that bigger is always better, but that’s not necessarily true. The Goliaths face challenges as a result of their size – challenges that offer smaller companies a leg up. “Large companies can be heavily dependent on brand name, brand recognition and brand marketing to generate demand,” says Tim Furey, CEO and chairman of MarketBridge, a sales and marketing services firm. As a result, small companies can implement much more targeted, specific guerrilla marketing and sales to reach their prospects. As an example, Furey mentions Dell Computer’s unique sales model of going straight to the end user within a corporation via phone and Internet, bypassing the typical field-sales route.

And when small teams are selling to other small or regional companies, the advantages of size can be eradicated, as Clear Channel explains. “The size of the company doesn’t necessarily impact the ability to work with customers,” says Warren.

So does size matter? If the customer says it does, it does. But large or small, size is just another selling point, one an effective sales team can use to their advantage. Says Linda Richardson, “Some companies will say you’re too large. Some will say you’re too small. A well-trained sales force can understand what the client’s issue is and position their strengths to overcome those issues.”



作者:狼协海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com






上一次由狼协于2008-2-12 周二, 14:12修改,总共修改了2次





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