| A balanced
sales plan is essential as the foundation in any
business growth program. This article describes
how my poker system for strategic sales works.
The system is very simple and is easy to follow.
All you need is a deck of cards and marking pen.
You will use the marking pens to identify the
strategic focus of your contact on the deck of
cards. This system gives you the ability to
change and vary the focus of communications
throughout the year. This becomes extremely
valuable when a business sells a suite of
products or services.
How to
Set-up the System You start with a deck of
cards. Each deck has 52 cards and four different
suits (hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades).
Fortunately, the deck of cards matches the 52
weeks in a year and each suit represents the
four different ways we can communicate with
customers. Yes, there are only four different
ways we can communicate with a customer.
1. We use Clubs
to represent our personal contacts when we meet
a prospect or customer face to face.
2. We use Diamonds
to represent telephone contacts when we call a
prospect or customer using the phone system.
3. We use Hearts
to represent notes and letters when we
communicate with a prospect or customer using
written communications.
4. We use Spades
to represent email and text messages when we
communicate with a prospect or customer using a
computer to communicate.
Defining the
Ranking of Your Services or Products Now
take the 13 cards for each suit and decide what
they will represent. For example, you must
determine what 13 services or products you want
to promote and rank them highest to lowest. The
highest services or products become the high
cards such as ace, king, queen and so forth. The
numbered cards will be used to indicate their
rank, so the 2 cards are the lowest ranking
service you want to promote. You can use the
profitability of each service or product to help
you decide where and how to rank your 13
options. Now that you have these ranked, you use
the pen to mark the cards with these services or
products.
Once all the
cards are marked, you can shuffle the cards and
use them to balance your communications and main
focus for each contact. An example might be that
you draw the 10 of diamonds. This means that you
will telephone your prospect or customer and
focus on the service that 10 represent. If you
drew the 5 of spades, you should email the
prospect or customer with a focus on what the 5
represents.
The Key
Benefits The key benefit of this strategic
sales plan is when the salesperson learns to mix
up and use various communications for selling.
This has a dramatic impact on spreading out the
different methods of communications. When a
salesperson limits their use of the four
contacts, the salesperson gets stale and boring.
The results of this show up when prospects and
customers get tired of salespeople always
calling them. When salespeople mix and balance
their communications, contacts generate a
quicker and stronger impact, selling faster. |