How to get Best Sales Support

In identifying accounts, there are five activities that provide winning sales support to the sales force. The first activity is segmenting the market. It describes how customers and prospects can be characterized such as industry segment, annual sales, number of employees, buying patterns, potential, opportunity. The purpose is to understand slices of the market to determine insight where profit and opportunity exists and where the sales force can be focused on the right accounts. Helping the sales force in identifying the right opportunities can lift your sales efforts. The second activity is selecting the right sales channel. Companies can deploy a direct sales force or sell through distributors or both. Which is more profitable? If you have a direct sales force, you can deploy outside sales reps or inside sales reps or national account managers or all of them. Once again, which channels are most profitable? And if you have segmented the market, companies can determine which sales channels should cover which segment. Once again, this allows you to focus your sales resources on the right accounts. The next activity is to shaping your offerings. This is where the sales force can provide input from the market on your offerings to strengthen them for the entire sales force. The next activity is preparing the market. This ensures that your prospects and clients are preconditioned so that they are receptive to your field's sales calls. The last activity is providing specific segment insight. The sales force is educated and loaded with specific segment insight in order to engage a fruitful discussion with account leadership.

The second step of this sales process is qualifying accounts. There are two winning sales support activities for the sales force. The first activity is assisting in qualifying opportunities. A tool is utilized so that the sales force can assess their opportunities and strengthen their positions. In addition, their assessments are summarized so sales leadership can make decisions on resource deployment. The last activity is providing initial value propositions for acquiring new accounts and expanding existing accounts. Initial value propositions are built on historical value propositions and are supported by market data. This valuable information supports the sales force in the qualification step of the sales process.

The next step in the sales process is pursuing accounts. There are three activities that provide winning sales support to the sales force. The first activity is identifying and quantifying competitors. It is usually easy to identify competitors, but it is a little more complex in terms of quantifying the competitors' strategies. This involves understanding the strategies that your competitors have deployed against you during previous sales cycles. The second activity is predicting competitors' strategies. If you know your competitors' strategies, you can find their vulnerabilities and develop winning strategies to defeat them in upcoming sales pursuits. The third activity is assisting the sales force in advancing the initial value proposition. This is where the initial value proposition becomes more customized and moving toward a final value proposition including a return on investment analysis.