By John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling® – The Sales Training Company
Image courtesy of Stock Images at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
In my first sales management position I soon noticed that one of my salespeople seldom made calls alone. He called on mid-level IT staff and whenever possible brought our Systems Engineer (SE) with him on his calls. He was a mediocre performer and we only had one SE in our office that supported eight salespeople. As a manager I wanted to optimize the usage of this valuable resource.
Most companies pay salespeople on top-line revenue without regard for the amount of resources required. Many CCS® clients understand this and expect competent salespeople to qualify opportunities before getting other resources involved. One of the many advantages of doing top-down selling is that calls on mid to lower levels with an SE can usually be made after making Key Player calls and qualifying the potential business outcomes they want to achieve.
Cost of sales is a concern for most organizations. “Four-legged calls” are expensive. When requesting them, sellers should be able to explain who they want the SE to call on, why it’s necessary and the objective of these calls as part of the sales cycle.
