建立可穩健成長的銷售活動

即使是有經驗的優秀銷售員也經常犯三個重要的錯誤。

1. 不足的銷售活動。首先，很簡單而明顯的，他們做的不夠。什麼是足夠的銷售活動？就是足夠的電話/QQ銷售，足夠的銷售拜訪，包含了足夠見到客戶決策人員的機會。簡單的說，就是投入更多的銷售活動，就能創造出更大的成功銷售機會。
2. 不良的銷售活動。其次，但是也一樣重要的，銷售員通常不清楚應該如何確認出那些客戶才是具有對公司產品或是服務具有真正需求的潛力。若是不能分析出客戶的優先次序，你就不能建立有效的銷售策略，這樣會浪費你很大量的寶貴時間。
3. 不對的銷售時間分配。另外一個巨大的問題是銷售員不知道該如何在服務既有客戶與開發潛在新客戶之間，分配好他們的時間。既有的客戶所需要的服務，有很大程度可以讓銷售支援人員來提供服務，包含你的銷售助理與客戶工程師（Account Engineer），你只需要保持關注即可，而無需你钜細靡遺地投入大量時間。銷售員應該很有紀律的，以創造新銷售機會為導向，將你的主要時間投入在繼續開發新客戶上。如果銷售員將主要時間花在維持既有客戶的服務上，總體上，是非常沒有生產力，也非常昂貴的成本。

銷售部門經理應該建立有效的客戶服務策略，建立起有效的銷售單元（Sales Unit）。通常一個銷售單元，包含銷售員、若干銷售助理與若干客戶工程師。銷售員應該將主要時間投入在開發新客戶上，而銷售助理與客戶工程師負責維護既有客戶的服務工作。

成功銷售仰賴於：

1. 良好的銷售準備。銷售經理必須做好部門的銷售活動管理，除了訓練銷售員有足夠的產品知識，產業趨勢知識，也訓練並要求銷售員收集各項有關客戶的資訊。如果銷售員沒有經過足夠的“武裝”，他們面對客戶的銷售成功效率會大打折扣。
2. 勤奮勝過巧智。付出更多，收穫更大。很簡單的道理。你如果不能比別人更有好的銷售技巧，就必須比別人更勤奮工作。

對於銷售部門經理來說，你必須思考：你是採用銷售活動來決定你的銷售策略？還是你採用以銷售策略來決定你的部門銷售員的銷售活動？

Establishing Steady Growing Sales Activities

Even experienced salesmen often make three important mistakes.

1. Insufficient sales activities. First, it's simple and obvious that they haven't done enough. What are enough sales activities? That is, enough phone / QQ sales, enough sales visits, including enough opportunities to meet customer decision makers. Simply put, more sales activities can create more successful sales opportunities.
2. Bad sales activities. Secondly, but equally important, salesmen often don't know how to identify customers who have the potential to really demand the company's products or services. If you can't analyze the customer's priorities, you can't establish effective sales strategies, which will waste a lot of your valuable time.
3. Misallocation of sales time. Another big problem is that salespeople don't know how to allocate their time between serving existing customers and developing potential new customers. The services that existing customers need, to a great extent, can be provided by sales support personnel, including your sales assistant and customer engineer. You just need to keep an eye on them, without having to invest a lot of time in them. Salespersons should be disciplined, oriented towards creating new sales opportunities, and devote your main time to continuing to develop new customers. If a salesperson spends most of his time maintaining the service of an existing customer, in general, it is very unproductive and expensive.

Sales managers should establish effective customer service strategies and effective sales units. Usually a sales unit consists of salesmen, several sales assistants and several customer engineers. Salesmen should devote most of their time to developing new customers, while sales assistants and customer engineers are responsible for maintaining the services of existing customers.

Successful sales depend on:

1. Good sales preparation. Sales managers must do a good job in the management of sales activities. In addition to training salesmen with sufficient product knowledge and industry trend knowledge, they also train and require salesmen to collect information about customers. If salesmen are not sufficiently armed, their sales success rate will be greatly reduced in the face of customers.
2. Diligence is better than wisdom. Give more and reap more. It's very simple. If you can't sell better than others, you have to work harder than others.

For sales managers, you have to think: Are you using sales activities to determine your sales strategy? Or do you use a sales strategy to determine the sales activities of salesmen in your department?