从Sun Tzu’s, The Art of War学到的销售策略

By Jerry Walters, Vice President, Marketing, Sales and Field Services

Today’s challenging economy requires Sales organizations to consider new ways to sell. In every technology company, including Spatial’s, Sales must work with Development, Product Management and Marketing to identify key product attributes. But more importantly Sales must have a clear understanding of the business value they provide. To illustrate the selling strategy involved, I like to equate them to the strategies in Sun Tzu’s, The Art of War.

In his book, Tzu identifies the 5 strategies as follows:

1. Direct
2. Indirect
3. Divisional
4. Contain
5. Delay

Strategies 1 and 2 are action oriented strategies and directly applicable for discussion of selling strategies. Most technology company’s sales organizations use a Direct Strategy, the de facto strategy of choice. A Direct Strategy focuses on selling tools or technology to customers, but not business value. A few years ago, Spatial recognized that the Direct Strategy did not enable our customers to readily see the value of our products. Consequently, Spatial now uses an Indirect Strategy to meet our sales objectives with an emphasis on a Value Selling Model as a consultative tool. Spatial adopted the Value Selling Model five years ago, and has experienced higher sales growth and customer retention ever since.

Value Selling improves our ability to articulate our business value vs. our previous method of selling what the technology does. With this selling strategy Spatial has:

1. Significantly shortened sales cycles
2. Increased revenue streams with improved profitability
3. Reached mutually-favorable contracts with our customers
4. Increased effectiveness in selling into new markets
5. Increased our portfolio of products with existing customers

What's Best: Direct or Indirect Selling Strategies?

Rapidly changing technology coupled with ever changing customer demands make technology selling propositions expensive and risky. For example; Direct Selling strategies require that the seller have a minimum of a 3:1 advantage over a competitor in order to win. This 3:1 advantage is usually achieved by selling product attributes such as price, performance, and product features. Value Selling, however, promotes articulating and delivering provable, repeatable value to the customer and sustains a far more profitable business with more meaningful partnerships.

In our sales terminology, aligning our value with our customers is striving to be a “Conscious Competent”. With a Conscious Competent model the sales person understands the keys to their success and can define the value that they bring. Conversely, the “Unconscious Competent” refers to seemingly successful sales people that sell high volumes with “hot” products, in new markets, with high demand, or with limited competition. This success masks the need for a defined selling model - the desire to have a methodology that is “conscious” and successful.

To be successful, our Sales organization works with our customers to define their business objectives therefore building lasting, impenetrable, and mutually profitable business relationships. With that both Spatial and our customer’s win. And your organization can too, if you choose the right selling strategy and successfully practice the art of war.