101 Best Sales and Marketing Ideas
Idea 101:
KEEP SEARCHING FOR AN EDGE
As a final entry (and yes, I know it says 100 ideas on the cover, but I have made a point of emphasizing the usefulness of something unexpected), I would like to make a point about the dynamic nature of the sales process. Sadly there is no one magic bullet that transforms every sales situation into a certain winner. Every sales person must get used to some rejection, and work with the prevailing strike rate in their industry. What this book does is provide ideas that might improve your strike rate. The best sales people never give up on the process of improvement. They see the process as dynamic, and constantly work to better what they do.
Not every skill is like this. Something that illustrates his principle, one that occurs to me as I write, is the skill of typing. I may type less than perfectly, but I do use a lot of fingers, and I do go at a fair rate. (Publishers do not pay enough to make slow writing economic!). This is something of a static skill. As long as I do enough typing, and do so regularly, my speed will keep up, and I do not really have to learn anything new – unless the querty keyboard is superseded. But it must be born in mind that selling is certainly not like that. What needs to be done with customer today is different from what must be done with another (or even the same one), next week, next month, or next year.
Idea
From motor giant BMW …
I mention the company because of its conspicuous success. This is a respected worldwide organization, one that sells a very large numbers of cars every year; it is no stretch of the imagination to think that its sales people must be no slouches. Yet BMW constantly refreshes the skill of its people. I have written several different books about aspects of selling, and the largest single order I have ever had for one title (actually The Sales Excellence Pocketbook, published by Management Pocketbooks) was for very nearly a thousand copies – from BMW.
In practice
- Whatever ideas you use, or adapt and use, from this volume, never stop searching for new ones. Sales success is not a matter of luck, so I will not wish you good luck, but I wish you well with it.