Key Factors to become Supplier of Choice

Key-identifying factors that will help you grow your sales territory and become “Supplier of Choice” include:

• Understanding the value of planning and actually document the key actions necessary to meet specific objectives at specific accounts.
• Become professional with your planned presentations whether it is to an individual buyer or a group of customer decision makers. Perfect your 25-word elevator speech that clearly outlines your value proposition. Get it down pat for those opportunistic moments that may occur.
• Goals are a matter of course and they include more than just revenue and margin growth. Milestones should be established for target accounts to highlight progress toward specific objectives.
• No one likes record keeping and paperwork but the really successful sales professional understands the necessity and the value received in return for being methodical with their record keeping. (This does not include journalistic call reports that have little value beyond redundant diatribe)
• Time management should be forever on your mind and you need to continuously practice efficient time control.
• You've got to be hungry. Hungry for knowledge to improve your skills and demonstrate enough curiosity that you don't wait for company sponsored seminars for education and training. Read, listen to tapes and finance your own self-improvement in addition to company programs.

• Don’t chase orders, chase customers. Be willing to lose an order but fight aggressively to never lose a customer unless you need to prune your territory garden due to unacceptable profitability.

• Your objective on every sales call is to identify the customer’s real needs, not to just take an order. Take pride in being a solution provider and demand creator instead of a demand fulfiller.

• Understand that often a key to your success lies in your ability to educate the customer. This may range in form of business acumen to helping the customer understand real value. Become an expert at demonstrating the difference between price and cost.

ACTION POINT: Practice the factors above to become the supplier of choice.