Sales Calls
This post relates to FREE Purchasing Resource #71 entitled "What Salespeople Learn To Say To You."
Like everyone else who has ever held a purchasing position, I experience varying degrees of annoyance at getting requests for meetings without a compelling reason. I find Jill's approach quite interesting. Here are a few of my thoughts...
1. I like Jill's suggestion about pre-call research. If every salesperson followed this suggestion, this would force the sales person to pre-qualify themselves, rather than you having that responsibility.
2. You could even consider using Jill's suggestion to adopt criteria to accept or decline requests for appointments. If the salesperson doesn't specify how they will help you solve a problem or achieve an objective, they don't get the appointment. Period.
3. If you do adopt some type of criteria for whether or not to grant an appointment, you also have to consider the category of products or services being presented. You have your goals and strategies for a given year. If sourcing for a certain category does not fit within your strategy, you have to decline the appointment, irrespective of how well the salesperson presents their value proposition. Maybe their solution is for next year's problem. Don't lose focus. You have limited resources, so don't scatter yourself.
All in all, I've found it quite interesting to read Jill's approach. I hope that you have, too. Her's is a lot better than the approach used by other sales trainers who focus on borderline manipulation.
Click on the comments link below to share your comments. I look forward to reading what you have to say!
Until my next post, I wish you all the best!
Respectfully,
Charles Dominick, C.P.M., SPSM
President
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
posted by Charles Dominick, SPSM @ 9:40 AM
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2 Comments:
Great post, Charles!
This is an important aspect of a purchasers work that has received little attention (in my part of the world,anyway)to date.
All the usual technicial aspects of purchasing are relativly accessable through formal courses but in my personal experience, most of my training in interacting with sales people(we're not talking about negotiation yet)has been self-taught -I remember reading a page or two covering the topic in the CPM syllabus-and then mostly through studying sales techniques from a sellers perspective.But although this is a good start, we're still playing catch-up by accessing this material from a sellers blog...
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