To read the first part of this article click here, increase sales. It is titled, “Does Marketing Support Your Sales Team, Or Your Sales Team Support Your Marketing?”

In the first article I addressed the crucial business question many small businesses don’t stop to ask:  “Are we a marketing-driven company supported by our sales force; or does our sales team take the lead and our marketing plays a support role?”

Today I want to post the question, “What to do if you are a marketing-driven company that is supported by sales?”  OK, if you are selling the less-expensive items (under $300), or if it is easy to compare items across different websites or among catalogs, then marketing has often closed the sale before ’sales’ ever speaks to the customer.  However, sales occupies an important supportive role. Sales:

• Needs to know your product & what makes your product superior.  Sales need to be versed in ‘benefits and features’.
• Needs to be able to up-sell or cross-sell.

Cross Sellers

If you are a large company then your CRM system will be sophisticated enough to suggest the appropriate cross-sell items; but for many smaller companies the CRM system won’t provide this. Instead, it is the combination of experience and training that can turn your sales staff into additional profit centers.

At the smaller dollar sale amounts, incentives or commissions aren’t always practical.  The dollar amount available to pay commissions on cross-sold items and tracking the commissions isn’t always available, especially in smaller companies.  Plus, many of the employees filling the sales slots in these companies aren’t always primarily motivated by money.

The key to sales

Good training from the outset is vital, but so is hiring staff with simple common sense.  It’s usually not a problem to train people — look at McDonald’s — to say “do you want fries with that?”.  The same is true for salespeople.  If somebody is buying a coat, it’s a natural to ask about gloves or a hat.

In some companies “order-takers” are derided by high-end commission salespeople.  If your company is selling at a price point under $300, you often rely on these “order-takers” to smoothly increase your margins by up-sell or cross-sell techniques.  Don’t deride the order-takers, but instead try your best to include them in your training, in your CRM, and as an essential component of your overall marketing.