Four Ways to Refine Your Sales Strategy

Winning More Sales with an Indirect Sales Strategy

How far does treating the receptionist like a rock star really get you? An interesting article about “Winning More Sales with an Indirect Strategy” breaks down several concepts that are taken from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” and interprets them for today’s world. From it are four ways to refine your sales strategy, paraphrased from an article by Steve W. Martin.

1. Employ psychology. The first principle is that the indirect strategy is based upon understanding, predicting, and influencing human nature. In sales, winning requires earning the trust, respect, and friendship of another human being. This takes patience and integrity. The residual effect can be to sow doubt among your competitors, because a halfhearted warrior is more than halfway to losing.

2. Know the competition. How well do you know your competitors? How much time do you spend studying their websites, products, and marketing collateral? Do you take the time to perform an honest win-loss analysis after each engagement? Becoming educated on this gives you a chance to differentiate yourself.

3. Understand power structures. All battlefield commanders need location-based information so they can map the way to reach their objective. Similarly, salespeople need a complete understanding of how the evaluators are organized within their company because political power during the decision-making process goes far beyond the lines and titles on an organization chart. Therefore, it’s critical to map out the political interrelationships and be respectful of the subtle cues between departments of the organization that reveal how decisions are really made.

4. Create turning points. The indirect strategy is based upon creating turning points which cause enemies to lose momentum they can never regain. Every deal has a critical moment, or turning point, that determines the winner and the loser. In sales, information can be used to create turning points that eliminates competitors. Your expertise on the customer’s industry, understanding of best practices, and the willingness to raise critical issues the customer is unaware of can be used to create turning points.

This is Mr. Martin’s discussion about the indirect sales strategy. We really stress that there is a relationship between the amount of respect you show to the people who answer the door, take your coat, and answer phones in the organization, and the amount of respect you will get back from the top leadership. Our experience is that having interpersonal awareness that extends kindness to everybody in the organization is a way to communicate to your prospect the way you do business is by showing respect.

Google recently concluded as much in an extensive study of the best “norms” at an organization: the more people are attuned to the interpersonal dynamics in the room, the stronger the team is. By paying attention to everyone in the group and picking up on cues, the collective intelligence rises among groups.

Think about it- are there things you could be doing differently or even people you could treat differently if you had a different sales strategy?