Strategy 2 Use and optimize multiple channels to serve customers of different sizes 中

If you aspire to grow, you’ll pretty soon figure out getting your products and services to the customer is the only thing that matters. Growth companies go out of their way to sell the way the customer wants to buy.

● Tactic 4 Work multichannels

Companies which master the art of multichannel sales enjoy larger profit margins and greater revenue growth. Multichannel management looks straightforward but it’s often harder than it looks because customers can vary so much. The keys to multichannel sales are:

■ Blend remote sales and field sales — Remote sales may seem like the best way to serve smaller customers but you may find some of your larger customers prefer this as well. Let customers choose how frequently they interact with you and whether they do things for themselves. Managing this dynamic can boost your own productivity substantially.

■ Integrate online and offline sales channels — Today’s consumers expect to be able to shop across a number of channels. Many retailers are fueling growth by placing web kiosks right in their stores and by making point-of-sale terminals web enabled so customers can easily order product which is not in stock or redeem coupons. As long as each channel supports and reinforces the overall brand experience, this is a case of the more channels you use the merrier.

■ Orchestrate direct and indirect sales channels, including service channels — Companies sometimes find it hard to hand valuable customers over to their channel partners but often this is a smart thing to do. The direct sales model is not always the optimum as sometimes partners have capabilities which are better suited to specific market segments. It may, for example, be helpful to have customers deal direct with the company when the product is new but then involve partners later in the product life cycle. Service channels also need to be factored into the mix here. Customer service teams frequently have intimate knowledge about what customers want and are in frequent contact with them. They can be in a position of trust which can lead to additional sales.

Key Thoughts

“Today, few if any companies have only one sales channel. But operating multiple channels is not the same as multichannel management, which seeks to maximize the benefits of all the available options. This type of management helps keep customers delighted and loyal while optimizing the cost of serving them.”

— Thomas Baumgartner, Homayoun Hatami and Jon Vander Ark

● Tactic 5 Harness digital sales

Some of the most innovative growth today is coming when companies integrate digital sales channels with traditional channels. Digital sales channels have been major drivers of growth for leading companies in recent years. The simple dynamic is two-thirds of all sales made today involve some form of online research, consideration or outright purchase. Both digital sales and digitally-influenced sales are growing prodigiously.

So how can you become a digital success story? Some ideas:

■ Optimize fanatically — Keep testing and adjusting what you’re doing online to drive sales and build loyalty. Keep finding better ways to engage customers. Online sales always come down to driving traffic, making the initial transaction easy and then cross selling and up-selling. Keep working at finding new and better ways to do each of these things.

■ Get social — Social media may have started out as fringe activities but they have now become global juggernauts. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube generate intense levels of engagement and they can lead to some highly effective personal endorsements. Social media really is word-of-mouth on steroids so you need to figure out how to use this medium to engage customers and help them make complex purchase decisions. Sales leaders are finding ways to go beyond “likes” to using social media to generate actual revenue. Experiment and keep trying new ideas.

■ Integrate digital into a multichannel experience — Digital sales channels may be getting all the headlines at the moment but many sales leaders have found the greatest benefit from digital channels is they improve the performance of more traditional sales channels. Merck is doing some interesting things in this area. It launched Januvia, Merck’s diabetes treatment, with a Web site linked to call centers. Merck also organized an online symposium on Januvia. Sales reps then visited the doctors that opted into the video briefing. Within a month, Januvia had a 14 percent market share of all new diabetes prescriptions. Digital works if you’re smart about it and blend it in with whatever else you’re doing.

Key Thoughts

“When considering a digital sales strategy, ask yourself: What would Justin Bieber do? Canadian singer Bieber rocketed to international stardom from his mother’s living room couch, where she taped him playing his first songs, which they uploaded to YouTube. He quickly went viral, acquired professional management, and went on to become a model for online sales success: 40 million people follow him on Facebook, 14 million follow his tweets, and fans have sampled his music on Myspace more than 100 million times. On iTunes and other online music stores, devoted fans purchased more than 23 million Bieber tracks in 2010 alone. It may sound far-fetched, but the same tactics that made Bieber the top global brand among teenage girls also apply to both consumer and B2B sales.”

— Thomas Baumgartner, Homayoun Hatami and Jon Vander Ark

● Tactic 6 Build direct sales

In today’s world, mastering business-to-business or business-to-consumer

direct selling models is no longer enough. The world’s leading sellers are using new digital tools to reinvent direct sales. How they do this varies widely from one industry to the next but the common underlying theme of most of these programs is savvy companies overinvest in their best customers. They keep coming up with new and better ways to reward their customers and engage the right prospective customers.

So what are the top sellers doing that you should also try? There are at least three fronts worth exploring:

■ Engage customers early — Instead of just asking questions, sit down with prospective customers and start discussing how you can adapt your products and services to solve their problems. Spend more time figuring out what they need and less time advocating your product and you’ll find your win rate will leap appreciably. If at all feasible, let them test drive some of your products under development as well. They may give you some great feedback which can guide ongoing development and become passionate advocates for what they have helped develop.

■ Inject your organization expertise — Make certain prospective customers speak to the right people from your team at the right time. Great products don’t sell themselves and knowledge is a great selling tool. Find ways to help your sales reps know more about what they’re selling and they will sell more. When salespeople are working on big potential deals, make sure there is a collective effort to sell involving your best engineers, technical experts, support staff and so on. Collaborate on those deals.

■ Pursue new prospects relentlessly — Sales growth is always achieved by first identifying and then winning new customers. Yet salespeople have a habit of relaxing those efforts to secure new customers when they land a big account and keep getting paid commissions on ongoing sales. To offset that, you have to find ways to keep your salespeople hungry and motivated. One company does this by having a designated day every quarter where their entire sales force steps away from their existing accounts and spends the whole day pitching to 8 to 10 new prospective clients each. Others designate some salespeople as “hunters” and others as “farmers” with the idea hunters establish the accounts and then turn them over to farmers to maintain. The hunters can then focus on what they do best — finding new business.

Key Thoughts

“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.”

— Theodore Levitt

“World-class sellers bring an innovative mindset to their direct channels. Many great companies have found a way to link an excellent customer experience with sales opportunities.”

— Thomas Baumgartner, Homayoun Hatami and Jon Vander Ark

● Tactic 7 Invest in partners

Direct selling and indirect selling utilize fundamentally different business models. It’s difficult to do both well because difficulties arise which are specific to each channel:

For all the challenges, getting direct and indirect sales meshed together can be highly beneficial. Many companies have improved revenues by 10-to 20-percent while at the same time reducing their cost of sales by 5-to 10-percent by doing this. The keys to managing direct and indirect channels are:

■ Manage partners as extensions of your own sales force, not as outsiders — Some companies have a “hire and forget” mentality when it comes to channel partners. Leading sales organizations, by contrast, work hard to improve their partners’ performance. If you have the mindset that working with partners is not a zero sum game but that greater visibility will be a rising tide that lift all boats together, then great things can happen. Focus on creating “true partnerships” with the right partners rather than having a multitude of superficial partnerships. Work to make them excel.

■ Confront channel conflicts head-on and challenge partners to raise their game — Sales leaders work hard to get the balance right between channels. You have to challenge your partners on an ongoing basis to keep raising their game. If you reward those partners who succeed with more support and more training, you can propel them to the next level of performance. Be proactive about reducing areas of direct competition between your own sales force and your channel partners. It’s important to be pragmatic and realistic. Try to anticipate where conflicts are inevitable and then mitigate the impact insofar as possible.

Key Thoughts

“If we are together, nothing is impossible. If we are divided, all will fail.”

— Winston Churchill

● Tactic 8 Get into emerging

Channel partners are essential when you attempt to capture the enormous growth potential of emerging markets. These types of markets can generate impressive rates of growth if you can learn how to think like a local — which is where getting the right partner comes in.

To accelerate sales growth in emerging markets, the three main imperatives are:

■ Get on the ground — Accessing expert opinion is great but when it come to emerging markets, nothing beats getting into the market and experiencing first-hand how the market works. Get a ground level view of the challenges, the opportunities and the realities of tapping into that market. Cultural differences always shape the most productive selling practices for any market and there is no substitute for getting your hands dirty. If you’re lucky, your initial efforts to access an emerging market may even generate some game-changing insights. Get into the game early so you can move down the learning curve.

■ Overinvest when you find the right partners — When you identify the right partner to run with in an emerging market — someone who shares your values and has the right capabilities — invest in them. Have a longterm perspective about this and help them build their capabilities even if your efforts might not yield any revenue for years. By cultivating these partnerships early on, you’re then positioned for sustained growth in the future as those markets grow.

■ Build and develop talent for the longterm — It’s not unusual for annual growth in emerging markets to exceed 10 percent year after year. That means a major challenge is to attract the right kind of people who can grow at that rate, and those kind of locals will be on the radar screen of other companies looking to tap into emerging markets as well. The only way you’ll be able to keep good people is if you offer them robust training opportunities and a solid career path. If you’re reluctant to train your people well because you anticipate they will jump ship and take that knowledge to a competitor, you’re already behind the 8-ball. Make sure your people have the opportunity to grow with you.

Key Thoughts

“The dynamic and unpredictable nature of emerging markets that makes employee management such a headache can also be dangerously distracting for sales managers. Yes, consumer sentiment can change quickly, and new competitors can arise overnight, but the best sales leaders don’t get swept up in frantic excitement or false urgency. Instead, they balance aggressiveness and speed with rigor to ensure sales investments will generate a return over time. Emerging markets present an enormous growth opportunity for many sales leaders. In many cases, they present an equally large challenge.”

— Thomas Baumgartner, Homayoun Hatami and Jon Vander Ark