At the start of my sales career, I was singularly focused on selling (execution), pitching the product, and closing the sale. Nothing else seemed to matter nor did I understand anything else. I had thought that there was nothing more important than selling and therefore, it should be not only my top priority but my only priority. As time went by, I was introduced to the word “plan” and the concept of “planning.” At first in my youth, I had no clue what this meant. However, it was important, and it seemed my career would not be successful if I did not learn how to plan or understand why planning was necessary.
Naively as a young salesman, I thought that selling was just promoting a product and convincing someone to buy it. While this is perhaps the main objective for a salesperson, it is a haphazard way to achieve the objective without planning. I learned that if you don’t plan the sale before making the sale, it may be just wasting time and closing may not be reachable.
I was then introduced to Anticipate, Communicate, and Execute, (“ACE”).
It seems these functions, performed in this order, apply not only to sales but to management and virtually everything that we do. In my previous chapters, I spoke about the sales cycle, a proven process for successful selling. Let’s look at the sales cycle in reference to ACE.
1. Anticipate – In Suspecting and Prospecting, we anticipate who we are selling to and why these people have the potential to buy. In anticipating their reaction to the product, we discover if there is a need, or we can create the perception of a need. If so, they are on the list for us to perform our pitch. If not, they are not on the list, and we do not spend time on them. Anticipation is essentially preparation and begins with a vision. What do we want the result to be and how do we get it.
2. Communicate – Making the sales pitch to promote the product to our prospects and answering their objections. We communicate features and advantages that equal BENEFITS which is what people buy. We communicate the product as a solution to the prospect.
3. Execute – Having made the sales pitch and answered all the objections, we ask for the business and execute the CLOSE.
When you sit down and fully understand ACE, you find this to be sensible, meaningful, logical, and effective. It is said that “Nobody plans to fail, but many fail to plan.”
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