Automation Sales...
Congratulations, You've picked a challenging career! We are all built to perform some function in life. Selling, especially in the Automation Marketplace requires a combination of skills that are rare indeed. So, what do I mean by that?
The Skills of an Industrial Automation Sales Professional:
- Cold Call and/or follow up on Leads
- Understand the selling process
- Understand the product value propositions
- Represent the company, with the proper image
- Manage sales channels
- Ideally, fully represent the products, even with Demonstrations
- Manage the CRM Process
- Read the audience and prospects
- Qualify the opportunity
- Feed the funnel, close the opportunities
- Appease Management
- Interact positively with Marketing and Engineering
Delivering on all these fronts is a challenge for sure. And, for some, this all comes naturally - which makes you the ideal salesperson. The people skills are the most important, followed by a solid grasp of the sales process, and finally, the technical skills to get it all done. Lacking in any areas quickly becomes costly - turning the simple sales call into the 4,6 or 8 legged call. For example - The Salesman needs a technical guru for the product demonstration - 4 legs, the manager feels that this is a key account and wants to present his "Corporate" image - 6 legs and then the local channel partner wants to tag along due to mistrust in the account handling - 8 legs...
Finding the right salesperson in the first place is greatly important to efficiency and success.
Some basic rules for Sales:
- Don't waste the prospects time. Pre-qualify the opportunity.
- Don't out-number the customer in a meeting - it just looks bad
- Listen as much as you talk
- Ask what the customer wants to see, and address the points - Do NOT start demonstrating all you know about the product. You will demo the customer into confusion, complexity and costs for things not needed in the first place...
- Learn from your customer. They will respect you for it.
- Continue learning and honing your skills
- Improve your technical skills
- Improve your Body Language skills
- Keep up with industry events
So, how can this site help you?
The automation marketplace is served through a variety of channels to market - Direct, Representatives, Distributors or Web/Catalog sales.
Other Tabs in this section will offer information and ideas to assist you in each of those areas.
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