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    Automated Sales: A Systematic Approach to Boosting Your Business
    Automated Sales: A Systematic Approach to Boosting Your Business
    Automated Sales: A Systematic Approach to Boosting Your Business
    Ebook174 pages1 hour

    Automated Sales: A Systematic Approach to Boosting Your Business

    By Steffen Ritter

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    About this ebook

    Many businesspeople and salespeople leave their offices at the end of the day without a valuable, measurable, and presentable sales outcome.

    Its easy to see why: With distractions flowing from all directions, businesses and salespeople need to focus on what matters to achieve results. After all, successful selling is a lot like skiingwhile the layperson uses force, the professional relies on technique.

    Steffen Ritter, one of Germanys leading consultants for sellers and agents, explains how you can join top performers in this energy-efficient guide to automating the sales process to boost revenue. Learn how to:

    create new habits to make sales easier;

    contact customers systematically;

    provide the right customers with the right service; and

    create value for customers on a continuous basis.

    By taking a tour highlighting how salespeople, employees, and customers think, youll be equipped to change your thinking to forge stronger and more profitable connections with prospects.

    In our modern world, automated methods provide a reliable basis for successful, sustainable sales. It is time for you to fully realize that selling can be smooth and easy. Sales can be automated!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateJun 30, 2016
    ISBN9781491796160
    Automated Sales: A Systematic Approach to Boosting Your Business
    Author

    Steffen Ritter

    Steffen Ritter is one of Germany’s leading consultants for sellers and agents. He is the managing director and mastermind of Institut Ritter, which is a consulting and training firm that helps companies, managers, and salespeople boost sales and increase profits. Visit www.institutritter.de to learn more.

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      Book preview

      Automated Sales - Steffen Ritter

      © 2016 Steffen Ritter.

      First published under the title Verkaufen kann von selbst laufen in 2014 by GABAL Verlag, Germany.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      iUniverse

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.iuniverse.com

      1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      ISBN: 978-1-4917-9615-3 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4917-9616-0 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2016908777

      iUniverse rev. date:   06/27/2016

      Contents

      Prologue My First Experience with Starbucks

      1. Life at the Selling Front: Thoughts and Reports

      The good old days

      Heading home

      Office work isn’t easy either!

      Who on earth is Smith?

      Roth again!

      I’m leaving

      2. The Non-Systematic Approach to Working with Customers

      Green frogs in a red bucket

      Salesperson gone means customers gone

      Help! I am stagnating

      The end of the conditional

      3. A Systematic Approach to Working with Customers

      Part A – The Preconditions

      The secret: a systematic approach

      Who exactly is your customer?

      Do you provide the right customers with the right service?

      Preparation: class A, class B, and class C customers

      Part B – Lead Generation and Customer Acquisition

      How systematically do others become aware of you?

      How systematically do others campaign for you?

      How systematically do you convert potentials into customers?

      How systematically do you contact your customers by letter?

      Part C – Servicing and Developing

      How systematically do you categorize your customers?

      How systematically do your class C customers generate profit?

      How systematically do you service your class A customers?

      How systematically do you develop your potential customers?

      How systematically do you follow up?

      How systematically do you continue to create value for your customers?

      Part D – Customer Loyalty and Recommendation

      How systematically do your customers recommend you to others?

      How systematically do you offer extras to your customers?

      How systematically do you deal with customer defection?

      4. How to Create New Habits

      How standard practices make your work and life easier

      Why many people don’t like standard practices

      It’s the what rather than the how: standardizing the right things

      Have you rung in your manufacturing age?

      How to deliberately engage your people

      Moving from unconscious to conscious quality

      At the cemetery of your intentions

      Yet another small example

      Epilogue What Skiing and Your Business Have in Common

      Appendices

      About the Author

      Prologue

      My First Experience with Starbucks

      Organization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individual.

      —Peter F. Drucker

      A while ago, I was on my way to Dusseldorf. Due to a slight train delay I had to wait in Cologne central station for almost an hour. Annoyed by the idea of arriving late, I felt the desire to have a cup of coffee in a quiet corner. Pulling my trolley case packed for a four-day trip behind me, I strolled through the concourse; however, none of the options appealed to me, and before long I found myself standing in front of the station.

      I looked to the left where the stairs lead up to the plateau and the cathedral. On the left hand side of the entrance there was a tiny little café. Then I glanced to the right where the round, black-green logo couldn’t possibly be overlooked. I went for the latter. Rolling in—I was at Starbucks—I was welcomed by an inimitable fragrance of coffee and three friendly young women behind the counter. I stopped in front of the first young lady to study the offerings displayed on a board hanging right above her.

      Maybe I waited too long. She interrupted my thinking by asking in a succinct and straightforward way, So? meaning something like Your order please. What would you like to have? Still not being able to make a choice I answered, One moment, please. Maybe the diversity on offer was simply too much for me.

      Finally I came to a conclusion and ordered a latte macchiato with the intonation of someone who has made a firm decision. Nadja, as she was called, seemingly glad that I had made up my mind, immediately put forward another question: M, L, XL? When I gave her a puzzled look she repeated: Tall, grande, venti? When I still didn’t react—in my mind I was somehow still in the train—she delivered her final blow: Well ... the size! I flashed back into reality and said L, please. (By the way, I think most customers, when presented with three options, would go for the middle, though most of the time it’s the least favourable for the customer as you get less value for your money, relatively speaking. Nevertheless you are happy: you neither spend too much, nor get too little of whatever you order. Companies and salespeople should pay much more attention to this customer bias toward the middle as they design their offerings.)

      I thought that was it. But Nadja held my cup in one hand and a black marker pen in the other. She obviously wasn’t ready yet. Syrup? I gave her another puzzled look. I wanted a cup of coffee, after all. Taking my head-shaking, slightly irritated glance for an answer, Nadja ticked the box for no syrup. Extra shot of espresso? Meanwhile I had mentally arrived in the here and now. I had braced myself for more questions and said No instantly.

      There were already three or four customers standing in line behind me. I felt that we ought to come to an end. Nadja had a different take. She looked at me, holding my cup marked with latte macchiato in her hand. She went on the offensive, asking me What’s your name? Now, this was getting weird. I wasn’t used to introducing myself when ordering a coffee. Although the question wasn’t intellectually challenging I was dumbfounded for a moment. Immediately aware of it, Nadja added: Well, your first name! The additional cue was helpful, of course, and I answered truly and obediently, though in a slightly inquisitive tone: Steffen? This seemed to be an appropriate answer. Nadja wrote it by hand on a sticker on my cup. I watched her with fascination. Now I had my Steffen cup. I felt reminded of a children’s birthday party.

      Nadja and I had chatted quite a bit. In a way, we had made each other’s acquaintance. But now she handed my cup to a colleague and turned to the next customer. I had the presence of mind to take my trolley and follow my Steffen cup. The middle one of the three baristas looked at the cup, turned it around to see what was written on it and said, matter-of-factly: Three euros twenty cents. That was short and to-the-point. I gave her a bill and she handed me the change—things happened so fast that I didn’t even read her name. Then, I moved on to the next barista whose name I cannot remember either. She asked me to wait just a moment until my beverage was ready.

      Suddenly I decided to use my waiting time to make a quick call home and keep everybody informed about where I was. No sooner thought than done! Some loving words: … Train arrived late. Now at Cologne central station waiting for the connecting train ... My report was interrupted by a shrill voice. Steffen, latte macchiato!

      Cologne central station??? There was a slight irritation on the other end of the line. Luckily I was able to clear things up. I was only at Starbucks. Still having some minutes left, I sat down. I watched the three baristas doing their job. Each had her clearly delineated task where every step had its purpose. The front-line service followed a systematic approach, and the process was well-defined.

      The person in charge would always know who was the right person for each job. Barista #1—friendly, matter-of-fact and with a slight penchant for cross-selling. Barista #2—the same strengths as #1 for replacement reasons, with the additional qualification of calculating. Barista #3—having the manual skills of operating the coffee machine, foaming milk and mopping the floor from time to time, or something similar.

      The requirement profiles are much broader, of course. But the basic idea becomes clear. Which system, which procedure does your business use? Which tasks can be deduced from it? These are questions you may ask yourself if you are a salesperson, or a business owner. Precisely how do you proceed to achieve which result? Is your sales activity well organized, and, most importantly, is it organized in a simple way? Is there a system behind your work, or does happenstance rule?

      In our modern world, automatisms provide a reliable basis for successful, sustainable sales. It is time for you to fully realize that selling can be smooth and easy. Sales can be automated!

      I wish you happy reading and lots of valuable insights!

      Steffen Ritter

      Sangerhausen, spring 2014

      1.

      Life at the Selling Front: Thoughts and Reports

      The good old days

      Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

      (Times change and we change in them.)

      —Sixteenth century

      Was everything better in the past?

      Do you remember the smile on Mr.

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