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When you understand the key factors of Commercial Awareness you start to open doors up to understanding sales and the processes that surround them better, don’t get confused with the fact to be a good salesperson, sales manager, business development manager, sales director, or the business owner you only need to have the technique of closing someone, it’s not that way at all. To be good at any of the above you need to have that Commerical Awareness, the awareness to see things from another angle. As I mentioned in my last Blog we are going to start stepping the detail up in our blog posts, so if you are not connected and signed up to the blog you will miss out on valuable information, I am going to show you all what the takeover strategy is really about, the content is going to start being insane, if you want to learn as I said sign up, if you don’t want to learn, I can’t help you!
Getting back to today’s Blog Post, Commerical Awareness can be viewed in many different ways, everyone will have their take on it, but I will explain how I see it, it’s up to you whether you vibe with it or not, we all have the right to our own opinions. What I will say though is from my standpoint I have worked in very LARGE BUSINESSES and they have taught me to have this point of view, so if their turning over Billions of pounds and your turning over 10K a month, which is great don’t get me wrong, I think we can safely say though they know what they’re talking about. The last business I worked for their annual turnover was 7.8 Billion, so I know what I am talking about, and I am here to pass on my knowledge to you, it doesn’t cost you anything, but it’s down to whether you have the mindset of listening and learning, many people don’t, let’s hope you do!
In any business, it’s important to know every role within that business, so many Managing Directors, Sales Directors out there that are reading this, you need to be making sure you understand every single role within the business you manage, you need to sit in that chair, you need to feel what the other person feels on a day to day basis, you need to understand their role within your business. When you do this it will open your mind up to your business, and it will open your mind up to how things can be developed within your business, I am not saying you should sit there for weeks on end, but you need to be sitting there for a day at least. Every member of staff you have should know what their colleagues feel like in their position within the company, it builds respect, communication, and understanding. In very large global businesses they want you to know how your colleagues feel on a day-to-day basis, they want you to feel their pain, because once you feel their pain, you understand their role, you understand them, so you can then look at ways to make their lives easier within their role. I will give you an example I sat in my old Commerical guy’s chair, I was a Business Development Manager at the time, and I felt how hard it was for him to juggle different tasks, I understood, I shouldn’t be throwing more stuff at him at certain times, and I understood my job deeper because it enhanced my strategic planning. It made me realize that continually hassling a Commercial person man or woman, “the drip feeding information wasn’t suitable, I had to be more in-depth in my findings, I had to be asking the right questions towards my clients, so it would make it easier for him or her to piece together the correct pricing structure, therefore possibly not giving the correct information was effecting my performance, not giving the correct information, not understanding his or her role, wasn’t going to enable me to put together killer presentations together! I found that once I started giving the correct attention to him, he would then come back with more information for me, this would then raise my game in my performance, and in the end, I raised my game another 20%!
Depending on what industry you work in whether it’s Manufacturing, Online, Technology, Production, Finance, or Agriculture, it doesn’t matter the principles are the same, you need to have commercial awareness of your surroundings it will push you to level up! If we take a manufacturer for example he or she will have various machines, manufacturing their goods, which run at different speeds, different intakes and outtakes, different sizes of products, Different thicknesses and so on, you need to be out on that shop floor learning the processes, not months on end, but you need to understand the machine operators jobs, you need to understand the machines, you need to understand what stresses they have? What work, works and what work doesn’t work, again within a global business you are pushed around many different roles, and it’s ingrained in you to establish connections at different levels, trust me having the commercial awareness of how operations work is a HUGE feather in your cap, not only from a selling perspective, but those people that work those machines will work that little bit harder for you because you have taken the time to understand them, you have shown an interest, it’s team game after all unless, of course, you work on your own. But if you do work on your own you are in a prime position, because you are doing everything, you are learning every role, so as you get bigger you will know how your employees feel, this holds you in great stead to be a fantastic leader, DO NOT FORGET WHERE YOU CAME FROM!
Another trick some Business Development Managers, Sales Managers, Sales Directors, and sales staff, in general, miss out on is taking your team members to meet your customers. When you do this and you introduce teams you are building long-lasting relationships, because it isn’t only you who has a relationship it’s several people, which cements your connection deeper with that business, so in the long run, to lose that business, it may have to be lost at different levels within that business, rather than with one person! But again it also helps your counterparts understand your role and the pressure you go through just to close a deal. I will give you a TIP when closing an account, you have got the POs everything is signed off, call for a meeting, and make it a procedure, for every member in the chain that will be dealing with the account, so this could be your internal sales team, production manager, sales director, and general manager, put one slide together explaining the account, what they do, where it has come from, who the contacts are, what the product is, how many it’s for and so on. Believe me when I say, when you do this, you will increase everyone’s knowledge they will feel part of the journey, and you will also find they will keep a closer eye on the job and the account! Once you have done that, make another meeting for everyone involved in the supply chain within your clients business, along with everyone involved at your end, which will be a meet and greet, get everyone to introduce themselves, explain their roles within the business, and build relationships, you are now encouraging people to build relationships, it will make the bond deeper between client and supplier.
It’s important from a commercial perspective that the commercial team has a pricing structure that you follow, this should include delivery of any pricing back to the customer’s timeline, this enables you the BDM/Sales Manager to successfully tell your clients what they can expect with lead times. Working to a guided set of times helps the structure of the deal, you can safely set out a structured plan with the client as you already know what times you are working to. I shall give you another TIP on how I used to CONTROL my clients in a prospective situation, you must dictate the terms, what I mean is you must gain control of the client professionally, so they are dancing to your tune. How to do this or a method you can use is setting out a clear journey for them from start to finish! You already have the lead times that you are working to, because your commercial team is organized with their structured times. You will get in front of the client, and this is where you control the situation. Many Sales people get stuck with being too desperate, so what that leads to is the client controlling you, you do what they say! No, you have your procedures, and you need to stick to them, so what you do is you say for example ” OK Mr. Customer, that’s great thanks for this all this information, I understand where you are coming from, I understand your needs” You read it back to them, then you say “So to be able to make sure I can give you the best experience possible with “Business Name” I understand you are a very busy person, so I want this process to be a smooth as possible for you, so I am going to put a collaboration plan together” What’s a collaboration plan? Well I have given you things that I need from you and you have outlined what you need from me, a collaboration plan is a plan of action to make sure the progression of our plan fits the deadlines we have put in place. On the Collaboration plan we will add everything I need from you which will be initialed, and the same will apply to me. I will then send the collaboration plan to you each Friday of the week where we can both tick off things that we have achieved which will take us through the journey of closing the project! Easy! With my VERY LARGE CLIENTS, I would have a meeting every Friday on Teams to discuss what we had done. This controls the client but also makes the client aware you are needing things to be done to enable the deal to be done, they need to keep the end of the bargain, if they don’t then things don’t progress. OK sometimes, they will have busy weeks, but the difference is they tell you, as they feel tied in, so they feel obliged to make you aware, this is a seductive way of controlling a client, and believe me, it works! As you move through the journey you will add new things and they will add new things, this also gives the client confidence you know what you are talking about, it lets them know you want their business, and you are structured and professional. The number of clients that have told me after I closed the deal later down the line, how impressed they were that I took the lead, they never felt pressured, they just rolled with it, it’s about making yourself different from your competition, and everyone uses to say I was different because I was, I have been taught by the best mindful business mentors you can imagine, and it’s my turn to mentor you!
So there you have it, a little insight into Commercial Awareness, I hope that helped someone, please drop me a line if it did, a comment, or an email, it’s always good to know! As I said we are going to start stepping up our BLOG posts now, although I have to be careful I can’t give out all my secrets, you have to sign up for a FREE strategy call for all my secrets. Trust me when I say, I can change your world, and how you view it, you want a successful business, let’s talk!
Until next time
The Takeover Team
