Define Sales Strategy

Chapter 18: Strategy is Focus - Page 18.5

Define Sales Strategy

Describe sales strategy as different from marketing strategy. To help differentiate between marketing strategy and sales strategy, think of marketing as the broader effort of generating sales leads on a large scale, and sales as the efforts to bring those sales leads into the system as individual sales transactions. Marketing might affect image and awareness and propensity to buy, while sales should close the deals and get the order that marketing opens.

Sales tactics deal with how and when to close sales prospects, how to compensate sales people, how to optimize order processing and database management, how to maneuver price, delivery, and conditions.

As with your marketing strategy, your sales strategy depends a great deal on which market segments you've chosen as target market groups. Obviously, you don't sell major deals to large companies the same way you sell cereal boxes off grocery store shelves. Think about how you sell in your business. What is your strategy for optimizing your way of selling?

Summary

Is your strategy a reflection of your company's strengths and weaknesses? Make it consistent and realistic.

A mediocre strategy implemented well and with consistency will always beat a brilliant strategy that is never implemented.

Check your plan for consistency throughout. Does your spending reflect your strategy? Do your numbers, including your sales forecast, expense forecast, and personnel plan, reflect your strategy?

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