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Picture this situation: One of your major
competitors suddenly announces a new discount pricing strategy, which could have
a substantial impact on your company's sales. Fortunately, you have a response
of your own to this market challenge, but your sales force doesn't know about it
yet. You need a way to get that response out to them quickly, before any major
deals are lost. What do you do?
OK, that's a dramatic example. Not all of your communications to the field
are as urgent as this one, but there are many smaller ones that can, when added
together over time, be just as significant.
Examples:
- An important new product feature
- The company's latest financial results
- A home-office staff change
- A press release that your reps will see reproduced in the trade media
What's the best way to get this information to all of your salespeople --
across the country or around the world?
E-Mail
One of the easiest ways to send an instant announcement to your entire sales
force is via e-mail:
- Build a recipient list beforehand.
- Take a couple of minutes to compose your message.
- Hit "Send."
This approach is fast and simple, but it has a few limitations:
List maintenance
You need to maintain a current, complete e-mail list of everyone who might be
affected by this information. If you want it to go to just your sales reps
throughout the company, no problem. But what about people in other departments
who also need that information?
And if your company sells through independent distributors or reps, you
probably don't have e-mail addresses for every one of them. How will they get
the information?
Filing
If the message has information people need to retain for future reference -- a
revised staff list, a feature change or the new price list -- everyone who
receives the e-mail has to come up with their own system for:
- Locating and deleting the old version of this information, if any
- Filing the new information where they can easily find it
Opportunity for response
Mass e-mail is a one-directional medium. You can use it to send a message to
everyone, but it's not practical for someone in the field to add his own ideas
to your message. So if your message announces a price increase, and one of your
reps has a great idea on how to present the increase to customers, how will that
idea get to everyone else?
Timing
Mass e-mail messages go out once -- to people who are on your distribution list
at the moment you send the message. But what about people who are hired after
the message was sent? They weren't on the list, so they never saw your important
message. How do they get their file copy to refer to?
Web Site
To address the limitations of e-mail as a way to communicate permanent or
semi-permanent information, many companies post it on their intranet or extranet
sites. Site information is available for everyone to see, subject to password
control, and it eliminates the need for individuals to set up their own filing
system for information.
But site distribution of information has limitations of its own:
Speed
It takes time to create new Web pages and build links so people can find them.
So while Web pages are excellent for longer-term reference, they fall short when
the information has to go out immediately and is only needed for a short time.
Notification
Web pages are great for browsing information, but they don't announce themselves
to the field. If you put up a new section on the latest product, nobody knows
where to find it unless you also send out an e-mail or other communication
telling them it's there.
Opportunity for response
As with mass e-mail, the Web format works best as a single-direction broadcast
medium: You've got information, and a lot of other people need to read it. There
is no natural way for reps with additional information or ideas to share what
they know with others on the team.
Interactive Message Forums
Bridging the gap between mass e-mail and traditional Web pages is the
interactive message forum (or discussion group). A message forum is a
specialized Web site where the administrator (you or a member of your staff) can
post announcements as easily as you send an e-mail message, but with a few
differences:
- There is no need for you to maintain an e-mail list. Everyone having a
need for the information (and the password) can view the information as soon
as you send it.
- There are no Web pages to create and no links to build. So if an important
piece of information crosses your desk at 11:00, it can be posted online for
everyone to read by 11:15.
- Nobody has to delete the old information or file the new. You, as
administrator, have the ability to instantly delete old messages. And by
posting the new information under topic headings that you specify, you
instantly organize it for your staff members so they can refer to it.
- New hires have full access to the information, whether or not they were on
board when it was posted.
- Information having long-term value will probably be added to your present
Web site. You can initially post it on your interactive site for immediate
access, and then add it to the regular Web pages later.
What about notification?
As with a conventional Web site, reps don't automatically know that there is new
information on an interactive message site (although automatic notification can
be built into some interactive sites). But there are two simple ways to address
this:
- The simplest is to establish a regular pattern of postings: All major
announcements appear on a regular schedule, say Tuesday morning. Your reps
and other interested staff quickly learn to check in every Tuesday for the
latest news.
- For urgent, time-sensitive information, use broadcast e-mail to send
everyone a brief message: "New pricing effective this week. Go to the
interactive site for full details." And you include the URL of the
interactive site in the e-mail so the recipients can click directly to it.
What about true interactivity?
So far, I've talked about the broadcast-like aspects of interactive sites, but
the greatest strength of these sites is that they allow full interactivity among
users, subject to guidelines established by you.
Here are a few of the possibilities:
Let reps add to your information
When you post a message, anyone on your team can post a response. Let's say you
announce your price increase. And one of your senior reps has fresh information
on a competitor's price increase. She can add that information for everyone else
to see. Then someone else can do an item-by-item comparison and add that later.
Easily run a sales idea contest
This is a simple way to get everyone in the field totally involved in sales
improvement:
- On Monday morning, you post a sales challenge (example: how to increase
add-on sales to current customers). You describe your goals and ask everyone
on the team to post their best ideas for responding to this challenge. You
give them until the end of Wednesday to come up with their best responses.
- On Thursday, you ask everyone to vote on whose response was best. This
gets your staff to read all of the responses and think about how to apply
them in their own territories.
- On the following Monday, you announce the first-, second- and third-prize
winners, based upon the votes of their peers.
- Later, you copy your challenge question and the best answers to an area of
your Web site for long-term reference, and perhaps build it into your
new-hire sales-training program.
Train all of your reps at the same time
When one of your reps sends you a question -- a customer requirement, the price
on a particular configuration, current lead times on products or how to use the
new brochure -- your response usually goes only to the person who asked the
question. But other people on the team probably have the same question.
When a rep sends you a question you think is important to your whole sales
team, post the question and your response on the interactive site so everyone on
the team can read your answer. This often leads others to ask related questions
or add their own answers.
Conduct interactive sales meetings
Getting together with your entire team is increasingly difficult. But everyone
benefits when they can exchange ideas on how to sell more effectively.
To conduct an interactive sales meeting, take these steps:
- First establish a regular schedule, say every other Friday at 9:00 a.m.
Everyone knows the event will take place and that they are expected to
participate between 9:00 and 10:00.
- Before 9:00, post a discussion question, such as:
- The best ways to present the benefits of your new product
- How to respond to a change in the market
- How to answer a tough objection
- How reps have applied a technique they just learned in sales training
- What they'll say to prospects who respond to your new ad campaign
- During the hour between 9:00 and 10:00, everyone posts an answer to your
question, while reading the responses posted by others. At the end of the
hour, you sum up by recapping the best ideas submitted by the reps.
- Later, you or someone on your staff edits and organizes the best
information as a sales-training aid.
Facilitate direct rep-to-rep communication
This is one of the greatest benefits of an interactive site, giving reps the
ability to directly communicate with their peers. Without your involvement, they
can:
- Ask one another for help with tough selling situations.
- Share sales leads across territories.
- Throw out ideas for reaction from their peers.
- Build stronger team relationships.
Integrating The Three Tools
E-mail, Web pages and interactive sites are all powerful tools for sharing
information with your sales and marketing team, but they work best when they are
integrated as part of your total sales information system:
- E-mail is best for instant notification to a known list, when long-term
filing of information is not needed. The e-mail message has links to the Web
or interactive sites for more details.
- Web pages are the choice for long-term information that is organized for
easy browsing and printing of pages, with links to the interactive site for
the latest updates on specific topics.
- Interactive sites excel at peer-to-peer communication, providing more
complete communication than is possible with e-mail, plus medium-term
reference of information, with links to Web pages for permanent information.
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