The 5 Basic Sales Strategies – part 5 of 5 – Develop

The 5 Basic Sales Strategies – part 5 of 5 – Develop

This is the fifth and last part of my series discussing the five basic sales strategies. To remind you of the list, they are:

  1. Frontal
  2. Flanking
  3. Fragment
  4. Defend
  5. Develop

Every sales manager and salesperson should be familiar with these strategies. The sales team should understand which approach they should employ in various situations.

5. Develop

A develop strategy establishes a position for possible future engagements. It is used when you know that there is genuine potential in the account, but it is not ready to move forward at this time. In this case, it is vital to establish credibility with the prospect to take advantage of a future change of priorities.

I frequently talk on these pages as well as in my book, Eliminate Your Competition that you as a salesperson are selling three things:

  • your product,
  • your company,
  • yourself.

Being in develop mode means you have time to build the credibility of the latter two before the prospect realizes that they need the first one.

There are times when the prospect’s prioritization of pains versus goals do not allow the spending of money. This situation is where the develop strategy is used most often. While other sales philosophies will talk about identifying a prospect’s pain, that is simply not enough. There is a lot of pain in any given organization, but most people simply tolerate the pain. It is only when the organization has a goal of eliminating that pain that they will spend money. Identifying pain is simply not enough, you must create a goal to eliminate the pain.

Hunters despise this strategy. They will seldom use it. Their goal is not to have long, drawn-out sales campaigns. A prospect that is not ready to move forward simply slows down the Hunter.

Farmers and Gatherers relish this strategy. The difference between them and Trappers are the tools to develop a prospect into a customer. Typically, a Gatherer or a Farmer will wait for the customer to realize the pain needs to be solved.

A Trapper puts every account in his/her target list into the develop strategy. When a prospect starts to be interested in achieving a goal, the Trapper will evolve the approach to one of the other strategies.

This is the final post in my series of the five main sales strategies. I hope it made you think a little bit. I also hope it gave you some ideas to close that next deal.

If you don’t know what a Hunter, Gatherer, Farmer or Trapper is, you should read my book Eliminate Your Competition. You may purchase my book Eliminate Your Competition from your favorite book retailer. The ebook version is available at the most popular retailers such as Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. The paperback version is also widely available at such retailers as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books A Million.

Header Photo by geralt (Pixabay)

This post is the fifth in a series of posts covering the five basic sales strategies. I cover the five basic sales strategies in these posts:

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