Create a product push strategy from product position to training
When selling in a crowded market, your sales strategy is the foundation on which your success will be built. However, when developing a strategy to answer the question of how to penetrate the market with a new product, a company must also consider product positioning and publicity. These strategies can help you improve your sales in competitive markets.
Engage Your Sales Team
Your salespeople are integral to the process of positioning your product and marketing it. They know your target customer, and have built meaningful client relationships. Encourage your salespeople to also know and understand the competition, how they position their products, and the strategies they are using. This information becomes invaluable when positioning a new product.
Comprehensive Sales Team Training
Launching a new product can be a nerve-wracking endeavour. To empower your sales team, provide thorough product demonstrations to ensure they fully grasp its features and benefits. This knowledge equips them to confidently offer solutions to customer needs.
Encourage Self-Directed Learning
In addition to formal training, foster an environment where your sales team takes ownership of their learning. Encourage them to assess product pitches, analyze what works and what doesn’t, and collaborate to develop a sales strategy that effectively communicates the new product’s value to customers.
Promote Knowledge Sharing
Facilitate an environment where sales team members openly share their experiences, both successes and failures, in selling the new product. Provide platforms for knowledge exchange among salespeople, fostering continuous learning.
Leverage Existing Customer Relationships
Utilize value propositions to re-engage existing customers who may have disengaged. If previous products lacked certain elements, the new product launch can present an ideal opportunity for upselling.
Effective Product Positioning
Leverage your sales team’s knowledge and expertise to craft a product positioning strategy that accomplishes three key goals:
- Differentiate your new product from competitors.
- Address customers’ buying needs.
- Highlight the new product’s key attributes.
Strategic Product Publicity
With a clear product positioning strategy, you’re ready to craft your marketing plan. Generate buzz through social media, email campaigns, traditional advertising, and trade fair promotions. Ensure that all marketing materials and messages:
- Convey a single, compelling message.
Resonate with your target customers.
Set your product apart from the competition.
Exude credibility and believability while offering practical solutions.
By involving your sales team early in strategy discussions, you gain invaluable customer profiling data that informs a focused and targeted marketing message. With effective positioning and publicity in place, you can confidently roll out your new product to the market. Harness your sales team’s strength and build upon established customer relationships, combining strong sales skills with emotional intelligence. Selling a new product becomes seamless when your sales team is trusted, and they offer early access to an exceptional product.
Product Push: Creating Sales Success
Now, as you gear up to penetrate the market, it’s time to unleash your product with confidence. Your well-crafted strategy and your sales team’s expertise ensure you’re not starting from square one. However, it’s time to revisit the basics. Here’s where the seven traits of a successful salesperson come into full play.
Selling a new product is most easily done by a salesperson who is liked and trusted, and when sold to those existing customers with whom the salesperson has developed a strong business relationship. When strong sales skills are combined with high emotional intelligence and back-to-basics techniques, the result is a cocktail of powerful selling ability that will ignite sales.
Sales managers must ensure that their sales teams understand the new product, how it is positioned in the market, and the key benefits it offers to new and existing customers. Therefore, it is incumbent on sales managers to provide adequate training in the lead-in to a new product launch, as, ultimately, it will be the sales team that drives success.
Still, there will be resistance to ‘trialling’ a new product. Salespeople who are adept at gaining trust, and connecting not only with needs and wants but also on a greater emotional level, will be able to position the sale as what it is: early-stage access to a great new product. By requesting the client’s valuable feedback, and listening to it before taking appropriate actions, your company will be best placed to evolve its product placement and publicity strategies to take full advantage of the real market potential.
Remember:
The better you are at understanding your market, and the closer your salespeople get to your customers, the better you will position your new product. And a well-positioned new product markets itself.