SSB 1/15/23: Cycle selling tips from 1985

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Master Salesmanship 1985, Cycle Selling (question and answer session)

It really bugs me when a good customer buys a product from a competitor that I could’ve furnished and the customer insists he or she didn’t know I carried it. How can I prevent that?

I assume you have a fairly large and diverse line of products. Your problem is obviously that the customer never knew or forgot that you had the product. The solution will be some plan make sure this doesn’t happen. One plan used by sales people with a large line is called cycle selling. It’s obviously impossible for any sales person to give up all the products in the line equal time and complete exposure to the customer on every call. Even if time is permitted to customer wouldn’t stand for it. But it’s important that every customer be made aware of all of your products or services eventually and repeatedly. There are different versions of cycle selling but here’s how this technique usually works on a call or contact.  Stress the more popular lines plus one or two of the secondary list of products. On the next call cover the same popular items to ensure maximum sales plus one or two different secondary products. The strategy is to make sure that after a given number of calls, a customer will have been exposed to your full line.

 

Ok that’s 1985 and customers were used to a salesperson calling on them and spending almost as long as they wanted to be pitched. Obviously, things are very different now, but we can learn from the example of cycle selling. Today you can do it with email marketing or maybe try a shorter version with face-to-face calls.

We will keep these selling tips from the past coming in future SSB’s

Jancast #139 is now up-

We were pleased to have a special guest for this episode, Broadcast and social media star Dr. Gavin McGregor-Skinner, of ISSA’s GBAC – Dr. Gavin McGregor-Skinner is a highly respected subject matter expert on infectious disease control, as well as your fascinating history as a doctor fighting Ebola.Gavin tells us about his work with Howie Mandel and the “Rethink Clean” program, and we hear that Gavin is NOT recognized as a social media star at airports or on the street.

     

Scott Jarden

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