Building Your Business: Adapting to the New Sales Paradigm
A Florida dealer overhauled its traditional business to begin selling IP-based products and interactive services for the residential market. Learn how the extensive project was carried out successfully.
Sales representatives at Vector Security (formerly Certified Security Systems) in Jacksonville, Fla., went through an extensive training course in preparation for the launch of the company’s interactive services offering.
Learning a New Language
We then invited the manufacturer to send its best trainers in to instruct our salespeople. If your company is about to undertake a similar process, be prepared: This portion of your journey could be the toughest. It certainly proved to be the hardest part for us, but also the most important.
We spent an entire day in training. Every salesperson was required to attend the daylong class. The first half of the training was dedicated to teaching them about features and benefits. After lunch each salesperson was given a live working demo kit on the products and asked to do a complete presentation on that product to their peers.
We even gave a written test to each sales consultant. The most challenging part of this training was getting them comfortable with some of the new terminology. It was very important to us that before any one of our salespeople left the training class that there were no unanswered questions. Our salespeople must be able to do a dazzling presentation. They had to know how to get the prospect excited about these new technologies and services.
For the next several days we spent time in our daily sales meetings reviewing the training and discussing the sales results from the previous day.
Fine-Tuning the Sale
The results were almost immediate. The very first day, after the training class, our sales team was selling new products that they had never sold before. We are now selling more additional products and services to existing customers, and have more to offer new customers. Our average recurring monthly revenue (RMR) rate has increased by several dollars. We have had a few sales consultants increase their monthly rate by almost 25% per sale.
One of our biggest fears was that some of our veteran sales consultants would not buy in to the new products. Not only did they embrace the new offerings, a few of them are leading the team in new product sales and interactive services. It is very exciting to see sales consultants who have been selling traditional alarm systems for more than 20 years now selling residential IP cameras and interactive services.
Because all of our initial preparation and training helped put us on a path to be successful, we have only had to make a few simple adjustments to our sales presentation. The fact-finding portion of our presentation had to be adjusted to make sure we were asking the right questions so we would know what products to offer.
We are now asking questions like, “Would it be important for you to keep an eye on your home or business when you are away?” and “Would you like to be able to arm and disarm your protection when you are away?” Here’s another important tidbit we learned right away: To properly demonstrate the new technology, we had to allow more time for each presentation. You can expect to have to do the same.
Our sales teams now go out on every sale with that NO FEAR attitude. They know that when they do a sales presentation they are going to win. They have more knowledge, more tools and are better prepared to make the sale than
the competition.
Russ Ackerman is District Sales Director for Vector Security (formerly Certified Security Systems) in Jacksonville, Fla. He can be contacted at [email protected].
If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our FREE digital newsletters!
Related Content
Security Is Our Business, Too
For professionals who recommend, buy and install all types of electronic security equipment, a free subscription to Commercial Integrator + Security Sales & Integration is like having a consultant on call. You’ll find an ideal balance of technology and business coverage, with installation tips and techniques for products and updates on how to add to your bottom line.
A FREE subscription to the top resource for security and integration industry will prove to be invaluable.
