My Playing Card System
This is Sample Lesson #5 of our 30 Day FREE Lesson Plan
This lesson is on using playing cards to teach sales strategy. When I was
losing money at the poker table with some friends, an idea for teaching
salespeople how to use all four communications came to mind. This playing card
system will probably work for you and increase your sales!
A balanced sales plan is essential as the foundation in any business growth
program. This article describes how my poker system for strategic sales works.
The system is very simple and is easy to follow. All you need is a deck of cards
and marking pen. You will use the marking pens to identify the strategic focus
of your contact on the deck of cards. This system gives you the ability to
change and vary the focus of communications throughout the year. This becomes
extremely valuable when a business sells a suite of products or services.
How
to Set-up the System
You start with a deck of cards. Each deck has 52 cards and four different suits
(hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades). Fortunately, the deck of cards matches the
52 weeks in a year and each suit represents the four different ways we can
communicate with customers. Yes, there are only four different ways we can
communicate with a customer.
We use Clubs to represent our personal contacts when we meet a prospect
or customer face to face.
We use Diamonds to represent telephone contacts when we call a prospect
or customer using the phone system.
We use Hearts to represent notes and letters when we communicate with a
prospect or customer using written communications.
We use Spades to represent email and text messages when we communicate
with a prospect or customer using a computer to communicate.
Ranking of Your Suite of Services or Products
Now take the 13 cards for each suit and decide what they will represent. For
example, you must determine what 13 Selling Magic services or products you want
to promote and rank them highest to lowest. The highest services or products
become the high cards such as ace, king, queen and so forth. The numbered cards
will be used to indicate their rank, so the 2 cards are the lowest ranking
service you want to promote. You can use the profitability of each service or
product to help you decide where and how to rank your 13 options. Now that you
have these ranked, you use the pen to mark the cards with these services or
products.
Once all the cards are marked, you can shuffle the cards and use them to manage
your Selling Magic communications and main focus for each contact. An example
might be that you draw the 10 of diamonds. This means that you will telephone
your prospect or customer and focus on the service that 10 represent. lets say
that you decide the 10's are for your Posters and Banner services.
If you
drew the 5 of spades, you should email the prospect or customer with a focus on
what the 5 represents. The five's might be for Life Insurance if you were in the
Insurance business.
I hope these examples help you in your industry because it doesn't matter what your top 13 services are. You simply mark your cards, shuffle and you have a balanced communication system.
If you were using our Selling Magic system you could incorporate this same
concept into our selling system. The difference is that it would be automatic
and you would be following the best practices more easily.
The Key Benefits
The key benefit of this strategic sales plan is when the salesperson
learns to mix up and use various communications for selling. This has a dramatic
impact on balancing the different methods of communications. When a salesperson
limits their use of the four contacts, the salesperson gets stale and boring.
The results of this show up when prospects and customers get tired of
salespeople always calling them. When salespeople mix and balance their
communications, contacts generate a quicker and stronger impact, selling faster.
Steve
Martinez
PS. If you would like to advance your sales lessons with a private lesson on how our selling systems will impact your business, Please contact us.
(951) 277-0080
