Best Practice # 42: Has a systematic approach to collecting, processing, storing and accessing information about their products and services.

By Dave Kahle

Sometimes I am almost embarrassed to have to actually spend time describing some of these best practices. There are some that seem so blatantly obvious, so basic, that there can’t possibly be salespeople who don’t do them.

Alas, no matter how basic and fundamental a best practice may sound, there are good numbers of salespeople who just don’t implement that practice well. They may agree on the concept, and give lip service to the idea, but they just don’t find themselves practicing that procedure with any discipline.

That’s why the best practices are called best practices. You have to do them. It’s one thing to acknowledge their value and expediency; it’s quite another to routinely execute them with excellence.

This one falls into that category. Could there possibly be a salesperson who doesn’t have all the literature for every product or service he sells — the specifications, the efficacy studies, the price and packaging – organized so he can easily find it and retrieve it?

More than you would think.

As a result, they look unprepared and unorganized in front of the customer, waste time looking for things they should have, and miss opportunities due to a lack of readily available information.

The best salespeople understand the need to be organized, and specifically to have their product and service information and literature readily available. They understand that this means both hard copy and electronic files, organized in some logical and coherent fashion, kept up to date, and readily assessable whenever they need it. That typically takes the form of a file box in their car for the hard copy literature, and a set of files on their laptop for the electronic.

That way, they can easily and quickly produce the information that their customers require. They save the customer time, appear professional and organized, and turn opportunities into dollars.

That’s why they are the best, and this is a practice of the best.

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