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Do You Have The Right Ammunition for a Sales Attack?
Kamayani Bharadwaj, The Business Workshop

The true nature of selling today is more aggressive and more competitive than ever before. Selling is a war, where the enemy is your competitor and the ground to be won is the customer. As in all military engagements, the need to keep oneself armed with relevant information, before going to the front, is the key to selling success. In short, selling today is knowing your product, outwitting the competition, overtaking the market and finally winning the customer! Let's examine this concept with the example of a popular product - ice creams. The market for ice-creams is extremely mature and flooded with a variety of brands. Some big players like Walls and Vadilal are locked in a fierce battle, churning up new flavours and campaigns. The competition is cut-throat! So how does a new (hypothetical) entrant like " Cool Dude" arm itself for it's sales offensive?

Nature Of The Market
First things first. Knowledge of the market is one of the primary ammunitions he will need in his arsenal. To begin with, here are some questions he needs to ask himself:

• Who buys ice-creams?
• How many buyers does he currently have?
• Where are those buyers located?
• Which ice creams do they eat?
• What are the geographical, climatic, cultural and demographical market trends for his product?

He will then use this information to determine pricing and product mix issues as well as plan locations (amusement parks, movie halls, educational institutes,etc.) for advertising and distributing the product.

Know Your Product
The next step would be to know his own product. He needs to know all the flavours and desserts his company is offering. Cool Dude's fresh fruit ice-creams are made with a revolutionary Soft Freeze Process, which enables the preservation of fruits inside the ice-cream-this product innovation will be his USP.

Know Your Enemy
Next, the Cool Dude salesman needs to arm himself with information relating to his enemies, i.e., his competitors (Walls and Vadilal). How are Walls and Vadilal promoting their ice-creams and at what price? Which segments are they strong in? What are their distribution strategies? What are the incentives that they are giving to the retailers to sell their product? In gathering this information, he can identify the gap into which he can fit his product.

Explore Alternative Channels
Since Walls are the undisputed champions in retail selling, concentrating on another segment (in addition to the conventional retail) would give Cool Dude ice-creams a sales edge. Our salesman, therefore, needs to target households for home delivery or bulk orders for parties and push new recipes and desserts to position his product in the home consumer segment.

Winning The War
Last but not the least, our clever salesman should never lose sight of his target, i.e., the customer. This requires an in-depth study of the customer from a behavioural, psychological, sociological and a cultural point of view. The salesman needs to find answers to questions like:

• What motivates a customer to buy ice-creams?
• Why does he choose a specific brand from a particular shop?
• Why does he shift his preferences from Walls to Vadilal?
• Do Walls and Vadilal have any special schemes like a dial-in to entice the buyer?

Based on this information, he can float specialised schemes like incentives and promotional campaigns to influence Cool Dude customers.

Selling is a war! A good company reputation and a steady flow of orders is enough to sustain a sales attack but it takes much more to gain competitive advantage and emerge the winner. Research your market. The more you know about your prospects and the programs that fit their needs, the better prepared you'll be for the onslaught.