Appco Group India: Face-to-face pitching as a traditional selling tool

If you are in the selling business, winning new customers often requires face-to-face meetings as a very traditional yet winning approach. Many experts in our industry have regarded direct selling approach to provide an edge over the other approaches owing to the advantages and liberty it provides. Globally, face-to-face pitching has been looked on as a traditionally accepted approach which has gone down well in the industry standards and is still regarded as one of the top selling tools.

In practical situations, the seller who meets the prospect face to face has a better advantage over his or her competitors. The other modes of selling/pushing the product or service like advertising, print mediums, events have also proved beneficial because it increases awareness in the minds of the prospects; however the mass impact and accessibility that a direct selling approach provides is untouched. Moreover, face to face meeting is a much persuasive approach where you can gauge the reactions better and look into handling the objections directly. On the contrary, customers and prospects find it easy to ignore emails and calls and that makes selling tougher.

Another aspect in direct selling is managing the time. Proper time management can lead to more time with the customer and less time for the non-sales activities. This can boost your face-to-face interaction with the prospects and give you a higher chance of selling the product/service. There are traditionally some golden rules through which you can enrich your direct selling experience. The prospect is your potential customer so it is extremely important to ask and listen to the responses. This helps in better understanding and improves the interaction. Another significant instance is to resist the urge of selling the product/service immediately before knowing the need of the customer. Let the customer speak so that you address his needs for the product and tailor your pitch to suit his precise needs.

Many such loopholes are addressed with the help of direct selling methods, thereby proving it to be a traditional yet powerful approach.

Appco Group India: The Power to Sell

Most organizations in the selling business have regarded selling as a powerful factor for their businesses. Recent researches show that companies which regard selling as an important function for their organization have strived to develop their sales teams and empower them with the technological advances to improve their businesses.

Selling is regarded as the marriage of science and art. The Science, here is everything starting from your analysis, metrics, tools, predictability, calculations and forecasts that have been formed to apply to the everyday goals which a sales professional sets for himself and takes it head on daily. These goals are however incomplete only with the scientific tools which needs the Art to apply. This generally includes the art or technique for selling which comprises of the interpersonal skills through which the sales people can form relationships and nurture them.

The Power to sell depends upon the Science and the Art of selling. Any good sales person will have the attributes like friendliness, persuasive, ambitious, hardworking which help a great deal in acquiring customers. But sustainability in the selling business comes from adhering to the science of selling. It is important to have the skills to sell but it is also important to have the right approach and technique to sell. And that’s the difference between an average and an outstanding sales performance. A significant factor to boost your results is to forecast and measure the sales activities such as your visits, the outcome, complaints etc. Having established the metrics, one needs to have a goal to achieve them constantly.

This forms the foundation for a sales person’s performance as they focus and cater to the important activities which drive sales. The power to sell is thereby a debatable topic where he more the suggestions , the better the results.

Appco Group India: Maintaining High Performance Standards

Appco Group India’s monthly statistical report focused on measuring the performance standards of the leaders in our business reveals that time and again, the high rollers in all our teams have shown exceptional performance standards. Our leaders have developed themselves with a lot of integrity, hard work, curiosity and intelligence. However, to sustain in the business, there is a long way to go with maintaining the high level standards they have set for themselves and their teams.

The whole point of running our business is to focus the energies, attention and vision to a common goal and infuse the same objective and passion into the team with an aim to set the performance standards and work towards achieving and maintaining it with time. A good thing about our business is that it will immediately make the high performing teams a standard organization with an individual status growing up on the records. The challenge here is to sustain the standards set by the teams with a vision to outdo your own records. The industry mantra is if you have high standards, you got to make it much higher. And that’s the idea behind adopting various leadership programs and workshops to develop our high rollers constantly and empower them to be courageous enough to set and maintain their standards in the business.

Of course, for challenging stuff like this, there are going to be loopholes and failures in the system. If the goal of the business, for instance, is to create a wonderful product/service or provide excellent customer service or conceptualize innovative marketing campaigns- the leader is going to have to establish and maintain structured standards for him and the team. And accept the matter of fact that there are going to be lags in the plan which has to be addressed with solutions. It is here where his individual qualities of leadership will shine and pave the path.

An ideal leader, whose goal is to maintain the high standards of his business, has to be well equipped with essential skills where he can share his ideology with his teams and build the trust value. The factors that can help him sustain the business with high standards include being able to communicate the successes and failures with equal emphasis, evaluate the quality of work done constantly, actively seek opportunities to involve the team in the decision making process, trust and empower the employees with responsibilities and address them with timely support. These traits go a long way in addressing the problems and ensuring a smooth business structure.

In a competitive environment, they can be regarded as the pre requisite for sustaining the business with high standards and out doing your own mettle to constantly improve and grow.

‘Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one’s level of aspirations, expectations and standards’

Appco Group India: Direct Relationship Building is the key to Effective Sales

The road map to effective sales has its foundation from direct relationship building and it thrives on the outcomes of effective relationship management. In the recent times, the focus of our sales operations has been laid on the importance of building and developing relationships with our prospects for getting an upper hand over the traditional sales tools.

In today’s industry, the sales methodology have been re-engineered to emphasize the benefits and the outcome of relationship development with the prospects as a way to build trust value and associate it with the product/service. The idea behind successful sales pitch is to think of you as a customer and analyze what points of interest can be generated in the mind of the prospects to push them to buy the product/service. This essentially requires a great amount of trust and confidence building which can go a long way in managing and acquiring clients across any industry. With the various products and services that we are associated with, our aim has been to nurture relationships with our customers and to build the brand value with trust.

Building relationships has been an integral part of our sales strategy wherein our sales people have gone an extra mile when dealing with the customers to ensure an effective trust building environment. This strategy, in turn has rewarded our business and a new turn to sales approach has been generated and tested among all our divisions. Another significant highlight of our approach is the customer service and support we provide as a part of our sales exercise so as to strengthen the existing relationship of our accounts. Our training model has stressed on the value of interaction, networking, and etiquettes to develop our sales people constantly for improvising on maintaining contacts with people and develop a sustaining relationship.

In the long run, the sales & marketing strategy will rely mostly on effective relationship management and the bigger the response of it, the bigger the sales numbers are likely to be generated.

Team Building at Appco

Appco Group India held its Annual Owners & Crew Leader’s Workshop in October 2013, aiming to bring in the renowned leaders of our company together on one platform with all the Owners & crew leaders from all divisions. The outcome generated was an intense knowledge sharing session. There were a host of esteemed speakers for the workshop with Mr. Chris Niarchos, Founder & Chairman, Cobra Group; attending and honoring the event with his impeccable speech. Other speakers for the event included Mr. Tony Fernandes, Vice President, Appco Group India & Country Head Japan; Mr. Taras Koochin, Vice President, Appco Group & Country Head Japan; Mr. Bertrand Lesbros, Owner, Australia; Mr. Kim Yong, Owner, Korea; Mr. Mike Blane, MD, Appco Group & Sai Prakash Kuckian, Vice President, Appco Group.

The event had many topics rolling out and the speakers sharing their experiences and expertise on the same. What was most notable from the entire convention was the emphasis on Team building & leadership. Appco India, as marketing and sales based company, has developed an intact team building environment for its sales people at all levels in the hierarchy. Belonging to a team, in the broadest sense, has a lot to do with the understanding of the mission and objective of our organization.

We aim to differentiate the overall sense of team building by developing an effective intact team that is formed to accomplish a specific goal. Our goal is become the one stop direct marketing partners for our clients and their products. The leaders & Owners in our business exude a sense of responsibility and the right attitude to expand and develop their guys on the ladder of success. We believe in not just individual development, rather we look out at the team’s performance collectively. Our Owners regularly adopt various methods on a daily basis to manage the sales people in the pipeline and impart the confidence and trust in developing them. We have had notable success in the process that we adopt to train our team.  At Appco, we continuously try to have the most connected and cohesive sales force in the industry that constantly performs and lives up to the expectations.

We understand and believe that real world team building skills continue and grow with time, efforts and trust and once adopted systematically across all levels of the sales hierarchy, it will certainly lead the team to win.

Appco Group India: Dynamic Sales Tactics

Being a sales based company, our business demands proactive development and spontaneous learning skills. The general personal challenges faced by the sales professional all over India include poor preparation, weak networking skills, and incomplete awareness about the product/service to name a few.

While the sales person is on the run continuously, he/she may get less time and opportunity to learn and develop their individual tactics. In addition to this, now-a-days, companies have been adopting newer technology approach to selling which further more increases the pressure on the sales force. However, we have adopted various specialized training modules for our sales people across all divisions to address and eliminate the issues pertaining to our workforce.

The need of the hour is to be proactive and take lessons from the situations faced on a daily basis. Taking a quick summary while on the way to the meeting, preparing a to-do/priority list for the day, being confident while addressing the issues/queries from the client, taking feedback for the services, maintaining written account for the day to day activities are few of the tips that the sales professional need to adopt while on the run. Selling is a skill and it needs to be constantly developed with the smaller experiences in different situations.

Overall, the sales person needs to look at his own performance matrix and selling skills to monitor where the gap in their performance is. Self improvement skills needs to be adopted and lessons taken on the run would result in continuous improvement.  A spontaneous and quick approach would ensure that the mistakes done earlier are analyzed and looked upon.

Hence while on the run, the sales person should be literally on the run.

‘If you can sell the product to yourself, you can sell it others’

Appco Marketing India- Racing Ahead!

Appco Marketing India continues to achieve great success across the country in all its divisions. The year 2011 brought huge growth for the company especially in the month of October. It was a record breaking month for Appco Group India with over 60,000 sales completed and growth of 29.10% in just a month's span.

Every Division contributed to the large sales average, with the Charity and Entertainment Divisions standing out in particular. Meanwhile, Pune and Nagpur were integral to the success of the Telco Division. The consistent growth of the two locations has helped to boost sales of Airtel in particular.

A significant highlight was the progress of the new office in Baroda City. Its team of eleven guys showed exceptional progress. Another new addition followed in the same vein in an effort to keep up with its peers. The Insurance Division, although new, witnessed phenomenal growth at 64.03%. There is currently a tide of emerging leaders sweeping through the country. Seven Assistant Managers are gearing up for their promotions. These include three in Charity, three in Reliance Big TV and one in Telco.

Appco Group India has shown that it takes more than just a well-known brand to succeed. In particular, they have displayed the self-determination and consistency that leads to growth and high-quality sales.