Animal Health Salesmanship

Studying The Coral Values
N.B. Synopsis of ProSell© Vet- Animal Health focused selling skills program- Copyrights Eyad Harfoush- 2006

In a life-science based market, animal health being one, the value of a unique salesman increases to be the cornerstone of having a powerful promotional mix that is practical as well as efficient. Hereunder, we shall elaborate the assets a salesman needs to be of maximal value to our business.

Salesman Assets
We have three categories of assets. These are:

1. Knowledge: Which is an acquired value, including problem knowledge, product knowledge, competition and market knowledge in addition to basic general knowledge.
2. Skills: Acquired competencies, developed through day to day business, training courses as well as self-development plans
3. Attitude: Developable personal traits. Usually formed in early years of life. Yet able for development and positive enhancements at any stage of life.

Types of Knowledge Needed

1. Morbidity Technical Knowledge: essential to enable salesman finding right prospects, understand their needs and subsequently convince them by tackling their most urging needs.
2. Category Knowledge: Assume you promote COCCIVAC®-B that is a coccidiosis vaccine for broilers, You will need to study not only your direct live-vaccine competitors, but the other coccidiosis control solutions (e.g. chemicals and ionophore compounds) as well as therapeutics in the area of coccidiosis. (Coccivac-B is a registered brand name for Schering Plough Animal Health. This claim is an example that is unnecessarily related to SPAH promotional claims)
3. Product Knowledge: we can never sell what we do not know. The salesman should always rehearse his products’ knowledge to insure having fresh information in mind. Remember, the more you know the more areas of interest to your customer you will find. Important aspects of product knowledge include:
   •Features & benefits.
   •Cost efficiency
   •Usage, dosage & applications
   •Undesired effects & precautions
   •Labeling & inserts meticulous knowledge
   •Related literature including papers, trials, researches …etc.
4. Direct & indirect Competition Knowledge: while studying your product knowledge, make sure to exercise gathering the correspondent points in each of your major competitors. This knowledge will enable you to hold a successful comparison whenever necessary. Remember, in a sales call, the “two column technique” is a priceless tool to shift customer preference to your product.
5. General Knowledge: the more knowledge you have in every vital subject, the more eligible you will be to build a strong rapport with your customer. Nothing gets people close to each other more than sharing an interest. However, as cosmopolitan knowledge is more likely to be a trait, remember at least to be acquainted with the serious events going around in life, it will not favor your acceptance if your customer talked about the earthquake happened this morning and you responded as a man who is detached from the present time. You can get this level of common knowledge by adopting the habit of reading daily press, following radio or T.V. or Internet current events.

Knowledge is Highly Accessible in Era of Communication.But … Always Remember

Skills of a Salesman

I- Need to Know Skills

1. Selling skills: it is the set of basic skills helping the professional salesman to perform, starting from finding his customer, preparing for the visit, opening techniques as well as other parts of the sales call down to closing, and post-call analysis. Selling skills gives the framework each salesman can express himself within, avoid traditional mistakes and benefit from years of sales experience others had in a condensed course.
2. Negotiation skills : Negotiation is to confer (with another) with a view to agreement. Usually negotiation skills is required to crown a successful sales call after convincing customer with a product, role of negotiation here is to close the deal and agree on terms.
3. Networking skills: closely related to key account management, networking skills is essential enabling salesman to create a backbone network of defenders in the target account. This process is a never-ending process, as the broad goal of a salesman is to get everyone inside this cycle or network.
4. Territory management: maximizing return on the invested time and resources necessitates acquiring territory management skills, enabling salesman to provide maximal coverage with the least time and resources through meticulous pre-planning.
5. Presentation skills: unlike the sales call, in a group presentation you need to maintain a link with a number of audiences with different learning styles and attitudes. Here is the role of presentation skills to offer a set of advises to maintain a vital link and overcome problematic traits in yourself. Presentation skills equips the salesman with techniques to maximally use voice, physical presence and body language to keep alert interested audiences
6. Time management: Time Management is more than just managing our time; it is managing ourselves in relation to time. It means changing those habits or activities that cause us to waste time. experimenting different methods and ideas to enable a salesman making maximum use of his time.

II- Better to Know Skills

1. Interpersonal skills: refers to mental and communicative algorithms applied during social communications and interactions in order to reach certain effects or results. The term "interpersonal skills" is used often in business contexts to refer to the measure of a person's ability to operate within business organizations through social communication and interactions.
2. Business Writing: Writing for business should be to-the-point, specific and accurate. In most cases, the business letter will be the first impression that you make on someone. For this reason it is important to be diligent in your task of writing an effective business document. Even though business writing is possibly less formal than it once was, your writing must still adhere to the conventions of standard language by using conventional spelling and standard grammatical forms.

Copyrights© 2006. Eyad Harfoush