SALES TOOLS

 

What are  sales tools? They are tools made available to the sales team and the coating advisers to show and demonstrate the company’s capabilities,  product performance, technical capabilities, service level and inspection resources.

Below a list of the sales tools that we think are necessary to visualize to the customers all these points. The list is related to corrosion protection of bridges in general but applies to all the market segments that JGC can handle. It is most important to train the sales team and the coating advisers in using the tools. The training courses are dealt with under the menu point training.

  1. A market segment brochure in English and in the local language. It can be 4, 8 or 16 pages, describing the company, the market strength,products,  products references, case stories and on-site service organisation. The company’s R & D should also be touched upon to demonstrate that the company are striving to bring new technology to the market.
  2. A customer presentation, that presents the company and  a selection of the tools available. This is normally a power point presentation, that can be customized for for the audience in question.
  3. A manual. The manual is a collection of all the material available to the sales team and the coating advisers for each market segment. Such a manual will typically consist of 500 – 1000 pages of material. It can be made available from the internet or on CD’s. The manual is an interactive pdf file which contains all material relevant to the market segment. For more details about the manuals and an example of the content press here.
  4. A thorough discussion of the technical parts in the customers industry. This is meant to give the sales persons a small textbook ,which will enable them to speak the customers language and appreciate the challenges that the customers are facing. Below are shown a few examples of pages from such documents.

3. Reference lists that contains all the projects which has been carried out. Such lists can be customized  according to period, country, structure types or owner. One such example is shown below:

4. Product assortment list. This is important so that both the customers and the sales team know which products are available. Such product assortment lists should be worked out for each market segment.

 

5. Case stories. Further to the reference lists mentioned above it is important to have available case stories with details about each individual project. The objective with reference lists and case stories are to show customers that the company can handle projects with success and it gives confidence to see that the company has a number of successful projects. An example is shown below:

 

6. Product information sheets and specification sheets. These are meant to give flavor and more detailed information about products and specifications. These should be worked out for all products belonging to the market segment in question. The Product information sheets contains; product description, recommended use, features, applicator value and customer value and on page 2, all test results and a typical specification should be shown.The specification sheets give details about the recommended specifications for all areas belonging to the market segment.

Below are shown an example of a product information sheet:

 

7. Frequently asked questions (FAQ). This is meant to give the sales team and the coating advisers in the field a tool with typical questions asked by customers, contractors and internal. This tool must be updated all the time so that everybody are prepared and able to answer questions in a professional fashion. An example is shown below:

 

8. Training.  As mentioned above it is not sufficient to develop all the mentioned sales tools. Much more important is to train the sales team and the coating advisers to use the tools. The training is done during interactive workshops, where the participants works with real world problems, develop a presentation to a customer and follow it up. For details about such training sessions press here.