A surgical strike is a military attack which results in, was intended to result in, or is claimed to have resulted in only damage to the intended legitimate military target, and no or minimal collateral damage to surrounding structures, vehicles, buildings, or the general public infrastructure and utilities
Can you conduct surgical strikes in sales? I do know we are not at war with our customers however, if we are to pick a strategy from the military world lets use this as well. It’s about targeted attention to a specific area in the buying process that may be leading to an advantage for my competition. For example when my competition is “using the funds for something else” my surgical strike is to first isolate the engagement with the person who has the discretionary use of resources. It is to then understand what are his other priorities and what is my pitch to make him see the justification of investing in the opportunity that leads to my deal versus the other things he is looking at.
Recently working with a client we realized our competition is with a CRM intervention and if the client went ahead with the CRM we would have lost the opportunity to them using the budget for the CRM purchase. We had to then understand what the sales head was wanting to achieve by purchasing the CRM. In the engagement with him we realized that his top of the mind issue was productivity so we had to realign our intervention and keep the focus on improving conversion ratios and hence productivity and let him use this intervention as a precursor for the CRM purchase decision.
Sometimes in sales we get confusing signals from the various stakeholders during the decision making process and in such situations surgical strikes could help in isolating the specific area / person that maybe taking us away from winning the deal. It can also ensure the sales effort is targeted rather than selling to all and even to the decision makers who may already be in agreement with you. A smart sales professional should be able to gain information to isolate the areas that need sales effort and then perform surgical strikes to eliminate competition and win the deal.
So sell smart and strike with precision.
By
Priya Sachdev
businesssaltblog 