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Six Greatest Ideas for Selling Big Ticket Items - Business to Business • 83

The team members had failed to understand that Pharmaceuticalswere no longer
a strategic business to the corporation. They could have known this, had they stud-
ied the published information or spoken to some senior managers at head office.
What they could not know was that the corporation was actively seeking a buyer for
the pharmaceutical subsidiary.

In any case this was a very difficult campaign to qualify, as the team would have
had to understand the strategic aims of the account and then acted on it by drop-
ping the campaign or slimming down their effort to a holding position. Probably
under pressure from the Singapore company itself to make an offer, the decision to
drop out of the sale becomes even harder.

They continued to put the effort in, took the client to meet satisfied customers,
made a proposal and laid on a professional and expensive presentation.

The bombshell dropped with the announcement that the corporation was in-
volved in friendly talks with a possible buyer and all activities except the day-to-day
continuation of trading were halted.

Is the campaign worth the necessary effort from the selling company"?
This is the crunch. From the team's understanding of the customer's position and
attitude to going forward with the project, it has to make a go or no-go decision. Not
only that, but it has to revisit that decision on a regular basis as the customer's
stance develops and changes.

In summary, identifying a real need for the customer to act on strategically is
the strongest basis for a sales campaign, and the absence of that is the weakest.

Finance

Is the money available in a budget?
Depending on the level of the customer you are dealing with, you need to find out