When I was losing money at the poker table with some friends, an idea for teaching salespeople how to use all four communications came to mind. This playing card system will probably work for you and increase your sales!

A balanced sales plan is essential as the foundation in any business growth program. This article describes how my poker system for strategic sales works. The system is very simple and is easy to follow. All you need is a deck of cards and marking pen. You will use the marking pens to identify the strategic focus of your contact on the deck of cards. This system gives you the ability to change and vary the focus of communications throughout the year. This becomes extremely valuable when a business sells a suite of products or services.

How to Set-up the System You start with a deck of cards. Each deck has 52 cards and four different suits (hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades). Fortunately, the deck of cards matches the 52 weeks in a year and each suit represents the four different ways we can communicate with customers. Yes, there are only four different ways we can communicate with a customer.

1. We use Clubs to represent our personal contacts when we meet a prospect or customer face to face.

2. We use Diamonds to represent telephone contacts when we call a prospect or customer using the phone system.

3. We use Hearts to represent notes and letters when we communicate with a prospect or customer using written communications.

4. We use Spades to represent email and text messages when we communicate with a prospect or customer using a computer to communicate.

Defining the Ranking of Your Services or Products Now take the 13 cards for each suit and decide what they will represent. For example, you must determine what 13 services or products you want to promote and rank them highest to lowest. The highest services or products become the high cards such as ace, king, queen and so forth. The numbered cards will be used to indicate their rank, so the 2 cards are the lowest ranking service you want to promote. You can use the profitability of each service or product to help you decide where and how to rank your 13 options. Now that you have these ranked, you use the pen to mark the cards with these services or products.

Once all the cards are marked, you can shuffle the cards and use them to balance your communications and main focus for each contact. An example might be that you draw the 10 of diamonds. This means that you will telephone your prospect or customer and focus on the service that 10 represent. If you drew the 5 of spades, you should email the prospect or customer with a focus on what the 5 represents.

The Key Benefits The key benefit of this strategic sales plan is when the salesperson learns to mix up and use various communications for selling. This has a dramatic impact on spreading out the different methods of communications. When a salesperson limits their use of the four contacts, the salesperson gets stale and boring. The results of this show up when prospects and customers get tired of salespeople always calling them. When salespeople mix and balance their communications, contacts generate a quicker and stronger impact, selling faster.