Many sales teams find themselves stuck between their daily duties and the lack of results they expected to reach. On one hand, they have big goals, on the other they face chaos reaching out to so many potential customers but only winning a few deals. The way to get this madness a little bit more organized is the difference between prospecting and selling, which are far too often not understood by salespeople.
PROSPECTING: ASK WHO? AND WHAT?
When you target your campaign or even direct communications at a certain group of people, companies or channels you probably ask yourself a question, whom shall I contact first. In a competitive world where several companies are usually struggling to win the same piece of the market, you need to be very specific when choosing the right target. So – the question is who to contact first.
If you sell tyres for new cars, you can limit your potential targets to car dealers from the areas that you can easily get supplies too. You can skip supermarkets, pet shops and swimming pool manufactures. Sounds obvious? Well, not for all. You would be surprised how many sales teams just go out shouting into the darkness, hoping that someone will answer. Studying the market could be a wise first move though.
OK, so once you know who your potential targets could be (not, who IS your potential target, as life is not that easy), you need to do some research to find out if the people you are looking at, really have a need that you can fulfill. So you ask them: WHAT is your main challenge? This is what the marketing component of your team is responsible for. All promotional actions can be simplified into two basic areas of operating:
- Trying to find out the exact needs of potential buyers,
- Trying to highlight the needs of potential customers e.g. if you’re selling kitten mittens, you may just pack a whole area with posters showing a sad little cat and in BIG ASS letters show your message: Winter is coming! Is your kitty as warm as it deserves? KITTEN MITTENS the answer for all your cat issues.
Once the actions within these two fields lead to identifying the so-called hot-leads, your experience salespeople can take over.
SELLING: STOP ASKING, OFFER SOLUTION
The selling process starts with delivering the proper offer to identified leads. It consists of a proper summarization of the current status of the potential client (let’s come back to the tyre vendor – ‘So, your brand new cars look great but they are missing tyres good enough to provide the proper performance for these powerfull engines of yours’), So suggest a solution to improve the situation (yeap, it is your offer), and backing it up with story-telling, as nothing proves your point better than a couple of customer success stories. Last but not least, agree on the next step.
If you want to sell successfully, you do not only need to come up with the right product at the right time for the right company, you also need to engage them to be active in the communication. A call to action can help here, so do not be afraid to ask: ‘OK, John, so let’s agree that you will discuss our offer with your CEO and we will follow up with a call next week. Does it sound like a plan for you?’.
You also need to track your actions and analyse your conversion rate. How many targets you can turn into leads? (what’s the %)? How many of the identified hot leads can be turned into deals won? Only these types of questions will allow you to understand properly if the measures taken make sense and if the ROI is met.
If you want to get in touch to find out more, just contact our Customer Success Team at cst@statscore.com or use the LiveChat service on our website. We will be more than happy to schedule a call and discuss how STATSCORE’s services can help your organization!
