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EP Huddle #50  Engaged Prospect is often asked two questions regarding contact lists and leads. 1) People mistake our work as an inside sales outsourcing company as simply giving our clients a list of contacts that they can call and try to sell to. That's not what we do. Learn More. 2) We're also asked, "how do you get your contact database to prospect for new business for your clients (or for yourselves)?" Here's how.
Building a contact list and finding the right targets is one of the most important things a company can do for its salespeople. Many companies require the sales team builds a list themselves. While this is sometimes the only way to generate new contacts, this activity is also a time commitment that takes salespeople away from having conversations and selling. Here are six tips for generating contact lists to help drive conversations and new business.
As a team: Discuss with your marketing and IT teams how you can better develop contact lists for your sales team. Talk with your sales team about their own contact generation. Ask them how much time they're spending "harvesting" leads from online websites. If the answer is more than 10% of their time, you need to implement the above six steps. Too much time away from actual selling is costing your company a lot of money.
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 EP Huddle #43
We hear it all the time. Inside sales doesn't work in a relationship business. "We're a handshake and a hug kind of selling organization". Some companies don't emphasize prospecting for new business, because their client base is built on relationships. In most cases, however, this is incorrect. Even relationship driven sales need prospecting, and there's no better way to prospect than to utilize an inside sales department to help drive qualified opportunities and set the stage for a solid relationship with a customer. Think about it this way. Relationship sales are valuable, and many profitable businesses have been created on solid relationships. But those relationships had to have started somewhere. Was contact first made at a tradeshow? Was a networking event responsible for the introduction? Did the customer (now friend) first hear of your company on a radio commercial or via your website via Google? Regardless of where the relationship is now, it started somewhere as a cold or lukewarm introduction. Prospecting has a place for helping to build relationships. Prospecting calls and emails can lead to a conversation. During the conversation, a relationship begins to form. Prospecting also has a place for helping to weed out potential customers who aren't a good fit. Some of the most important data an email marketing campaign can provide is the list of people who've unsubscribed from your campaigns. They don't want to build a relationship, and that's fine. You'll get the same information from people who tell you on the phone they aren't interested. The data the salesperson permission not to spend time trying to build a relationship with that prospect, and can instead focus on prospects who might be open to new ideas and forming new relationships. As a team: Write down a list of 10 or 20 of your most profitable customers. Where did they come from? You will likely have a mixture of sources such as referrals, tradeshows, cold calls, etc. Figure out what that mix is. I bet you have a good number of clients who did not come from direct "hug and handshake" sources at first. They became that over time. Write down a second list too. Write down the top 10-20 relationships in your book of business. Complete the same exercise and figure out how those relationships started. There was a time before you were invited to his daughter's wedding that you didn't really know him. How did it all start? I bet you'll see many of them came from the activity of simply prospecting to find new business. EP Huddle #39
Using collateral throughout the sales process is a great way to help drive new opportunities into the pipeline, convert opportunities into sales, and engage new customers to ensure maximum usage and engagement. Here are a few key ideas for utilizing collateral effectively to drive revenue. Prospecting:
Opportunity Conversion:
Account On-boarding:
As a team: Take inventory of what you already do. What is missing? What information can you create to further assist prospects, qualified opportunities and new customers? Who in your organization can create these documents or videos? If you need to outsource some of this to a designer or a marketing firm, have you vetted these companies yet? If not, plan to get a few different quotes and scope of work proposals to ensure you're choosing the right partner who can help you with all of your collateral needs. |
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© Engaged Prospect, LLC. All Rights Reserved
© Engaged Prospect, LLC. All Rights Reserved