Peady’s Selling Engagement sponsored by IRD Prospector

Welcome to this week’s post on sales and selling success.

Don’t you love my headline? “Go Where Your Customers Are” – talk about stating the obvious! But think about it for a moment, shouldn’t any intelligent sales person focus their efforts where they’ll most likely get a reward?

First things first

As a sales person, your first goal after properly qualifying a prospective customer is to build an integrity based relationship over time that might lead to closing a business opportunity.

But the question is where do you find these potential customers or clients?

The sources are broad:

• Social media, particularly LinkedIn
• Networking events
• Users of other media outlets
• Hosting in-house activities
• Content marketing with personalised posts or blogs
• Lapsed or past clients  
• Referrals from current customers
• Personal contacts (sporting clubs, church or social groups, schools etc.)

All of the above don’t require cold-calling as there is already a connection to open the discussion on a “warm” basis. Additionally, not all prospecting activities are equal and some work better than others.

Find the areas you are better at, find the one or two that yield the most prospects for you and then focus there.

Warm calls?

One skill exhibited by strong sales people is the ability to establish a rapport quickly with a prospective client – particularly on the phone.  With “warm calls” it’s so much easier because you are referencing something that you both have in common.

• “Hi Mr Customer, Bob Smith, who you know, asked me to give you a call…..”
• “Good morning Mr Client, we met at the XYZ Chamber of Commerce business after work…..”
• “Thanks for taking my call Ms Prospect, we are both professional connections of Mary Smith on LinkedIn…..”
• “Hello Tania, we were talking at the kid’s football match on Saturday…..”

There’s a million versions of these calls but they are so much more powerful than a “hope strategy” when you just pick up the phone or send out an email and “hope” you can make a connection.

While a “warm call” exhibits some of the behaviours of a qualified lead, the sales person still needs to engage with the prospect to further validate the level of qualification.

Until next week, good selling! 
 

About the author 

Stephen Pead is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management. He is based in Sydney and specialises in helping SME’s market their businesses more effectively and providing training for salespeople and sales managers.

He can be contacted at [email protected]