Are you running out of leads? No idea where or to whom to sell your products or services to? I think every single sales person has been at that stage during their career. But what did they do to get themselves out of it?
Here is a list of things you might want to consider:
1. Contact former customers again to discuss future opportunities. You never know, one of your former customers might need to buy additional products or services from you. Or you can inform them about new developments, activities, events or just want to meet up for a coffee with them to see how things are going after they bought from you. Follow up is a crucial part of sales and a proper after sales service can go a long way and generate new business for you.
2. Ask your former customers for referrals. You may be able to combine this with step 1 but most customers who are happy with you and/ or the service/ product you supplied, have no issue recommending or referring you to some other potential customers. This is probably the best option in order to keep your business going. Especially when you’re selling b2b, business owners/ managers understand the meaning of referrals and some might be happy to help.
3. Look over your old prospects, the one’s who didn’t buy yet from you. What was the reason? Maybe they didn’t buy because of an un-established need? Or maybe they just didn’t like your approach. Contact them again and get some feedback. Yes, it might be hurtful (in some cases) but it’s a learning curve. Feedback is valuable and most people are willing to provide you with feedback of why they didn’t buy from you. If it was you, maybe hand the account over to a colleague. We can’t get along with everybody, sometimes it’s as simple as that. This has nothing to do with you personally. It’s business. And if it’s a great sale, maybe you can even share the commission (if possible) or get an account from the other sales reps to deal with some of their clients. Selling may be competitive, but you’re working in the same company so the goal is the same: Increase the companies turnover and ensure future growth.
4. Re-establish your target market. Have a look again at your old prospects and other companies similar to your target audience in your area. If you don’t know your target audience, or you say, everybody should use my product, then think again. You may think your product is suitable for everybody, but who is actually buying? Make a list of your current customer traits and find companies or audiences that are fitting (age/ type/ gender/ company size/ industry/ country etc.).
5. Try a different target market. I know this one doesn’t correspond to point no. 4, however sometimes if you depleted all your options you may need to rethink your target market and make it more suitable for a new audience. This means, redesigning your pitch, values etc. It’s a lot of work but may be worth your while. If you’re targeting the IT industry for example and you have no more companies to go to (which I doubt but there is always this one sales rep…) maybe a similar market may be suitable for your products or services. Maybe automotive, pharmaceutical, retail etc. could also be a fit for your products. Yes, sometimes we need to adjust certain aspects of our presentations or sales pitches but hey, that’s life. Think why this audience may be able to use your products as well and what are the benefits for them? Maybe they are not in the IT industry, but have an IT department??? Food for thoughts…
6. Go to networking events, join social media networks, groups etc. This will get your name and trait out there. I’m sure a lot of you doing this already but as a sales rep or manager who is employed, how many of you actually go to business networking events to meet new people? A lot of people who are employed wouldn’t go because their company is not paying for it, meetings are held outside office hours / late in the evening or even weekends. If you want to make money, you need to hang out where your clients hang. Easy as that. And if you’re not willing to go the extra mile for your customers, what are you doing in this position? (Sorry for being blunt, but if you are in sales, and no longer have enough customers you need to look at activities that will bring you new clients).
7. Join Networking groups. You can also join local/ national or international networking groups such as BNI (Business Network International). They might be costly, but a lot of people get great value out of it. It’s all about meeting new people and getting referrals, and that’s what those networking groups are all about. Referring business to each other. So, get in there, yes, they are holding meetings usually early in the morning, but honestly, how much do you want to grow your business/ sales?
8. Ask your family and friends. Yes, I’m serious about that. Even if you believe they have no use for your products or services or that they are too expensive for your family and friends. Think about it this way, we all have a network of people and most of us know at least 250+ people that are hanging in our social (media) networks. Besides that we all know between 30 – 100 people which we consider acquaintances, friends etc. Ask them to help you out to introduce you to some of their friends or acquaintances. A lot of sales people don’t want to mix personal life with business life however you are leaving out a massive amount of people that you could easily tap into to get introduced to or do business with. Don’t be shy, get in there. It’s not about convincing your mother to buy your health insurance. It’s about convincing your mother to help you find people who would be interested to buy health insurance from you (I guess you catch my drift here). This is your network as well 🙂
9. Hit the phone. I mean, seriously now. If you have already tried points 1 – 8 and you’re still out of options, then there is only 2 things left to do: Either hit the phone or quit. Sometimes it requires drastic action in order to get back on track. And if that means to open the telephone book or yellow pages to get out there again, then by all means, do it. It will not be the most fruitful time in your life, but usually 1 out of 10 will listen to you and may even invite you over for a coffee to meet. In order to ease the pain of just calling, you could create an email list of companies that you haven’t targeted yet and send them an email first. You may want to do some research but this will take the (extreme) cold out of cold calling. Read my article on successful email marketing and you will see what I mean.
10. Still no luck but haven’t quit yet? OK, here is one last thing you might want to try: PRAY. I mean it, seriously, go to church and start praying. Well, maybe not literally. But talk to your local priest. Even if you’re not a church goer, an atheist, have different faith or religion then what’s locally available, go anyway. Talk to the local priest or pastor. They know a lot of people and they are in the business of guiding and helping people in their most desperate times. Having faith is one thing but maybe the local priest knows somebody who you could talk to to get your business off the ground again? If that doesn’t work you may also want to try chamber of commerce, other business owners/ entrepreneurs, talk to other sales reps even from different companies, join clubs, health and sport clubs etc. Don’t give up. There is a lot of things that you can do that we haven’t even mentioned yet.
A lot of people saying that we as individuals like it comfy. We stay inside the box where it’s cosy, comfortable and nice. But sometimes we have to go to different lengths in order to succeed and need to stick our heads outside of our own box. And most of the times it works. If it doesn’t who’s to say that you can’t take the box, throw it out the window and redesign a complete new box for you? Brainstorm with colleagues, co-workers, managers and/ or other business owners on how to increase sales and get more leads.
You might also want to consider a business or sales coach to help you find new leads.
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Carsten
Carsten Schnier is the founder of SalesClinic & Coach Clinic and professional sales consultant based in Cork, Ireland
The Sales Fear Factor 