One of the biggest mistakes many sales people make is fishing in too small a pond.
They have a small set of prospects that they keep going back to in the hope that one day they’ll become clients. And in every sales meeting, when asked, they’ll tell you that the prospect is “close” to coming on board.
Sound familiar? I know I’ve been guilty of it. But it isn’t a path to success.
So why does this happen and what can you do to prevent it?
Most of the time it comes down to two things. Hope and fear.
Prospecting is difficult for many salespeople. The very thought of making cold calls and suffering rejection strikes fear into their hearts. And it’s amazing how seemingly heavy a small plastic instrument (the phone) becomes.
So when you do get through to someone and they express interest, there’s a natural tendency to keep hounding them, hoping you’ll get them over the line.
Your thought processes go along the lines of “If I just keep calling, eventually they’ll buy”.
And while sometimes you may be right, most of the time you’re fooling yourself and your time would be better spent elsewhere.
But that of course comes back to the fear.
So what’s a better way?
Let’s start by splitting the marketing and sales roles (which are often combined to their detriment).
Your marketing function should be designed to cast a wide net to catch prospects at the first two to three stages of the buying process. These are – in order
- Awareness
- Interest
- Learn More
- Shop
- Buy
Salesmanship overlaps with Learn More and proceeds to Shop and Buy.
Problem is that many organisations expect their sales force to perform the marketing function – which is not a good use of their time and skills.
The sales force should be used to work with prospects already in the funnel – prospects who are in the process of learning more, shopping and buying.
That’s where their skills in eliciting specific needs, matching these to the buyer’s situation, handling objections and getting the order come in.
It simply doesn’t make sense for them to be cold prospecting to raise awareness and interest. That’s Marketing’s job.
So if you’re tasked with “Marketing”, you need to work with the sales force to define what a good quality lead is.
Then design campaigns to target these people to raise awareness, interest and have them opt in to learn more.
This process qualifies them as they’re taking action, and moves them down the sales funnel. It’s only when they get to the require more specific information, shop and buy that the sales force should become involved.
And that’s where we can help you get more business.
Working both sides of the coin – we can design marketing campaigns that target your specific audience to generate interest.
We can create compelling copy that makes them sit up and take notice, ask for more information – mainly in the form of free White Papersand Frequently Asked Questions. Then move onto credibility and social proof in the form of Case Studies and Testimonials.
In short a complete marketing makeover.
And we don’t stop there. We’re expert sales trainers in the B2B and complex sales space. So we can work with your sales team to improve their performance and meet your organisational goals.
Call me to find out more or click one of the links above.
Rashid.
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