"The odds of hitting your target go up dramatically when you aim at it"
Mal Pancoast
In today's environment, sales team are being faced with monumental and daunting challenges.
They’re wrestling with major changes in their markets brought on by information-empowered buyers, digitization within the sales channel, and adapting to selling in a virtualized world.
Competition is everywhere, from well-established companies to tech savvy start-ups, coupling this with uncontrollable events; and this has placed added pressure on sales margins.
- How effective has your team been in maintaining their clients?
- How effective have they been in driving profitable new business growth?
- What is your plan for client retention?
How open minded are you to change?
In order to grow, you must retool parts of the sales process around a different model, one which calls for new approaches, new positioning within the marketplace, new client experiences, and new business growth; all centered on a well-organized plan.
In 2021, your team must be equipped to adapt to the rapidly changing market conditions, digital business models and disruptive competitors. More importantly, your team must be laser focused on bringing fresh ideas and new insights in a hyper-personalized and client centric manner.
What distinguishes your team from all the others in your marketplace?
IT STARTS WITH INFORMATION
Your team has unparalleled amounts of information available to them, to the point where information in itself is no longer a competitive advantage. The competitive advantage is in plain sight and it's each individual on your team.
What gives your team a competitive edge? It's the insight into how to use all of this information to help solve business problems and challenges for your clients.
Are your salespeople making your clients smarter or are your clients making themselves smarter?
Trust, value and relationships... it is how your team sells it and how they offer it that will set them apart.
What's your sales growth game plan?
The head coach of any professional sports team has a game plan. What's yours? Will you rise to the challenge, dig in and do the work?
5 DARTS TO SALES GROWTH
"It is impossible to progress without change, and those who do not change their minds cannot change anything."
George Bernard Shaw
What is your appetite to fuel sales growth?
NEW BUSINESS
Your team can actually increase sales by focusing less on acquiring new clients and more on their current clients? Call me crazy but this actually works.
A vast majority of salespeople fail to capitalize on what sits close to home and who lies within the networks of people they already do business with.
To increase new business, your team must concern themselves with reducing client attrition by providing to them an outstanding experience.
In doing so, and with mutual agreement, they get their clients to edify their work by introducing them into their networks. This opens up new relationships, new conversations and new sales opportunities.
New business growth fuels company profits!
CREATE BONDS WITHIN CURRENT ACCOUNTS
One of the best sources for sales growth - retaining and growing your client base. It’s less expensive to retain and grow with your clients than it is to acquire new ones.
It is absolutely imperative that your salespeople build multiple relationships with more than just key decision maker's. Think influencers, end users, key department managers; cross pollinating relationships is mission critical.
Your people must build genuine, authentic relationships with numerous individuals within their client base, as the opportunity for loyalty increases. One way to guarantee loyal clients is to create unbreakable heartfelt bonds.
Here are a few ideas:
- Set specific client expectations
- Become their expert and continue to bring insight
- Nurture the relationships online as well
- Listen - go above and beyond, don't break a promise
PROTECT YOUR ASSETS, YOUR CLIENTS
Protect, this means your team must strengthening their personal relationships and social relationships. Gone are the days of a single decision maker. They must interface with multiple buyers, influencers and end users. One never knows who is feeding influence to the decision maker.
Those who fail to build strong ties may see important deals collapse. Conversely, when they socially surround multiple people in each and every account, they create a network of hundreds of potential referral sources.
Sales leaders must make client obsession part of the team culture.
It is about building rock-solid relationships. Always look for potential blind spots within your client base.
TARGET THE HIGHEST VALUE ACCOUNTS TO MAXIMIZE PROFIT
High-value prospects offer the potential to generate growing and consistent revenue.
I know you want to grow sales revenues and maximize your profits, then you must take the time to plan, update and retool your teams' sales tactics. Work strategically to implement a well targeted, buyer-centric account growth plan.
Your team must become precision-like in proactively developing credible relationships with these high-valued opportunities. Not only are these 'big fish' they're attainable 'big fish'. With this in mind start reeling them in with a strategically designed prospecting and development plan.
"Superstars are relentless, unstoppable prospectors. They are obsessive about keeping their pipeline full of qualified prospects. They prospect anywhere and anytime—constantly turning over rocks looking for their next opportunity."
Jeb Blount
LEVERAGE SOCIAL TOOLS
Fuel new business growth by integrating social into the sales process. Your clients use social, your competitors use social, quite frankly; social has become deeply woven into our everyday way of life.
The core elements of integrating social into the sales process can be accomplished by:
- Building a value framework - establish credibility and help create visibility within the marketplace
- Listen and learn - understand what your clients and prospects are talking about... What's important? What's top of mind?
- Engage in conversations - join and start conversations moving them from online to offline
Listening is the new prospecting. Are your salespeople intentionally listening to the cues?
Overachieving new business targets means integrating social tools into prospecting while strengthening relationships to enhance the client experience.
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
In the book, To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink, he writes about how we’ve gone from a "buyer beware" culture to a "seller beware" culture.
There’s so much information available today via the internet that your clients have become versed in their options and interests before someone on your team may even enter the scene.
It's incumbent upon you and it is now mission critical that your salespeople must understand your client's world. They must add value, not to just show up, throw up and educate them on a product or solution.
Salespeople must intimately know their clients, or I promise someone else will.
Business growth is critical to your sales health.
Do you have the will-do and the can-do? Being open-minded to growth enables your team to innovate, leading the way to new opportunities within your marketplace.
Team innovation is critical to fend off competitors and to stay attuned to the ever-changing needs of your clients.
"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning."
Benjamin Franklin
I understand, I get where you all are coming from. Every day, I walk in your shoes. I am fully committed to helping your sales team integrate social aspects and heartfelt strategies into your current sales process to grow new business. I want you to get results. This is why I am passionate about doing this the right way, the genuine way, the authentic way! It's about understanding value before visibility.
Selling From the Heart is making a difference! I poured my heart into every page of this book and I think you're going to love it. You can find it on Amazon in paperback, kindle and in audio. You can click on the book image below and this will take you to Amazon.
In a world full of empty suits, I'm passionate about helping sales reps succeed by getting valuable before they get visible. I help sales teams understand the true value they bring to the market.
I appreciate getting the opportunity to share my stories. Integrating the use of social and sharing my story on LinkedIn was my “game-changer” in the highly competitive office technology world. With great pride I transform, challenge, coach and inspire sales teams to grow new business by helping them share their story and how they communicate it out by integrating the use of social inside the sales process. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and on my podcast by clicking on Selling from the Heart.
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