Many of you with a sales role (or at least sales targets..) will undoubtedly be focused now on your 2011 pipeline, which may - or may not - be filling you with confidence and excitement!....this article will help to usher in the new year with some thoughts on how, in the modern business climate, we can throw away those cold calling phones, leverage social networking and build on existing relationships to generate new ones.
As a starting point - what makes people buy services? In 2009 The Wellesley Hill Group and Raintoday.com surveyed 231 buyers of professional services across a number of professional services categories - buyers representing over £1bn services purchased in previous year. They posed 2 questions:
- How do you identify and engage discussions with providers of professional services?
- During your decision making process, what factors influence your decision to engage or not a particular provider?
The top twenty answers were as follows…
1. Referrals from colleagues (79%)
2. Referrals from other service providers (75%)
3. Personal recognition or awareness (73%)
4. In person seminar (66%)
5. Presentation at conference or event (62%)
6. Website (58%)
7. Articles/News stories about provider (56%)
8. Exhibit at conference or event (55%)
9. Internet search (55%)
10. Industry website article or story (53%)
11. Conference/trade shows (53%)
12. Case studies (53%)
13. Trade magazine article or story (50%)
14. Articles written by provider (48%)
15. Telephone call from rep. of service firm (47%)
16. Newsletter from provider (45%)
17. Webinar (45%)
18. White papers (43%)
19. Mail (42%)
20. Email from provider (41%)
I have to say, from our own experience, we find it interesting that as many as 47% of respondents said a telephone call from the rep of a service company still influenced their buying decision! I guess this means that cold calling hasn't gone out of fashion, but they need to add far more value to resonate and inform beyond what customers can find online.
In fact we are rarely asked to develop telephone cold-call skills as part of our sales programmes and frankly we believe that pure cold calling rarely works in today's b2b sales environment.
So - from our own experience and expert advice from a range of others, here is our personal 2011 top eight tips for a healthy pipeline that is a cold-calling free zone!
If they ring any bells why not come to our (virtually..) free London seminar on this subject in February where you can learn from others ideas too and come away with a solid sales plan. Click here for more details…
1. "Water your contacts" at the right time
We have all been put off emailers and callers who contact us too much or at the wrong time - equally though how often do we get contacted by the right person but just after we have made a buying decision? Getting the contact timing right is key and a real challenge for many of our participants who don't want to be a pain in the neck, but DO want to keep in touch...
With this in mind, we recently came across an article by Steve Martinez who came up with a gardening analogy we liked…
Steve mentioned thinking about sales as if they were fruit trees and you wanted to increase the fruit yield each year. If a fruit tree could talk, it would tell you not to forget about it and tell you to water it consistently over time. The tree would tell you to water it during the hottest months just like you should contact your hot clients when they are most likely to need your services. If a client tells you they will be ready in about 6 months, you should have an action plan that will contact them regularly during the time period they ask. The consistency of your action plan will yield the most sales. Just like with an automatic watering system, your sales plan should be automatic. So the question here is - are you really making full use of your CRM system to do this?
2. Set measures and targets for your pipeline
We are great believers in what gets measured gets done - so you may measure your end sales, but do you measure your weighted pipeline? In the work we do with clients in this area, we often suggest a balanced scorecard approach which identifies potential gaps in a sales 'funnel' - so why wait until a bad sales month when you can predict this in advance and prioritise?
3. Keep in touch with previously lost deals
They said no to you before, but that doesn't always mean no forever. Circumstances change, they may have had (or are having) a bad experience with their current product or vendor, or they just plain weren't ready. Key contacts may of course move to other organisations - and this time you weant them to choose YOU. Don't lose touch with those opportunities - and don't take it personally that they didn't use you the first time round! Some of our own best business was gained as a result of 'keeping in there' with customers who decided to go with a big organisation and found they didn't meet their requirements… so go through your lost deal database and make contact - why not use Linked-In or send them some recent relevant research?
4. Ask for referrals
Matts blog in Heinz Marketing's web site, reinforces probably the approach we have found most fruitful - but one we find is rarely followed through consistently by sales teams - ie are you regularly asking your best customers who else they know? Or, putting it another way, are you inviting your customers to look good among their own peer group by enabling their contacts to benefit from your service as well?
From our experience, asking for referrals is a real block - especially for non-salespeople, but it is proven that happy customers are delighted to give you referrals, but they're also busy. They don't wake up in the morning wondering how to help YOU get more customers. But if you ask them - occasionally - they can be a powerful source of highly-qualified new opportunities for you.
In our workshops on this topic, I often reference my own experience as a sales director at Reuters where the one time I was asked by a supplier for an internal reference I was able to think of at least 5 fellow directors who I would be only too happy to introduce them to (and I did..) The key thing is that I needed to be asked!
5. Nurture repeat buyers:
Your existing, satisfied customers are your biggest and most underutilised source of incremental business. No matter how great your services are, your customers will almost always buy less from you if you're not proactively asking them for more business. Don't assume they know all the services you can offer! Again we know that many people think they might come across as too pushy - so another way of looking at it is that your customers DESERVE the opportunity to benefit from all the services you offer - you owe it to them to explore new opportunities with them!
6. Pull v Push - or don't neglect the low hanging fruit…
Interestingly many customers say that rather than have services pushed at them -they want it to be easy to find you (pull) when they are in the market for your services. However you DO want to make sure you are considered when they are in the market - One of the most frustrating situations for any salesperson is when their existing clients who want to buy (the low hanging fruit in our own horticultural metaphor) choose somebody else because you have slipped their mind...So make sure you are the first to spring to mind when an opportunity does arise!
One way to do this of course is write content, white papers, articles etc. - on topics that your customer cares about. Find out what their objectives are, and write about possible solutions (that maybe have little or nothing to do with specifically what you sell). Find out about their challenges, and suggest answers. Existing customers will then be reminded about you and new targets will be drawn to this content, and will want to learn more about the source.
7. Spend time on networking:
I'm not just talking cocktail parties and breakfast meetings. If your prospective customers are all part of the same LinkedIn Group, that counts. If there's an active discussion forum somewhere, that counts too. Join the community, and participate as a peer. Don't sell. Leverage your ideas and content to build new relationships based on a foundation of trust, credibility and selfless helpfulness. Those you write to, and those who merely see or read those interactions, will want to learn more about you.
Make the most of Linked-In and other business networking sites. Become an expert and understand how to make it work for you. (in the workshop we will explore this in more detail)
Develop a conference session that demonstrates your industry knowledge and look for speaking opportunities.
8. Be seen in a broader partner network:
You're not the only company working with your customers. Who else is in their ecosystem? Who else do they go to on a daily or weekly basis? Who else has influence over them? And how could those complimentary partners help increase visibility for you?
