Is Your Sales Team Losing Out On Opportunities To Your Competitors?
One of the primary goals of any sales team is to find all potential buyers in their target market(s). There are 2 key areas to look at to ensure your company is finding these buyers before your competitors are getting to them:
1) Are ALL marketing generated inquiries followed up on EFFECTIVELY? How persistent and effective is your team at getting a response to marketing inquiries?
2) What does your team’s outbound call strategy look like? Are you confident that your team is reaching ALL of the potential buyers in your target market that didn’t get pulled through your marketing team?
While many companies exert a tremendous amount of effort to market to the active buyers in their target market, it is very important that you have a team that is focusing on the passive buyers in your market. To optimize the marketing team’s efforts, it is very effective to have their efforts supported by a strong teleprospecting team. I hear too many companies relying solely on marketing campaigns. While these campaigns will no doubt uncover new opportunities for the sales team, a teleprospecting team will not only ensure all the leads from these campaigns are thoroughly followed up, but they will find and have conversations with the passive buyers in your market as well. This will give you an edge over your competitors. The stigmatization of “cold calling” and the premature claims of its demise do not give it the attention and praise it truly still deserves. Mr. Bell had the right idea when the telephone was created over 100 years ago. 2nd to face to face, there is no better way to communicate than a live conversation. The telephone then trumped letters and even with today’s modern communication (but often impersonal) tools such as the email, IM/ text messaging, or tweeting, it is still the most effective way for sales professionals to communicate.
When your team has live conversations with key decision makers that have not been uncovered by through marketing, you are reaching a very specific and important audience. These are the buyers that may have tasked other people to evaluate your competitors, they are the buyers that don’t have time to download whitepapers or return emails. These are influential decision makers that may be your next customer. The best way to grab the attention of these key prospects is to pick up the phone and call them.
While most companies have a large universe and little bandwidth, the concept of reaching all potential customers can seem overwhelming. Does your team have the right amount of outbound calls and conversations to effectively reach your audience before your competitors get to them?