Many businesses believe any customer is a good customer. While that sounds great, it's not true. Growth starts with knowing your Ideal Customer Profile, then tailoring your business to meet their needs. Not sure who your ideal customers are?
It's probably easier to tell you how not to reach these new ideal customers — cold calls. We've developed a number of techniques to not only identify your ideal customers, but also reach out, warm up and deliver leads ready to do business with you.
Both questions could be answered with, "yes," but that depends on your long-term business goals, corporate culture, ideal customer base and more important factors. Your search for the right salesperson begins with developing an Ideal Candidate Profile.
If you're asking this question, the answer is probably "no." In our experience, sales leaders start asking this question when they get a gut feeling that something is wrong - stagnant sales, missed opportunities, lost long-term clients are all signs. Now that you know the answer, what are you going to do about it?
In most cases, yes. Oh, sorry, that was an 'or' question. No, you don't need business development salespeople or account managers, you need business development salespeople AND account managers. More importantly, your sales staff should not double as your account managers. We've worked with companies to define roles, compensation packages and strategies for both.
Compensation should be determined by a number of factors including salesperson performance, position expectations, skills required, travel and more. For most people, pay is a motivation. If you have a well defined sales strategy, rewarding sales and new customer acquisition, your sales staff should be motivated to meet or exceed your goals. Unfortunately, many companies haven't established a realistic strategy, meaning their sales staff is either over motivated to underperform, or they aren't motivated enough to perform at all. Is your compensation [...]
Yes. Well, no. Actually, maybe. Direct sales make perfect sense for some B2B companies, but not for others. We'll work with you to determine direct sale opportunities, create sales and marketing strategies, and find the right balance of sales through dealers, distributors reps and online for your business.
The first step is identifying who those dealers are, then it's time to get your company noticed. That's the difficult, and fun part. Ready to get started?
You know you have great products, but do your dealers know that? Signing a dealer agreement is only the first step, if you want reps to push your product they have to know about it, understand it, and see its value. That's where we come in.
Developing a product is one thing, selling it is another. Sales and marketing strategies are just as important as developing a quality product, possibly more. The best time to get started is now.
There's two answers to this: 1. Hire someone local. 2. Explain why they don't. Either way, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. We can help.
Branching out into new territory takes time, personnel and money, but before you begin you need a well-researched strategic plan. That's were we come in.
If that's all they're doing, then good question. However, you should really be asking: How can I get my reps to work harder pushing my products and increase sales?
In a word, yes. Online selling in B2B or ecommerce, in some form, is a key piece of a modernized sales model. Ready to get started?
First, take a deep breath. Losing a key customer sucks, but it's rarely fatal. As a leader you need to act with urgency while keeping your team calm, engaged and focused on what needs to be done to stabilize the situation. To drive short term revenue look at opportunities already in your sales pipeline that are closest to closing. Need help sorting things out in a high-stress situation?
