Give Your Sales Team a Fighting Chance

With the incredible proliferation of brands in both the b2b and b2c markets, your sales people needs all of the help you can give them to get in the door and make a case for your products and services. It’s obvious. We live in a world in which a “brand” can be launched in an hour—literally—and there can be hundreds or even thousands of competing brands against you.

How can a sales person battle through?

The bottom-line is that the old tried-and-true sales skills are not enough anymore. It takes both hard work and some new tools to compete. Here are three tactics to employ:

1) Know what matters most to your prospective clients and eliminate the rest from your client discussion.

It’s great if your sales team is well informed and can spit out your key sales points—IF that’s what is of interest to your prospects. But what if they are not interested in what you have to say? This can be avoided by researching each prospect to determine what valuable insights you can offer on your first introductory call.

I can almost hear you saying, “But that would take me a lot of time and I won’t make my quota of calls for the day and week!” Right, you probably won’t make your quota, but what you will make are the most effective sales calls you’ve ever made.

2) Be bold in your marketing.

Detail your most recent client successes on your website, in your blog, in your social media channels, and everywhere else you can think of. Caution: talk about your client in generalized terms such as “mid-size manufacturing company located in the Northeast” vs. using a client’s name. Of course, if your client will grant you permission to use of their name, that’s even better, particularly if they are well known.