If You Want to Win New Business Here are Five Questions You Must Answer
Have a go at answering these questions. You will find them very useful if you want to win more business.
What is your sales goal?
Do you want to win work from a particular activity? Do you want to build your 12-week sales project around referrals or lapsed clients or selling more profitable jobs? What type of clients do you want to win? Are you going to focus on a particular sector or a particular type of business?
How many clients do you realistically want to win? And what does this mean in terms of revenue and profit?
What does the prospect’s sales journey look like?
What are the key actions you are going to be taking in order to win new business? Will you focus on creating new leads through social media? Are your strengths focused on networking events (even online ones?) Or will you win new leads by using direct mail?
What specific steps does a prospect need to take in order to become a client?
What activity will you undertake?
What are the key actions you will have to take every week? Will you be asking for referrals? Connecting with potential prospects on social media? Sending out mailers?
How will you follow this activity up? Emails? Phone calls? Other online activity?
What do the metrics look like?
If you want to win a new client, it’s important to think about the amount of activity you have to undertake. For instance, if you base a sales project around social media, how many connection requests do you need to make every week? How many new connections do you need? How many should you ask to have a call. How many will accept your request? And how many of those will become clients?
When you have the numbers, you know just how much activity you need to undertake. And when you measure this activity, you know if you are on track or not.
Who will you be accountable to?
The best sales people always report on their numbers. Did they carry out the right activity this week? And did it create the right results? If not, why not?
Having an accountability partner keeps you on track.
Once you answer these questions you may well find a new purpose and focus in your sales activity.
P.S. Find out more ideas on how to engage with today’s buyers: download my free e-book “Ten Common Print Selling Errors and What To Do About Them” right now. You’ll also receive my regular “Views from the print buyer” bulletin, full of ideas on how to sell print effectively. Also, check out my book, "How To Succeed At Print Sales: Setting targets, planning the right activities and making sure goals are met." You learn how to create 12-week sales projects based round precisely this sort of activity.
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- Business Management - Marketing/Sales
Many printing companies are frustrated how hard it is to engage buyers in today’s world. That’s where Matthew Parker can help. He is a gamekeeper turned poacher. Parker has bought print for more than 20 years and received over 1,400 print sales pitches. He now uses his buyer’s point of view to give practical advice to printers. He helps them engage with prospects and customers to create profitable relationships.
Download his free e-book, "Ten Common Print Selling Errors And What To Do About Them" and check out his recently launched book, "How To Succeed At Print Sales: Setting targets, planning the right activities and making sure goals are met."
