Many sales professionals are talented and hard working but they never come close to achieving their true potential. Why? It is because they are not organized or gaining momentum through a better understanding of their business. In today’s post I want to share 3 simple tips to getting more done in the field. If you believe you have sales ability but you feel you could better leverage your time, here are some tips to help you!
#1 – Get a CRM and get the data on your market. Too many sales professionals are literally prospecting blind and this is a huge mistake. There are certain things you need to know in order to plan your attack on your target market. You need to know how many good prospects there are in your area based on criteria like revenue, SIC Code, number of employees, independent or corporate, single or multi-location.
If you are serious about selling small business owners, you must have a database system that is loaded with data so you can make a good marketing plan and then execute your plan. With our Marketing Platform we offer to pre-load your database with data on every business in your territory that we believe is a qualified prospect based on our research and customized to the primary services you want to sell. This information can be purchased directly from companies like InfoUSA which is the vendor we use.
#2 – Update your CRM in real time, every time. With the cloud based software and mobile devices available today, it just doesn’t make sense to use a pad and paper any more. It is time to get outside your comfort zone and get the data that matters in the moment when you remember it. I encourage the sales people on our team to do 2 things after every prospecting stop. First, make a note in the prospect about what happened and update the fields like “status.” Secondly, create your “next action step” using the tasks. Doing this after each visit is vital to your productivity and will help you better plan your days. If you decide the next action step the moment you leave the business, it will keep you from spending hours looking through all prospects to figure out what actions to take each day.
#3 – Leverage your own data on top of the business data you purchase to make your prospecting more targeted and effective. One of my personal secrets to success was my database. When I was selling full time in the field I knew exactly which competitor all my prospects were using. I knew the name of the spouse, I knew the hobbies of the owner, I knew how much revenue they did, I knew their biggest business challenge and every time I went back to their business I had more and more information to draw on to build rapport and customize my offer to suit their specific needs.
Once you have the data, marketing and sales becomes so much easier it is just hard to explain and it really doesn’t even take that long to create this data. Most of you already take good notes, you just don’t put these notes into a system where the data can be accessed and used to sort prospects into campaigns. The possibilities are endless once you have the data entered but you have to take time in the moment to update your system completely. In my mind, I believe that every prospect will eventually become a sale and if they tell me no, my goal is to gather more information so that I can nurture them and be better prepared next time.
Have a great day in the field!
James Shepherd
Read previous post: Independent Sales Partners Are Not Robots
Read next post: The Secret to Turning Merchant Services Leads Into Sales