Find Prospects
To get sales, you need to start with a group of prospects who are likely to buy. By starting with a good list of qualified customers, you are more likely to hit your sales target. It is a numbers game!
Selling Mindset
The most important part of being in sales, is the attitude that you bring about the work you are doing. If you don’t believe in what you are doing, neither will your customers.
Why This Model?: The right mindset will help you be motivated and get the best list of prospects.
Customer Profiling
Who you are doing business with today is a great indicator of who you should focus on selling to. Critically analyzing what is working today, will help you get more.
Why This Model?: Know who is already buying from you to find future prospects.
Who Should Be Your Customer?
Sometimes who you are selling to is not the right customer for you. Most companies start with the idea that any business is good business, but this is not always true.
Why This Model?: Be strategic about the list of future prospects that you will pursue.
Customer Personality Types
The best sales people are able to adjust to their audience. They quickly assess the personality type of their customer, and adjust how they interact with this customer immediately.
Why This Model?: Understand the type of customer that you are pursuing.
The Buying Group
In a complicated sale, there is often more than just one person involved. This group of individuals is called “the buying group”. Knowing who they key players are and what matters to each of them, will help you customize your sales approach.
Why This Model?: When listing your prospects, understand that there are multiple contacts for every single customer.
The Sales Funnel
The purpose of the sales funnel is to drive sales through it. By understanding your sales funnel and analyzing it, you are able to refine your sales strategy.
Why This Model?: Know that every sale starts with the prospect list.
Qualifying
Too many companies spend marketing/sales time and money going after customers who are simply not qualified. See where things could go wrong and plan to avoid this.
Why This Model?: Be able to quickly qualify customers as early as possible in the sales funnel.
Lead List Generation
If you are going to reach out to customers, you will need to develop a lead list with customer information to assist you in doing this.
Why This Model?: Finding lists of your prospects.
Lead Research
Knowing more information about your customer can help you with a sale. What information helps? How to find it? How much is too much?
Why This Model?: Know who to contact and who to avoid.
Lead List Testing
After generating a list, the only true way to know if it works is to use it. Testing a lead list is a critical step in refining your sales approach.
Why This Model? Figure out if a lead list needs more work.
Tradeshows
Tradeshows are a great form of learning and lead generation. But they can be expensive, time consuming, and a lot of things can go wrong. How do you mitigate the downside?
Why This Model? Find new prospect types and lists.
Sales Cycle Length
The more quickly you can close a prospect, the more time you have to invest in other customers. And the longer a prospect stays in the funnel, the less likely that they will buy. Learn how to keep them moving.
Why This Model? The better the prospects, the shorter the sales cycle.
Whales Vs Minnows
Every sales person wants to track down a whale of a customer as it is assumed that this is where all of the money is made. However, there are different reasons and different ways to sell to big companies versus small businesses.
Why This Model? Your lead list could be a combo of both but only if understanding how they are different.
Referrals
Friends, relatives and current customers refer business to you, not to help you, but to help the prospective customer! It’s important to realize this?your goal is not to ask for referrals, but to explain why a referral would help a prospective customer.
Why This Model? Referrals are a way to find more prospects you might not have thought of.
Channel Partners
Why sell when you can get other people to do it for you? “Channel partnering” is the process of setting up other people or businesses to sell on your behalf, enabling you to focus on your core competency.
Why This Model? Channel partners are a way to find more prospects you might not have thought of.
Upselling
If you have many products available to sell to customers, how do you persuade them to try out something different, maybe a more expensive model or an additional complementary product? This is upselling.
Why This Model? You don’t need a long lead list if you focus on upselling.
