Most people read the headline of this article and think they are going to get what you would typically see in an article titled “energize your sales now”. Things such as do more SEO, marketing, or run a promotion or discount, or…you name it. Nope ! We prefer to take a more systematic and methodical approach to driving sales.
1. Go to your last five customers who purchased from you and sit down with them and ask them “why” they chose to do business with you. My advice is to take them to lunch and tell them that you are not looking to sell anything else to them, (at least not right now), but you would just like to ask them some questions about the process of buying from you. Yes. Do this in person if you can. When you are knee to knee with someone your genuineness will come across that you really want to know the answers to your questions so you can serve others and add value to others the way you added value to them. When you ask your customers these questions, they will give you great insight that you can use to go and find other customers. The problems you solved from them will be communicated to you in their language and you can use that information to sell more effectively to your future customers. This exercise also re-energizes you about your product and the problems you can solve for your customers.
2. Who are your customers that were buying from you and are most likely still using products similar to the ones you offer, but for some reason are no longer doing business with you? Ask them for a meeting and see if you can buy them lunch and do the same thing I suggested for you to do in action step one above, except ask a different set of questions. Obviously, the question would be something like this: “I am trying to learn more about our customers and former customers and how I can better serve them.” “I was just curious if there was something I could have done to better serve you?” Please make sure you state that you are not looking to sell to them, but you are looking to learn from them. I know the skeptics out there are saying this wont work. If you show genuineness and sincerity to want to serve them (buy them lunch with no agenda, but to learn) you will be surprised. We as humans want to help others, and former customers are more likely to want to help you when you take the serving approach.
Now that you have some fresh information. You are more confident in your solution that you provide to your customers. Which means you are now re-energized and want to reach out to some prospects and let them know how you can solve their problems. Before you do that! Lets take a systematic approach to this before just running out and puking on the next prospect.
3. Go to your Rolodex, your LinkedIn account, your CRM, or whatever you use to manage your leads. Pick out your top five leads that for some reason you just haven’t converted into a sale. Maybe you met with them and maybe even sent a proposal or contract, but it hasn’t made its way back to you. Do you have that five? With the new information you have on how you solve your customers problems. If you look at these 5 non-moving sales leads. Be objective and ask yourself if you were effective in showing them how you can solve their specific problems? If the answer is Yes. I was effective! Then you have to ask yourself why did the deal stop? If the answer is NO! I wasn’t effective in showing the customer how we can solve their problems. Then before reaching back out to them you need to figure out what solution you are going to propose.
A lot of times we as sales people think that we need more leads, or we need more marketing and promotion to help us drive more sales. Its just not always true. Sometimes we have the best leads in front of us and we just have to approach them in a different way. To re-energize your sales sometimes we are the ones who need the re-energizing, and that inspiration comes from education. Hearing from your customers on how you solved their problems and hearing from former customers where you fell short lets you know where your competitive advantage is and you can then take that information, learn from it, and use it to sell more successfully.
When you are energized your sales will be energized.
As always we look forward to hearing from you.
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