Sales Growth In A Recession - 4 Ways
I wrote about sales growth in the face of the economic recession recently
, explaining how market share consolidates in downturns and how businesses should increase rather than decrease marketing efforts to grow sales and market share. Well, I was flooded with suggestions and stories about how to grow in tough times. And, although many of the suggestions were not that good (two of them were actually illegal), some were so good that I decided to share the best ones here.
1. Use your existing database. Your past customers and contacts hold the key to your future successes. Here are three practical uses of those relationships that can help you.
Referrals - In his recent book, The Referral Engine, John Jantsch points out how most companies do not leverage past successes into referrals. Word of mouth advertising has long been the most powerful kind and today's social networking communications tools make it even more so.
Reach out more, not less - While it is tempting to reduce communications efforts during downturns, it's not smart. In fact, it's the best time to increase them. Why? Because about 33% of your competitors have done exactly that. They are virtually non-existant in the marketplace right now. About 33% of others are so dazed by the financial stress that they are doing the same old/same old. The top 33% (of which you should be a member) are grabbing market share by promoting their company more than ever. And, promoting in unique and inexpensive ways.
Improve your Data - This has a double benefit. First, you get an opportunity to "tough" past customers. That's always good for business. Secondly, you can improve your customer relationship management (CRM)database. Have your sales team greet your past clients and offer a new eBook, article, newsletter, describe a new service., etc. Then, have them gather additional important information like mailing address, alternate phone numbers, social media contacts, etc. They can gather demographics like family size and purchase signal-type stuff.
2. 100% follow-up on trade show, promotion or seminar leads. All of us fall into the same trap - not doing a very good job of follow-up when we attend a large trade show or run a big promotion or attend a seminar and make tons of contacts. Often we let these opportunities slip away. Don't!
During tough times that's not smart. You already paid for those contacts - you should go the extra mile to get every new customer you can from them. One guy recently hired us to make the initial follow-up call to over 1500 leads he gathered from his booth at a national trade show. He was happy to get the 1500 database entries into his CRM three days later, and really happy to get 100 real leads with "ready now" ranking one week later.
3. Stop squandering your sales resources! This reader is a regular customer of ours. He figured that almost 50% of his sales team time was spent on super-simple, routine tasks like verifying shipping information. Not only was this discouraging to the sales team but it was an incredible waste of their expertise.
In order to free them up to do more profitable work...like outbound calls and key account focus, he outsourced the first level customer service function. Now, callers are directed to an outsourced call center for questions about shipping dates, tracking numbers, price changes, returns and etc.
4. Generate warm leads by cold calling a targeted list for prospects. We call this "suspects-to-prospects" and "prospects-to-appointments" calling. This is the type of effort I wrote about recently. This is a no-brainer. You and your team already know your best customers. Identifying these top customers and targeting lists of similar demographics can yield a boatload of real warm leads.
You know growth always requires leads. That's true in any economy. Your best growth strategy begins with lots of leads. That way your sales team can hone in on the top opportunities and work them confidently and without any paranoia, like when they are calling their last good lead! Cold calling is an effective way to get good leads and appointments. Always has been, always will be. It is an important early step in the sales funnel.
Now is the time to keep that lead pipeline full. That will keep your best salespeople hard at work on the best real opportunities. Now, that's a growth strategy for ANY economic environment. Try some, or all of these ideas and gain market share NOW.
by: Britt Lemans
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