We all know that sales people can be expensive for any business, especially if they aren’t bringing the right number or type of sales into a business. But, the truth is, you are more likely to unleash the full potential of your sales people through two key steps.

Step One: provide your sales people with more “leads” to maximise their time in front of customers.

You’ll get a higher return from your sales people, if you help them take the leg work out of finding new customers by generating more sales leads centrally.

Following some of these tips will help you generate more leads:

• Target specific business sectors for new customers, particularly those sectors in which you have a successful track record.
• Don’t forget to target existing customers, especially those who haven’t ordered from you for a while, they can provide the quickest route to new sales.
• Maximise your marketing reach over a short period of time using email campaigns – there are many data houses that can supply up-to-date and guaranteed, sector specific data incorporating decision maker names and their email addresses.
• Put links in your emails to drive traffic to blog articles and landing pages on your website, so that customers can record their interest (leads) and find out more about what you have to offer.
• Use your social media postings to do the same thing.
• Follow-up emails with direct telephone calls from your lead generators, especially to those recipients who have used a link in your email to click through to your website. These calls are essential because 98% of your website visitors are likely to leave without even contacting you.
• Pass the ‘hot’, high quality leads to your sales people to convert to real business.

Step Two: maximise capability

For the strategy above to succeed, you need to ask some fundamental questions about your people:

Lead generators: can they deliver high quality leads and sales appointments for your business through outbound calling?

Sales people: can they convert the majority of these leads and appointments to real business?

Clearly, your lead generators and sales people need some fundamental selling skills.

For example, your lead generators must be able to:

• Make professional, relationship-building approaches to prospects over the telephone
• Manage the contacts and the contact strategy effectively (e.g. using some form of CRM system).
• Answer challenging questions about your business and help potential customers overcome their initial resistance and concerns
• Gain commitment to a follow-up/appointment

And, your sales people must be able to:

• Make professional introductions
• Engage potential customers and build rapport and strong relationships with them
• Use questioning and listening skills to help potential customers to take stock of their circumstances, understand their needs and identify what would motivate them to explore the products and services your business has to offer
• Gain commitment from potential customers to act
• Write benefit-led proposals
• Make attractive and compelling presentations
• Overcome resistance and close sales

If, currently, your lead generators and sales people do not have the knowledge, skills or motivation to deliver all of the above, then the strategy is less likely to succeed. The answer is to either find new people, which can be both time consuming and expensive, outsource some or all of these sales activities to a third party, or train your people to be the best they can be.

The good news is that you can expect a 20% improvement in performance, as a minimum, from lead generation/sales training…so it soon pays for itself.

If you would like to find out more about setting up an effective lead generation strategy, outsourcing lead generation or would like some support with your telemarketing and sales training, contact us here: https://www.pdtmarketing.co.uk/contact

Phil Gower

Performance Development & Training Limited – The Telemarketing and Lead Generation Experts

01249 758425

www.pdtmarketing.co.uk

“The team at PDT were instrumental in the making of our new online video marketing campaign. They were sensitive to our audience and brief then creative with their design suggestions, without being overbearing. The filming day was fun and very productive and the post editing result was quickly and efficiently tailored to our requirements. To summarise, we would have no hesitation in recommending you at least contact PDT to discuss your organisations video marketing requirements.”

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