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DO YOU KNOW if your salespeople are contacting the right customers and prospective customers? Are they focused on target accounts and the best sales leads that will create the most sales and profit for your company?

 

Without a disciplined lead management and contact strategy, your company's sales team will spend too much time on some easier lower priority sales opportunities with lower potential ROI than others they miss. If your company is like most, you can convert this situation into substantial sales and profit improvements.

 

The right contact sales strategy could double your lead close rate and increase sales productivity with the remainder of your sales team's efforts.

 

You will see immediate increases in your sales pipeline, if you follow these tips:

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• Make sure all salespeople are contacting the best sales opportunities. Unless your company closely manages their contact strategy, you haven't maximized the sales potential from more effective targeting. Salespeople generally aren't well organized to focus on the best sales  opportunities with the highest likelihood of closing. 

  • Include a simple process that scores the best opportunities ranking them from 1 to 5. For example, quotes would probably get scored as a "1", since any quote is most likely going to have a higher closing percentage (and therefore a lower selling cost) than a less qualified contact. General email inquiries may get scored from "3 to 5" based upon the topic. Since email and "click leads" require less work, some leads may be worthwhile. You will need to find some segmentation method if it is too costly to contact these leads by phone or face to face. Personal contact dramatically increases close rates and also costs much more. This creates an ROI decision to make before executing a costly campaign to less qualified leads. 

  • Initiate a process to track activity and results for the most important or highest ranked account opportunities or leads. Include a management plan that assures that these high ranking leads result in a yes or a no decision. Salespeople often "give up" before placing enough effort into their follow up activity.  This is a great time to utilize a pipeline or forecast reporting process to help the sales team stay on top of opportunities and to help forecast future revenue.

  • Utilize CRM for tracking activity. It is by far the easiest method to track customer behavior for businesses that have a large quantity of customers and prospects. Salespeople often appreciate the assistance with helping them call the opportunities that will help them make the most money. If your company isn't using a CRM system, add one. 

  • Make sure either you or the salesperson's supervisor have regular coaching sessions to stay on track. Define a contact plan for any target or high value accounts. 

 

Do this today and you will see sales pipeline increases soon; leading to a solid incremental sales increase! Want to discuss this, contact us today!

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