5 Tips To Growing Sales Post Pandemic in 2022
Through the pandemic you may have found that prospecting had new challenges and that working existing customer relationships was your priority. As businesses around the world begin to reopen you have an opportunity to get ahead in your sales prospecting.
Over the last 2 years, since the start of the pandemic, many of your customers have new faces and work in new places. This is true for every business and it creates and opportunity for you and your business to open doors for new customers and grow opportunities with lost clients.
Your time is important and having a plan on whom you will prospect will be a key element in your success. Here is some tips on getting started with growing your sales in 2022.
1. Establish an interest statement
It is vital to your business and your sales efforts that you understand your true north, why you have an interest in this customer. What is the means in which both of you will benefit from the B2B relationship.
Time and time again, I have prospected accounts that I thought would look good on my book and that because they were a big company that they would be the key to me breaking out in sales growth. The truth is many times I had recognized an interest statement, therefore, I soon ran out of stream and progress slowed on the customer development.
Every-time, I developed an interest statement that was meaningful, it gave me the motivation to keep digging and reaching relationship milestones.
2. Prospecting is more than list development
Many sales people when asked to develop a prospect list, they simply go to writing out a list accounts to call on. Generally, they will create a list of prospects that reaches far beyond their capabilities to call on. And if they had the ability to contact them all, it would impact their attention to their current clients. I am personally guilty of this.
I have found that developing a top 10 list of prospects that I am always working has produced more long term results than any sales blitz that I have ever attacked.
The key with prospecting is getting to know your customers needs and how your products and services align with them. If you can introduce a solution to a problem early in the call cycle you become a valuable partner.
3. Sketch a Plan for Success
When you are ready to start calling on customers again, you need to have a rough idea of the roadmap in front of you. How will you get to learning who the decision maker is, what problems you can solve, how they take delivery and so many more questions? A good sales person knows the value of sketching out a plan for building a relationship.
Just like any trip, you have a starting point and destination, along the way you may experience some detours, so its best of have alternative routes at your ready.
Just like any trip is also important to include a timeline, this helps with your own self awareness if you are meeting your expectations.
4. Establish Milestones
Most sales people will stop calling a customer by the fifth call, most customers will buy by the 6th. The point is as sales people we often are hunters and when we feel that we are not in a position to make a sales we lose interest. Which is why the interest statement is an important part of this process.
To keep the excitement alive, we encourage as part of your sales journey that you establish milestones. This could be anything from getting introduced to a member of the business, first meeting, plant tour, proposal, delivery and so many steps in-between. The goal with these milestones they help you indicate where you are in the journey.
5. Meeting Objectives
Only a few times, has a customer just handed me the sale on the first meeting. What I learned from those incidents is that the customer was desperate and truly didn’t know what they wanted from the relationship. These relationships rarely produce large results or last long term.
It is more likely that you will be met with objectives, meeting objectives can be the fun part about sales, if you have take the time to go through the sales process and develop out your road map. When you are able to meet objectives, sales will come to you naturally and clients will reach out to you when they have new issues that need your service.
These tips are part of the Key2Success CRM Toolkit. A process which we have developed as part of our daily planner to help build and grow customer relationships. If you use a CRM already this product will enhance your performance and increase your results. If you have not used a CRM in your business, this product will help you establish better sales processes and organize your own business’s roadmap to growing your business revenue in 2022.
