I have a great success story from one of my reps that I want to pass on! This fellow met with a large corporate prospect of ours today; the client has 160 stores and 3,000 employees and is one of the biggest opportunities in his territory. The call went well and it looks like we will be providing them products and services on a go forward basis - enough business that they should end up as one of our top ten accounts over the next 12 months.

After hearing about this win, I logged in to our CRM to take a look at the length of the sales cycle with this client. I knew that we had been persuing them for the past three years and wanted to find out why this particular rep had succeeded where a previous rep had failed. The key to closing this client was patient persistance. The previous rep had ultimately found the buyer but had only put 4 activities (calls/emails) in over a 2 year period to try and book a face to face sales call. The new rep, on the other hand, logged a persistant 18 activities over a 5 month period before booking the first meeting. 

I would encourage you to take a look at your stuck accounts/prospects and ask yourself if you have exhausted every possible avenue to gaining an appointment. Throw another call in (and let them know you will be following up on the message if they don’t return your call), send a letter, use their company internet to find a new contact or drop in in person. Eventually you will be rewarded and your sales will grow substantially.

I’m a firm believer that activity is the key driver behind sales results. There is never a bad time to reach out to clients you haven’t talked to in a while to ask ‘what’s up’. In our sold accounts, sales people can become complacent, not realizing that our end users have short memories. End users and buyers get in buried in their business, running projects, attending multiple meetings and a?short email can secure the opportunity to bid on a good sized project that will drive your numbers up.

I encourage my sales team to have some short, easy email templates set up in their CRM software that simply ask a client ‘hows it going?’. The idea is that every week they take an hour, use an email template, and touch 30 dormant accounts to see if they can scratch up some interest. Where as a call will most likely get screened and go to voicemail and ultimately deleted, a soft email touch will put the reps contact info at hand and easily accessible if something comes along.

It is critical that as a team someone is watching and monitering neglected accounts on an ongoing basis and keeping your businesses’ contact info fresh in your client’s minds. In a lot of cases clients buy based on convenience, and will often send a job to the last person that puts a call into them. Make sure that you are that last person!

I started this blog for a few reasons. First and foremost I love selling, and have made it my career. I am a regional sales manager for a Fortune 500 service company. I am a fairly young sales professional and find myself constantly looking for ways to improve my craft. Whether it’s through books, peers or the internet I love reading about sales situations, successes and champions.

One thing I have noticed as I cruise the web looking for sales related information is that there appears to be a distinct lack of quality info on direct selling techniques. There are numerous sales and marketing blogs, but in my mind sales and marketing are completely seperate entities. Sure good marketing will increase sales, but how does a business or individual prospect, secure and maintain clients without the support of a marketing department?

This blog is aimed at account managers and executives, sales managers and SOHO business owners that are looking for quick tips and best practices to help further their sales efforts. My hope is that readers can leverage some of my experiences to help them succeed in growing their business!