Am I right? You might think this article is going to spend lots of time talking about building pipelines and creating conversion funnels, using social media to generate leads and attract prospects with content, mining data to unearth new insights, and more. Do read on, and see if you’re right.
Do you remember last week’s post, about how something may resonate with you, and then suddenly you’re seeing it everywhere? Sure enough, that happened to me. (I checked my bias, though, and validated – these things do work).
First, I was speaking with consultant and coach Debbie Adams of PeopleCan about how, despite the many tools we have at our disposal, some of the best and easiest sales come because we’ve already impressed the customer, and we aren’t listening carefully enough to realize it’s time to stop selling. I also overheard a conversation between two business women and one was asking the other about getting new customers, when privacy regulations seemed to be making it harder and harder to use email. “It’s easy, said one. I phone them.” Cold-calling is sometimes most effective because it’s simple and unexpected. And it makes you take time to think about the person on the other end of the line, before you begin – at least if you do it well. (For more info on how to do that, check out The Phone Lady – she works with entrepreneurs and enterprises to help them get better at using the phone). Lastly, to use Steve Willson’s favourite F1 quote: “Get in there, Lewis!” In other words, go to where potential customers are. Have conversations. Engage. Show them you’re a real person. You’ll be pleasantly surprised on one-on-one outreach will help build momentum in your business. So, in short, three tools that are underused and can freshen up your sales numbers?
- Listen carefully for clues that people you know are already ready to buy.
- Pick up the phone and call.
- Go out and meet prospects in person at an event that interests them.
Oh, and one more tip about the customers you’ve already found? In this post by Devin Haman, he says that you can come up with more things to sell your existing customers, by proactively fixing problems today’s proactive customers may not even have discovered yet.
I’m Megann Willson and I’m one of the Partners at PANOPTIKA. We work with our clients to help them see everything they need to make better decisions – using better data, a better approach, or better metrics. If you need help deciding which metrics will work best for you and your team, so that you can find, serve, and keep more customers, we can help. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. For more news you can use to help you or your team to make better decisions, click the handy button, below.