In a recent article, I wrote about sales growth in the face of the economic recession. I explained how market share consolidates in downturns and how smart marketers increase rather than decrease their marketing efforts to actually grow sales and market share. Well, ‘guess I struck a nerve because I was flooded with suggestions and stories about how to do just that - grow in tough times. O.K., some of the suggestions were not so great, and some of them were technically illegal. But some of them were so good I decided to describe the 4 Best here:
1. Leverage your past successes. That is, use your own database of past clients and contacts to propel you forward. There are three ways that readers suggested doing this.
Get referrals - In his new book, The Referral Engine, John Jantsch describes how most companies fail to take advantage of their past by failing to ask for and use referrals. Advertising by personal referral and testimonial has always been effective and is even more so in today’s interconnected world.
Communicate more, not less - Don’t fall into the trap of cutting back on marketing communications during a downturn. It’s tempting, but not smart. Instead, find inexpensive ways to touch past clients. These are the ones who have already experienced your services and products. Get them to buy more and to buy again. It’s a great time to express your thanks, offer a special promotion or share useful information.
Improve your Database - This has a double benefi for you. First, you get a communication opportunity with past clients. That’s always good stuff, right? Second, you improve your marketing database to make you more effective in the future. Have your sales team greet your past clients with an offer of a new article, newsletter, notice of an event or new service, etc. Then, have them gather critical contact information like mailing address, alternate phone numbers, social media contacts, demographics like family size and purchase-readiness information. This one not only gets you an additional sales opportunity but makes you more effective in the future by improving your database.
2. 100% follow-up on trade show, promotion or seminar leads. All of us fall into the same trap - not doing a very good job of follow-up when we attend a large trade show or run a big promotion or attend a seminar and make tons of contacts. Often we let these opportunities slip away. Don’t!
You are in a recession, my friend, so that’s not good enough. Leads are precious now and you should use them effectively. One of our repeat customers recently hired us to make the initial follow-up call to hundreds of leads from his presence at a big trade show. We entered all of the leads into his database in just a few days and called/culled the list into 100 great warm leads for his sales team within a week!
3. Stop wasting your sales team’s time! This idea came from an internet marketer who had eight inside salespeople who spent half their time (his estimate) on very routine customer service support. Not good.
To relieve them of this non-productive work, he outsourced the first level customer service function. Now, callers are directed to an outsourced center with tools to answer questions about shipping/tracking numbers, estimated delivery times, price changes, returns and other things. The sales team is now charged with outbound calls to the company’s top customers.
4. Generate warm leads by cold calling a targeted list for prospects. We call this “suspects-to-prospects” and “prospects-to-appointments” calling. This is the type of effort I wrote about recently. This is a no-brainer. You and your team already know your best customers. Identifying these top customers and targeting lists of similar demographics can yield a boatload of real warm leads.
Growth always requires leads, in any economy. The best growth strategy starts with an abundance of leads so that your sales team can hone in on the best opportunities and deal with them confidentlynot like there’s a scarcity of additional opportunities. Cold calling (or cold contacting, as we call it) is an effective way to generate good leads. It always has been and always will be. It’s a critical step in the sales funnel - turning client “suspects” into actual prospects, worthy of your sales team efforts.
Keep the lead pipeline full. Keep your top salespeople focused on the best real opportunities for success. That’s a growth strategy for ANY economy! Try some, or all of these ideas to gain market share and grow NOW.
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