Whether you are part of a sales team targeting government, health or education or a sole operator chances are you are facing the same problems everyday – sales prospecting, talking to the right people and growing clients.
1. Sales prospecting
Virtually every sales team lacks sufficient prospects and their database is often out of date. In fact the key reason most sales teams miss their targets is either they’re not working enough deals or the deals they’re working on are with the wrong prospects.
Both situations can be resolved by stepping up prospecting regardless of the value of the product. For some reason, big ticket sales teams are generally more prospecting averse than teams selling lower value products and services.
The challenge for sales managers is to find a way to get their team to prospect effectively. Intelligent prospecting requires someone to research target organisations, but this is time consuming and expensive. Your sales team should not be wasting valuable time researching but should be getting on with the job they were employed to do – making sales.
2. Talking to the right people
Once you have identified an organisation you wish to approach who do you need to talk to? There may be a number of people involved in the decision making process, and you need to know who they are.
Decision making in recent years has become a shared process. This is especially true in risk averse government, health and education sectors, so much so I’d suggest the concept of the one ‘decision-maker’ has gone. For some reason sales people cling on to the idea that by talking to one person they’ll eventually win through. In fact this is generally not the case.
To decide who you should talk to, you need to think about who would benefit most from your solution. Build a profile of who you need on board to get a positive outcome. In government, health or education the profile should include someone who can make the decision, someone who can approve the payment and someone who has a problem that requires solving.
3. Growing clients
Existing clients are far and away the best way of creating new sales. Yet time and time again they’re a resource that just isn’t worked thoroughly enough.
Growing business with a client is predicated on two things:
- Having a consistently applied account planning process to spot opportunities early
- Having the relationships in place to be able to explore situations in-depth with clients
Put simply you need to plan to keep in touch. Without a plan it’s easy for time to pass without noticing and relationships to cool. An easy way to maintain a profile is to regularly send interesting emails – preferably directly tailored to each client.
Solution
Imagine having high quality sales leads that allow you and your sales team to quickly and easily access all the key contacts you require?
Imagine a sales tool that is available on the cloud so you get the information you need, anywhere and anytime you need it? Imagine having access to a search engine that gives you the ability to plan and implement data projects or prepare government, education or health data for analysis, identify prospects or provide valuable intel when writing a sales plan or monthly report?
Selecting prospects
The A-ZGovBIZ Discovery online data tool can connect to a fully customised dataset which has been pre-determined by you. Click on the navigation buttons to select the contacts you require from the dataset you have licensed. Export the list to CSV and import it into your CRM.
What to do next
If you’re interested in how Discovery could help you contact sales@azgovbiz.com.au or phone 02 9516 4703.
