In Bust Your Slump: A Dozen Slump Busting Strategies to Fill Your Pipeline in 30 Days I lay out 12 proven strategies that will generate sales quickly. Here is one of the simplist yet most effective. Don’t look at this and say, “yeah, right, done that.” Because I bet you haven’t done it—and if you did, you probably aren’t still in a sales slump.
Miners Know Where to Find Gold
If you have been in sales for a while, you have more sales locked up in your client database than you could ever make the rest of your career by cold calling, using direct mail, or advertising.
- Those sales are locked up in three formats:
- New and add-on sales to current clients;
- Referrals to new prospects from clients;
- Word of mouth business from satisfied clients telling others about you.
In an earlier chapter, we discussed mining your database for referrals. Word of mouth is too slow to have an immediate impact in only a month. However, there are still a tremendous number of sales locked up with your clients.
Now, you need to mine those sales.
We?ve talked about a contest to spur sales to your client base and about going back to your “dead” files, but contests aren’t necessary if you know your clients well, and your active clients are easier to sell than your dead clients are.
Hopefully, you?ve been keeping in constant contact with your client base through an effective, disciplined contact program. If you have, generating add-on sales is much easier. If you haven’t, you have some work to do but can still generate a significant amount of business from your database quickly.
No matter what you sell, you have many clients who know they need additional product or service from you—or one of your competitors—but haven’t taken action.
Now is the time to move them to action.
- If you’re a Realtor, who in your database is considering selling their home or may have to sell? If you?re a mortgage loan officer, who needs to refinance?
- If you’re in the financial services industry, who needs to be thinking about rolling over their 401(k) or planning their kids college education—or needs insurance or other risk management products?
- If you sell business application software,who needs to upgrade or add a module — or has a need for another product they haven’t bought?
- If you sell heavy material handling equipment, who needs to upgrade or replace or add to their fleet of material handling equipment — or needs supplies or servicing?
- If you sell medical devices, who needs replacement, service, upgrades, or other equipment you handle that they haven’t bought yet?
Go through your client database and select those clients who you haven?t heard from in awhile, who you know needs to hear from you, or hasn’t ordered in quite some time. You’ll undoubtedly find a large number of clients and customers who need you. For many, you’ll have to let them know they need you; by that, I mean you’ll need to let them know you have products and services they need but they really don’t think of looking to you for them.
How many of your clients count on you for their investment needs but don?t really know you can also handle their life, health, and disability needs?
How many of your clients use your accounting software but don?t realize you have other products to meet their needs in other departments?
How many of your clients think of calling you when they want to sell their home but don?t think of you when looking to buy a new building for their company?
How many of your clients think that with the issues in the credit markets they just can’t refinance out of the ARM?
How many of your clients think of you for their businesses line of credit but don?t think of you when looking to build their new warehouse?
Execution
Finding potential sales is easy. Getting the word out is more difficult.
If your client thinks of you as a residential Realtor, you must let them know you handle all real estate. If they think of you as their investment advisor you have to let them know that you are their financial advisor. If your clients think of you as the accounting software guy, you have to let them know that you?re their business solutions guy who handles a number of solutions for their business, not just accounting software.
Communicating this can be a bigger issue than you may think. Once a client has defined what you do, you have to resell them on expanding their perception of who you are and what you do in order to get them to broaden their view of you.
That’s not necessarily an easy thing to do.
Once you identify what you believe is a viable area to explore with a client, set an appointment with them. This appointment is very close to the same sales appointment you’d have with a new prospect.
Review their current purchases. Make sure there are not any problems and that the client is satisfied with both your performance and your product or service. Then introduce your further services by discussing related areas to the original product or service the client bought.
This may prove to be a little delicate.
This is your client and hopefully your friend. You don?t want to come off as a stranger trying to sell something to someone they don’t know. At the same time, you don?t want to take for granted that your client is familiar with the broad range of products and services you have to offer. In addition, you don?t want to be scatter shooting hoping that you?ll stumble across a need or a want.
Approach your client to discuss what you have reason to believe is a real need or want, explaining that you’ve been meaning to discuss the issue with them. Ask their permission to show them the solutions to their needs that you have, or, if it is a more complex sale, ask their permission to explore their situation and possible solutions with them. Give your client the opportunity to consent to your discussion. People respond better when given the opportunity to give their consent rather than having someone assume their consent.
Work your way through your database. You’ll probably find that not only do you realize an immediate increase in sales, but you?ll be generating sales from this activity for several months to come. The real lesson from this strategy is to make sure you keep your clients informed about what you can do for them. Don’t let yourself be pegged as a one product or service supplier if you can meet additional needs. Being pegged as a single product or service salesperson will keep those additional sales locked in your database forever.
Does It Work?
Calvin Washington sells tools and supplies to automobile and truck mechanics. He has been in business for a number of years and has a large, scattered client list, many of which he hasn’t connected with in a good while.
Over the last couple of years he had picked up some new and unique tools that had sold well.
When he found his business suffering from a down economy, Calvin dusted off his client list and methodically revisited his clients, making sure he introduced all the new tools that he wasn?t sure if they had seen.
During his first 30 days Calvin almost tripled his sales — and it took an additional 60 days to work his way through his entire client base.
Not only did he gain tremendous short-term sales increases, he has revived several of his former clients and they are now regular customers once again.
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