No matter where you look today, Twitter, Facebook, forums or even the papers nearly every business is saying looking for sales, looking for sales people, or saying "introducers needed".
Now by doing this are businesses kidding themselves into feeling that they're doing what is needed in order to increase their presence and order intake.
Our experience is telling us, that a lot of businesses are not shall we say “doing themselves any favours”.
By that we mean, they instruct sales companies to act on their behalf in obtaining leads and enquiries. Once the lead is passed across to them by the sales company nothing seems to happen, other than perhaps an email being sent to the potential customer with a quotation.
It appears that companies are forcing the onus across onto the customer to get in touch if they'd like to take up the quotation offer. Obviously a high percentage of customers will not readily make contact, especially as it was not them who instigated the communication the first place. You will hear things from the company like, “I used that sales company what a waste of space” or “can't understand it our prices are really keen and we still can't get the work” or “what a total waste of money that was”.
Sales is not a singular process, if you engage in the services of an outside sales company you need to ensure that you have appropriate systems in place to manage any leads. Sending an email simply does not cut the mustard, yes.... you need to send an email/quotation but tell them also that you will phone them within 24 hours to check they have received it and see if they have any questions.
Doing this will start to promoted familiarity with the company and its services/products, also the company is taking control of the situation and could quickly answer any questions that may be asked.
If the customer cannot make the decision to purchase then and there, ask if it's okay to ring them back again in 48 hours once they had chance to think about it, and continue with this line of approach until you get a simple yes or no.
We're not suggesting harassing people, or even doing hard sell, we're just highlighting that you need a system in place to complete the process started in the first by engaging the services of a sales company, sometimes referred to as a lead generation service.
Should you require any sales or lead generation assistance then we can connect you to our Sales WM department, just let us know by using the contact us form.
Log in with Google