Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana, American philosopher (1863-1952)
I’m working on a new sales project, and I need some quick wins.
One instinct in this situation is to jump in and start prospecting without wasting any time. But I like to figure out which direction I need to point before I go running off.
Sales history
I’ve been looking at some of the small healthcare accounts that my client serves. After some initial analysis and some conversations with sales management, it has become clear that one type of healthcare account is more likely going to have a shorter sales cycle than the other types of account. Since I need quick wins, this type of account is going to be my target segment.
Delving deeper into the history in the CRM I am starting to get a picture of how these accounts have been approached in the past. The short version of this history is that the past sales approach looks transactional. Salespeople made a couple of phone calls and sent a couple of emails. If they did not sell the product they were focused on at the time, they moved on. After moving on many of those accounts were not approach again for a year.
The selling effort was very focused. It seems that there was virtually no attempt to sell anything but the product of the moment. It was pretty much “take it or leave it”. No attempt to set a meeting with the clients to discuss business improvement, be consultative, or do any solution selling.
Surprisingly my client’s salespeople sold 30% of the accounts that were approached in this manner. Most of us that study “Go To Market motions” (or whatever jargon you prefer) would consider two calls and two emails a pretty “light” effort to sell an account. In this 30% conversion rate I think there’s a clue that my client’s product has some pretty good appeal to this market.
Future test
If there are no changes, I believe my client’s salespeople will repeat this same sales process this year.
To increase sales results for my client I’d like to see a move from a totally transactional conversation of “do you want our focus product (or not)” to “can we meet to discuss marketing ideas for your business?” The goal is to upsell other products in addition to the “focus product” that has been the only thing sold to these customers in the past.
I am going to need to work with my client’s salespeople to get this question asked. These salespeople are going to need support and certain collateral, such as one-pagers, web pages, scripts etc. to feel empowered enough to open a wider conversation.
We will see how this part of the project evolves. I will let you know. To increase revenue for my client in this area we are going to have to learn from the past and change our behavior in the future.
Summary
- When you get a new territory, you may feel the need to start prospecting immediately, but I’d recommend figuring out which direction to point before you go running off.
- All accounts are not created equal. If you need quick wins (like me), figure out which ones are likely to be easier to sell.
- There are surprising things to be learned from boring old CRM history records. If you don’t yet know your market well, this history may have a story to tell you.
- Many salespeople are still transactional. They sell what they need to sell that month and move on. This can leave a lot of money on the table.