Large sales, enterprise accounts, the big fish.
It’s all about the large accounts that increase profits and prestige overnight. Ever since SPIN Selling was published, sales experts have recognised that work in small sales does not transfer to large-scale deals. I will assume your team has robust sales skills once they are in the room with the prospect. Optimizing performance before and after the meeting will be our focus.
1. Preparing For Major Sales Meetings With Act!
You’ve decided to pursue a large, well-known, corporation as a client for your business. You know that landing that account will bring instant credibility throughout your region. Through networking, you have managed to identify a few managers at the company. How will you convert this information in a productive meeting?
- Do your pre-call research. Get on the phone with your customers to find out what software they are using and problems they have experienced. If you are selling technology, market research tools like BuiltWith may be helpful.
- Opportunity Notes in Act!. As you prepare for the meeting, include links to resources and notes in an Act! Opportunity for future reference. Significant sales can take weeks or months to close, so it is helpful to have these notes available beforehand.
- Hold a pre-call meeting. This step is critical if your major sales involve team presentations and coordination. A few days before your first sales call, organise a short meeting to outline what you have learned and what you plan to cover.
Sales Resource: Read Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount for additional insight on prospecting. Blount makes an excellent point with his 30-day rule. If you are disappointed with your sales results today, check your calendar from 30 days ago. For example, if you take it easy at the office in December, you will have to work extra hard in the new year to catch up!
2. Improving Major Sales Follow Up With Act!
After you hold the major sale meeting, you leave with a signed contract! Well, that might happen if you are lucky to meet an exceptionally hungry buyer. If you are seeking to close a large sale, the process takes time to close.
Disciplined follow up makes all the difference. There’s just one problem with that suggestion. Sales professionals know they need to follow up. Yet many of them get distracted with other work and sales opportunities and never get around to it. Use Act! to augment your follow up discipline.
- Set reminders. Remembering to call the next day is easy – doing so a month after a meeting is more difficult. Using Activities associated with the Opportunity in Act! helps you stay engaged with the sale.
- Connect with multiple stakeholders. Did you notice that some technical experts at the prospect’s company objected to your solution? If so, document those points in Act! and work on developing answers for them. Link all the client contacts to the Opportunity in Act!
- Use email marketing. After your initial introduction to a major sales contact, they may be interested but simply not ready to buy. Using drip-marketing or inviting them to sign up for your email newsletter are excellent ways to sustain the connection.
3. Growing and Keeping Customers Loyal With Act!
So far, I have focused on bringing new customers in the front door. That’s critical for growth especially if you just starting our breaking out of a slump. Landing new accounts is not enough. Keeping current customers happy and doing more business with them matters as well. Analyse your customers in Act to find cross-selling opportunities such as:
- Analyse your most profitable accounts. Some customers are more profitable than others. Use 80/20 analysis to identify the outliers in your profits. How can you reduce the burden generated by a high maintenance client?
- Document client review activities. Some sales professionals are good at “farming”: growing an existing account over time. To encourage this practice, ask staff to document their efforts to network and meet other people at the company. If this activity is neglected, you may lose the account if a single manager or executive leaves. Don’t wait for a problem to happen at a loyal customer before you pick up the phone.
What The Other CRM Experts Aren’t Telling You.
Why aren’t you landing more major accounts? You probably lack one of three disciplines: sales goals (you are not shooting high enough), sales strategy (you have no idea how to land the big fish) or process (you do not have the right techniques or tools). I can help you with the last of these … However, no technology can fix the other problems associated with landing big sales.
Contact me to discuss ways we can use Act! to improve your company’s sales processes and efficiency.
If you would like to help other Act! users, please post your best strategies for landing the big deals as a comment to this post.
