Niche Customer Sales Tactics
Selling to Wholesale Ice Businesses
There's no question that wholesale ice businesses are major players in a growth industry -- and that presents an opportunity to sellers who are eager to get in on the action. Here are some of the things that are required to sell to wholesale ice businesses in today's marketplace.
Overcoming the barriers of selling to wholesale ice businesses can require complex sales and marketing strategies.
With market momentum on their side, entrepreneurs are knocking on the doors of the marketplace, anxious to collect their share of the profits. Competition is fierce, so new businesses have to be careful about the way they approach wholesale ice businesses.
Message First, Targets Second
Messaging is an important part of a successful sales strategy. Confused messaging dilutes the sales cycle and makes it difficult for prospective customers to discern the value of your products.
Whenever possible, the identification of key messaging should be incorporated into a comprehensive planning process that combines sales and marketing into a coherent strategy.
The next step is to reduce your contact list to the contacts who are most likely to respond to your messaging. Although lead generation techniques are diverse, lead lists can be a useful resource for generating a list of prospects that are receptive to your messaging. Vendors like Experian are adept at providing targeted lists of wholesale ice businesses that can be tailored to meet geographic and demographic criteria.
Cost Analysis of Your Selling Tactics
Every part of your sales strategy should be targeted for cost analysis. Business owners sometimes ignore cost considerations and instead, choose to invest in sales strategies that underperform in the area of ROI.
For example, even though it might seem logical to increase the size of your sales force to expand your base of wholesale ice business customers, the additional labor overhead may be an inefficient decision from a cost analysis perspective.
How to Evaluate Sales Staff
Periodic staff assessment is essential for companies that sell in this industry. Businesses that achieve significant market share hire quality candidates and routinely evaluate them against performance goals and benchmarks.
Although annual reviews may be enough for other business units, sales units should be evaluated quarterly with monthly or weekly reviews of sales totals. Training, coaching and sales incentives can be useful for improving performance and revenues. In some instances, it may be appropriate to team underperforming sales reps with reps that have more experience selling to wholesale ice businesses.
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