Selling to an Industry

Selling to Chicago Style Restaurants

The word is out that many Chicago style restaurants are expanding, and smart vendors are hoping to target sales prospects in this market. With calculated planning, your business can achieve financial success selling to Chicago style restaurants.

In the current business climate, Chicago style restaurants are looking for quality and affordability.

If selling to Chicago style restaurants is your core business, the likelihood of conversion improves dramatically when you incorporate a few proven resources and techniques into the selling process.

Cost Analysis of Your Selling Tactics

Every part of your sales strategy is fair game for cost analysis. Business owners sometimes overlook 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 Chicago style restaurant customers, the additional labor overhead may be an inefficient decision from a cost analysis perspective.

Focused Messaging

Reliable lead generation systems are vital for firms that sell to Chicago style restaurants. Sales teams should be trained in basic lead generation as well as your company's typical prospecting routines. Lead lists obtained through legitimate third-party providers like Experian can improve the quality of your leads and reduce the workload of gathering prospect contact information.

But lead generation is only one piece of the puzzle. Of equal importance is the quality of the messaging you include in your sales and marketing strategy. Keep in mind that Chicago style restaurants are educated buyers who can spot an empty value proposition from a mile away. To get their attention, you'll need to create highly focused sales messages that leverages your product's differentiated features.

How to Evaluate Sales Staff

Periodic staff assessment is essential for companies that sell in this industry. Businesses that achieve significant market share recruit the cream of the crop 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 Chicago style restaurants.

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