Sell to Your Target Market
Selling to Self Help Groups
Many self help groups offer opportunities for emerging companies to earn profits. The implementation of these techniques for selling to the self help group market will move you significantly closer to your sales goals.
As it turns out, self help groups play by the same rules as any other type of business; they respond to businesses that offer solid, affordable products.
Frequently, the best B2B businesses achieve success through the consistent application of proven selling concepts. That's especially true in the self help group industry where simple blunders can translate into losses in market share.
Industry Experience
In self help group sales, industry experience is a huge plus. Although it isn't necessary to have decades of front line experience, it helps to speak the industry language and to understand the pressure points of a typical self help group.
B2B sellers who lack industry experience can compensate for inexperience by subscribing to trade journals, partnering with industry insiders and immersing themselves in the industry culture. Remember, self help groups may also be more amenable to sellers within their network, so it's important to make new contacts as quickly as possible.
How to Evaluate Sales Staff
Frequent employee evaluations are a must for companies that sell in this industry. Businesses that achieve significant market share hire top-end producers and routinely evaluate them against performance goals and benchmarks.
Although annual reviews may suffice 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 boosting sales and employee morale. In some instances, it may be appropriate to team underperforming sales reps with reps that have more experience selling to self help groups.
How to Find Self Help Group Leads
Leads drive sales cycles. The first step in lead generation is to survey the local market. From there, you can expand your search to include the yellow pages, Internet searches and trade listings.
The names of self help groups you obtain through your own efforts need to be qualified through personal contact and other qualification techniques.
But the most reliable source of qualified sales leads is often a third-party lead list provider. If you're in the market for high quality lead lists, we recommend Experian Business Services to our business partners. Experian has a reputation for providing updated and sorted lead lists that can be used for direct mail and other marketing efforts directed toward self help groups.
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