Sell to Your Target Market

Selling to Swap Shops and Meets Businesses

As the market recovers, swap shops and meets businesses are gradually bouncing back from the Great Recession and are starting to reinvest. If you're tired of sitting on the sidelines, maybe it's time to start selling to swap shops and meets businesses.

Not surprisingly, swap shops and meets businesses are subject to normal business demands; they respond to businesses that offer solid, affordable products.

Your approach will vary according to your situation and your company's unique sales objectives. But overall, there are several things you will need to consider when devising a system for selling to swap shops and meets businesses.

CRM Software

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) technology is standard fare for most B2B enterprises.

When used properly, CRM can enhance your company's interactions with customers and prospects. For those who do not have a good lead management system, you're missing out on a valuable selling resource. Companies that already use a CRM solution need to assess their processes to make sure it is being used to its full potential.

In the B2B swap shops and meets business industry, the inefficient use of CRM can put your business at a competitive disadvantage.

How to Evaluate Sales Staff

Frequent employee evaluations are a must 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 swap shops and meets businesses.

How to Find Swap Shops & Meets Business Leads

Leads are the foundation of successful selling. The first step in lead generation is to analyze the local market. From there, you can expand your search to include the yellow pages, Internet searches and trade listings.

The names of swap shops and meets businesses you obtain through your own efforts need to be qualified through phone calls, emails, and face-to-face conversations.

But the most dependable source of qualified sales leads is often a third-party lead list provider. For consistently high quality lead lists, we recommend Experian Business Services to our business partners. Experian has a reputation for providing accurate and filtered lead lists that can be used for direct mail and other marketing efforts directed toward swap shops and meets businesses.

Share this article


Additional Resources for Entrepreneurs

Lists of Venture Capital and Private Equity Firms

Franchise Opportunities

Contributors

Business Glossary