5 Steps for a Successful Prospecting Campaign

Selling products and services to businesses and consumers is challenging. Whether you are an outside sales person, inside sales person, chief marketing office or chief executive officer – you understand the difficulties in selling and marketing your products and services to the market.

What’s more is that the amount of information you have available to you is overwhelming. Here, we tell you what information is most important for you to focus on before conducting sales and marketing campaigns.

Why is it so hard to sell?

Whatever market you are selling in, there are direct and indirect competitors. These competitors, both old and new, are propagating messages into the marketplace which creates a great deal of noise and confusion. In addition, if you are trying to persuade decision makers to choose your product and/or service, you are trying to influence change. Change is difficult to influence- regardless of its purpose.

If you are going to stand out in a marketplace and grab the attention and interest of buyers, you are going to have to take some difficult steps. Here at Fulcrum Sales & Marketing, we are constantly working with our clients to sell and market their products/service. We are always challenging our clients to follow unconventional wisdom by leveraging our step-by-step approach.

1. Start with ‘who buys’, instead of ‘what sells.

Most business people (especially salespeople) begin by becoming subject matter experts in the products and services they are promoting. Being an expert in this is necessary, but starting there is poor form. Start by becoming an expert in your customer-base. Your goal should be to fully understand their needs, their wants, their internal and external challenges, their personal and professional aspirations, their likes and dislikes, etc. By doing so, you will understand how to better position the products and services you sell, into their professional and personal lives.

2. Broaden your opportunity by narrowing your focus.

Most of our customers here at Fulcrum Sales & Marketing want to sell everything to everybody. We have found this strategy to be ineffective and very expensive. The hard thing to do is to focus your sales and marketing efforts on selling a best-in-class product/service to a best-in-market customer. Do the hard thing and you will experience more fruitful short and long term outcomes.

3. Uniquely position yourself in the market.

Imagine that your company, along with its products and services, are sitting on a shelf filled with your competition. How would you stand out amongst the crowd? What is your unique selling proposition (USP) and why is it more advantageous for buyers to choose yours over the others? What is in it for them and how will you help them succeed or avoid failure?

4. Put the right incentives in place.

If you want your sales and marketing campaign to be successful, then your salespeople will need to be successful. The best salespeople on your team are probably enthusiastic, coachable and competitive; which means they can be easily motivated by the right blend of short-term and long-term incentives. These incentives will drive your salespeople to drive your sales revenue.

5. Track and evaluate your numbers.

I know that you have heard it before… but it’s true; sales is a numbers game. This means that your sales and marketing campaign will touch several and sell to a few. The most important thing is that you monitor the rate at which the several are touched and the few are sold. This is called ‘conversion’. Analyzing your numbers, gleaning insights from the numbers and leveraging those insights to increase your conversion rate is insanely important to the future success of you, your company and your salespeople.

Here at Fulcrum Sales & Marketing, we build sales and marketing campaigns that follow this approach. Our first step towards working with your company is gathering all the necessary information so that your team and our team can feel confident in our efforts to drive your revenue. Whether it be inbound marketing services (lead generation), outbound marketing services (appointment setting) or sales consulting/training – our first step is to gather.