Evan Carmichael Top Header about About About facebook Twitter YouTube Google+

Ensure That Prospects Buy From You and Not Your Competition



Free PDF Download
How to Expand Your Customer Base - By Paul Tobey

Name: Email:


Life in the world of sales and marketing is a passing parade. At anytime there are a small percentage of potential customers ready to do business with you, and a bigger percentage of customers who are interested in buying what you sell but are not yet committed to any particular vendor. There is an even bigger group who has needs, but is not yet interested. Many of these might become interested if they were educated about how your product or service can help them solve problems they recognize. Most sales people, quite rightly, try to focus their attention on finding the few people who are ready to buy, but in the process meet countless people who fall into the other categories. Often these names go into a database only to be ignored, or worse still are discarded. Remember . Each one represents someone who is potentially interested in your products or services. This group can represent one of the most valuable but often the most under leveraged asset in your business. Think of your market like a peach tree. There are some ripe fruit that are ready to be picked, and you should do your best to pick every one. But what about the rest of the peaches? You know that with careful attention, pruning, watering, spraying and fertilizing every peach will ripen and can be harvested at the appropriate time. It is just the same with marketing, but what most firms do, is leave it to the sales team to pick whatever fruit is ripe. The salesperson picks the few ripe ones and then leaves for greener pastures. The next sales person who comes along picks a few new ones as they ripen and also leaves. And so it continues. Very few businesses focus any attention on the prospects that aren't ready to buy. Most salespeople have a sense that some of the people they meet along the way, will buy sometime, so they set up either a tickler file or a reminder in their contact manager. Every now and again they phone the prospect to find out if they are ready. This kind of call is not only ineffective most of the time; it is downright annoying, as it seldom adds any value. Who among us has time for the regular, “Are you ready yet call”? Few sales people ever use the opportunity to nurture the customer with useful information. Instead they simply become commercial pests. Smart marketers know that eventually almost every prospect will ripen and decide to buy. They need education, encouragement, advice and guidance. If you do a good job of this you can pick every one instead of a few. Use smart marketing to continue to ripen these customers, and to guard against them going to the competition. Offer them special educational reports, give them ideas on how to improve their business, invite them to seminars and workshops, and give them free audio CDs. When they ripen they will let you know, as they will see you as the logical choice and that is when you can send your sales people back in to close the sale. It is much cheaper and more effective to have sales people focus on qualified customers, than continuously foraging for new leads


Related Articles

  Sales Competencies and Your Competition
  How Your Salespeople Can Eliminate the Competition
  Fast Isn’t Fast Enough for Increased Sales
  A Questionnaire for Businesses
  5 Guaranteed Ways To Retain Online Customers & Keep Them Away From Competiton
  Summertime Blues
  Tips To Ensure Success In An Online Network Marketing Business.
  It’s the Holidays!
  Are You Wasting Sales Leads?
  How To Know If You Are A Strategic Marketing Communicator, According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
  Contractual Obligation is a Missing Link of Sales Success
  Sales Training – Salesperson’s Universal Distress Signals
  LinkedIn or LinkedOut! It's time to get in!
  How To Overcome the "I'm Not Interested" Objection
  Using Testimonials As a Marketing Tool
  Stop Driving Your Customers To The Competition
  Trade Show Selling
  Top 10 Outcomes When Salespeople Screw Up Selling "Value Added"
  Focus On Your Business Goals Instead Of Worrying About The Competition
  Strategic Marketing Tips For Tough Market Conditions, From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach

Home > Marketing > Paul Tobey > Ensure That Prospects Buy From You and Not Your Competition >

Free PDF Download
How to Expand Your Customer Base - By Paul Tobey

Name: Email:

About the Author: Paul Tobey

RSS for Paul's articles - Visit Paul's website

Professional Speaker, Trainer, Author, and Internet Marketing Expert, Paul Tobey is CEO of TrainingBusinessPros.Com and StreetSmart Marketer.Com.  Having trained over 22 thousand business owners in the past 4 years, the training company offers a suite of  business training helping small and medium size business experience rapid growth using social media and internet marketing platforms.  We teach business owners how to become customer acquisition experts. His popular free marketing tips magazine is read by thousands of business owners around the world in more than 47 countries. You can get it free at www.streetsmartmarketer.com.  To find a social media training near you visit www.trainingbusinesspros.com

 


Click here to visit Paul's website.
Dashed Line

More from Paul Tobey
Business Owner Guide

Related Forum Posts

One More Thing... One More Thing...
Re: Congratultations to GT! Re: Congratultations to GT!
Re: Email Etiquette Re: Email Etiquette
Simple way to avoid Cold Calling Simple way to avoid Cold Calling
Re: Is Google Search getting better or worse? Re: Is Google Search getting better or worse?

Share this article. Fund someone's dream.

Share this post and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.
Share for a Cause
Featured Article



Worksheets
By: Evan Carmichael

Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?

8 Powerful Steps to Finding Your Passion

Does your pitch suck?

Create a plan of attach to launch your new business.

8-Cover

Like this page? PLEASE +1 it! Evan Signature
Bottom Footer



Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!
Name:
Email:
Popular Articles

The Benefits of having a Company Uniform

Multilevel Marketing: 4 Tips To MLM Success

Common Sense Stress Management

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.