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Selling to Specialized Markets - Associations, Buying Groups & Chambers of Commerce

Guest post by: Jeffrey Shavitz

Article Overview: In virtually all industries today, the competition is fierce as salespeople are competing for the same customer base. So how can you differentiate your services and reach large groups of new prospects?

Selling to Specialized Markets - Associations, Buying Groups & Chambers of Commerce

In virtually all industries today, the competition is fierce as salespeople are competing for the same customer base. Why not differentiate yourself and contact more specialized vertical markets such as Associations, Buying Groups and Chambers of Commerce in your local communities? During the past several years, my company has become very involved with the above markets, developing integrated programs to help our sales partners earn more business in these areas - and providing a real added-value benefit to the Association (in addition to just saving some money for their members).

Associations, Buying groups, and non-profits are losing market-share as their membership base is dwindling down - new members are not joining and existing members are not renewing due to our difficult economic times. In good times, companies' annual dues could range from as low as $25 annually to upwards of $1,000 depending on your employee size and office locations. One major problem that I have heard repeatedly is that most people do not fully understand the value that can be derived by joining and that your annual fees have real value if your company gets involved. I believe that Associations create a "meeting place" for industry-specific executives to share information with fellow associates.

Through our due diligence, we have created a program working with Associations to help demonstrate the value of offering our services while providing aggressive revenue-sharing back to the Association. It's a detailed 5 step program and already in the past few years, we have helped many Associations actually grow their membership during our country's worst economic period (excluding The Great Depression). Furthermore, the winning of these Association Endorsements helps our active agents receive warms leads, which have a very high closing ratio.

Whether you're working with your local Chamber of Commerce or Association, it's amazing how much more powerful the phone call is to the prospect when you say "John, this is Jeff Shavitz, we are the endorsed vendor to your XYZ Association and I want to describe a valued-added program now being offered by your Association" vs. a random cold-call pitching our services. Of course, it's obvious, but those few words, whether you can mention you are the endorsed vendor, the vendor of choice, preferred vendor, etc - all of these terms help differentiate you, your service and will help earn you more business.

Top down selling is very powerful and helps with exponential growth because it's scalable. Why sell only to one business at a time when you have the opportunity to sell from the top down, which enables you to meet hundreds if not thousands of business owners through these endorsements.

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Article Tags: chambers of commerce, salespeople, Selling to Associations, Selling to Chambers of Commerce



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