Member Article

Sales nugget – Don’t eat yellow snow

Don’t eat yellow snow is sound advice but in this weeks sales tip I am going to ask you to copy Yellow Snow. Let me explain that Yellow Snow are a great company based in Middlesbrough who deliver fantastic videos and animation services to their commercial customers. In fact they are so good they have just won an award ‘Animation Company of the Year’.

So back to the sales tip. The tips is not about the services Yellow Snow deliver but in the way they manage their prospecting process. To find new customers you have to go out prospecting. In the Wild West Digging for gold was called prospecting which is exactly what we as professional salespeople need to do every day. We need to prospect for new clients all the time to help us hit our sales numbers.

There are many forms of prospecting, using the phone, email, and direct mail, networking, and using social media. It is perhaps the most misunderstood activity in the business world today.

But there is something we must do, before we start any of these activities. Let me ask you a question.

When you dig for gold are you creating it?

So let me ask you another question.

When you are looking for new customers are you creating them?

No, gold, like your potential customers is already there, and you need to discover them in a particular place. You don’t just start digging where you stand or wherever you fancy you have to do some research before you set up a gold mining operation. You have to do land surveys, study soil samples, study rock samples. You have to do lots of preparation before you commit the money and resources to start the actual mining process.

The old prospectors of the Wild West went where they thought they had a good chance of finding gold. In prospecting for new sales opportunities you have to have the same frame of mind. In fact being successful in selling is very similar to gold mining. If you just pick up the phone and start calling companies on a list you are not going to be very successful. You need to have some evidence or gut feeling that they have needs or a requirement already exists. Then you match up your solution to meet their requirements.

Your initial focus should not be on selling; you need to focus on discovering how the company in question can benefit from your product or service. Once you discover their needs, you can sell based on how your product will meet their specific needs!

Now this is what Yellow Snow are very good at, as they understand the need for prospecting. They do their research, network, cold call and use social media to prospect for opportunities. When they find a potential opportunity they record and manage it. How they manage and record their prospecting opportunities is fantastic and something other companies could introduce for themselves.

This is what they do to ensure the potential prospects are not forgotten. They have an opportunity wall that has clippings of newspaper article or prints from websites with details of the prospect or details of a story about the prospect pinned up on the wall. The cuttings are listed into the sectors they are targeting with comments on the prospects printed on the cuttings.

This opportunity wall ensures that the potential opportunities are visual and are followed up. Once they are qualified as a genuine opportunity they move the prospect name onto a white board full of live opportunities.

Yellow Snow get the importance of prospecting, understand it is hard work, and ensure that every potential opportunity is qualified to see if there is any work for them.

So the tip this week is copy Yellow Snow. Prospect professionally and have an opportunity wall to see how your prospecting is going.

DEVELOP A SALES CAMPAIGN

If you would like to improve your prospecting skills and be able to put together a sales campaign then please give us a call as you may be eligible for our free fully funded ’Marketing and Sales for Business’ course.

This short programme will walk you through the development, implementation, and execution of a sales campaign. The good news is that this can be on a 1-2-1 basis and at your workplace.

LIMITED OFFER

We have a limited amount of FREE fully funded sales, retail and customer services training available to SME’s in the North East region. The eligibility and criteria is very flexible which most of the SME’s in region will meet. The issue is that it is very limited.

If you want more information on this limited offer to increase your sales please contact us on 0191-2267366, email us at sales@arrowsales.co.uk or visit us at http://www.arrowsales.co.uk/

YELLOW SNOW

For more information on Yellow Snow visit http://www.yellowsnowstudio.com/?page_id=14

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Arrow Sales Training Limited .