Finding new prospects is always a challenge. Without a pipeline of prospects, there can be little long-term growth.
Here are four ideas that may help your salespeople capture new customers:
- Review prospects’ history. Try to find out how long they’ve dealt with their present suppliers and who they used before switching to them. What made them make a change? Try to sum up their responses and suggest that it makes good business sense to look at other suppliers (that means you) from time to time.
- Take a second-source approach. If you find that a company has a long-term relationship with a present supplier and is not going to switch for any reason, try to establish yourself as a second-source supplier. There are a lot of events happening such as transportation problems, product discontinuations and many others that encourage a prospect to have a back-up source with demonstrated capabilities.
- Lead with research and development. There may be new developments, products or services that your prospects aren’t aware of. Use what you’ve learned about the latest developments in your field to help them.
- Highlight forgotten benefits. Many benefits of the products or services your prospect currently buys may’ve been forgotten or misunderstood. Try to remind them of the features your products or service offers that they aren’t taking advantage of.
Adapted in part from the book “How To Get Your Competition Fired,” by Randy Schwantz, a consultant and sales trainer.
