Niche Sales Strategies
Selling to Data Processing Equipment and Supplies Businesses
To be sure, data processing equipment and supplies businesses are excellent sales targets -- and that presents an opportunity to entrepreneurs who have aggressive revenue targets. Here's the information you need to boost sales to data processing equipment and supplies businesses throughout the U.S..
In today's economy, even small missteps can have dramatic consequences for your company's bottom line and impede your selling success.
For B2B professionals that sell to these companies, the industry's positive growth outlook makes the implementation of proven sales techniques more important than ever.
Cost Analysis of Your Selling Tactics
Every part of your sales strategy is worthy of cost analysis. Business owners sometimes overlook cost considerations and instead, choose to invest in sales strategies that underperform in the area of ROI.
For example, even though it might seem logical to increase the size of your sales force to expand your base of data processing equipment and supplies business customers, the additional labor overhead may make hiring cost prohibitive -- or at least unattractive compared to other less costly strategies.
How to Evaluate Sales Staff
Periodic staff assessment is essential for companies that sell in this industry. Businesses that achieve significant market share hire top-end producers and routinely evaluate them against performance goals and benchmarks.
Although annual reviews may be enough for other business units, sales units should be evaluated quarterly with monthly or weekly reviews of sales totals. Training, coaching and sales incentives can be useful for improving performance and revenues. In some instances, it may be appropriate to team underperforming sales reps with reps that have more experience selling to data processing equipment and supplies businesses.
Reaching Prospective Customers
Prospecting is the process of identifying potential customers and converting them to qualified leads.
Networking can dramatically improve your team's prospecting abilities and conversion ratios. However, it's important to make sure your sales force isn't so focused on conversation that they miss the point of prospecting, i.e. the identification of likely buyers, key decision makers and high value industry contacts. In other words, the type of people you meet is just as important as the number of people you meet when prospecting for data processing equipment and supplies businesses.
Lead lists are useful because they narrow the field for your team. Third-party lists from reputable vendors (e.g. Experian Business Services) equip your sales personnel with a large quantity of targeted leads, making it easier for your company to balance the quantity and quality demands that are prerequisites for effective prospecting.
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