B2B Selling Advice
Selling to Interior Landscaping Businesses
As the clouds dissipate, interior landscaping businesses are slowly emerging from the Great Recession and are positioned for investment. For companies that sell to interior landscaping businesses, the focused selling strategies discussed in this article can be important for breaking into the industry.
Despite robust demand for products sold to interior landscaping businesses, penetrating the market can be daunting.
Many interior landscaping businesses expect high levels of service from the companies they do business with. But service alone won't close the deal. For B2B companies that sell to interior landscaping businesses, the steady execution of business fundamentals is just as important as your relationships with your customers.
Sales Incentives
In a perfect world, you want your sales force to be self-motivated to perform at a high level. But to inspire your team even further, consider offering sales incentives to sales reps that exceed interior landscaping business sales targets.
Incentives don't have to be cost-prohibitive -- sometimes just recognizing an employee's worth to the organization is more valuable than an expensive incentive that lacks recognition or prestige.
Casting a Broad Net
The first step in selling to interior landscaping businesses is to take a broad approach to the marketplace. Strategies that are isolated to the local market are not likely to succeed in an environment that leverages the benefits of long-distance sales techniques.
Although a geographic concentration may be a useful strategy for new sellers, you will eventually need to increase your bandwidth to include prospects outside of your initial range. You can also broaden your prospect base by expanding your product line or by creating strategic partnerships with suppliers of complementary goods.
Reaching Prospective Customers
Prospecting is the process of identifying potential customers and converting them to qualified leads.
Networking can fine tunes prospecting performance 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 interior landscaping businesses.
Lead lists are useful because they narrow the field for your team. Third-party lists from reputable vendors (e.g. Experian Business Services) arm your sales force with good leads, making it easier for your company to balance the quantity and quality demands that are prerequisites for effective prospecting.
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