Capitalizing on Niche Markets
Selling to Printing and Writing Paper Businesses
Leading printing and writing paper businesses understand the value of every dollar. If your offerings appeal to this market, it's time to learn how to sell to printing and writing paper businesses in the current business climate.
Personal motivation is essential for entrepreneurs who are interested in selling equipment and supplies to printing and writing paper businesses.
Quality products, a good strategy and a lot of hard work are requirements for companies who sell to printing and writing paper businesses. Although there are market challenges, new companies can gain traction by applying a handful of tried and true sales principles.
How to Evaluate Sales Staff
Frequent employee evaluations are a must 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 printing and writing paper businesses.
Understanding the Market
Start with good market research, which is a prerequisite for profitability in this industry. Effective sales teams conduct thorough research on market demand, pricing and niche opportunities.
More importantly, they conduct research on the specific printing and writing paper businesses that they want to add to their customer roster.
Since relationships are an important part of the selling process, meetings with printing and writing paper businesses leaders and their staff facilitate the flow of the sales cycle. These meetings can also provide information that can give your business a competitive edge.
Reaching Prospective Customers
Prospecting transforms contacts into qualified leads.
Networking can enhances the value of prospecting and closing rates. 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 printing and writing paper businesses.
Lead lists are helpful 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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