Capitalizing on Niche Markets
Selling to Protestant Churches Businesses
Without a doubt, Protestant churches are high value sales targets in today's marketplace. Here is the information that will help you get started selling to this market.
Although there is a strong market for products geared toward Protestant churches, breaking into the market can be daunting.
If selling to Protestant churches is your bread and butter, your odds of success increase dramatically when you incorporate a few proven resources and techniques into the selling process.
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 fall short of ROI expectations.
For example, even though it might seem logical to increase the size of your sales force to expand your base of Protestant church 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 recruit the cream of the crop and routinely evaluate them against performance goals and benchmarks.
Although annual reviews may suffice 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 increasing sales volumes and individual achievement. In some instances, it may be appropriate to team underperforming sales reps with reps that have more experience selling to Protestant churches.
Message First, Targets Second
Messaging is a fundamental component of sales. Confused messaging dilutes the sales cycle and frustrates prospective customers' efforts to discern the value of your products.
Whenever possible, the identification of key messaging should be incorporated into a comprehensive planning process that combines sales and marketing into a coherent strategy.
The next step is to reduce your contact list to the contacts who are most likely to respond to your messaging. Although there is more than one way to capture lead contacts, lead lists can be a useful resource for generating a list of prospects that are receptive to your messaging. Vendors like Experian specialize in providing targeted lists of Protestant churches that can be customized to your precise specifications.
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