Selling More
Selling to United Methodist Churches
Most would agree that United Methodist churches are high value sales prospects for businesses with an eye on growth. For companies that sell to United Methodist churches, the upside is that a strong selling approach can lead to quick gains in this market.
Getting your foot in the door with United Methodist churches can require complex sales and marketing strategies.
Don't be intimidated by the speed of the marketplace. Although speed is important, sales fundamentals and logical strategies will make the biggest difference in the success or failure of your selling efforts.
Industry Experience
In United Methodist church sales, industry experience is an advantage. Although it isn't necessary to have decades of front line experience, it helps to speak the industry language and to be acquainted with the concerns of a typical United Methodist church.
B2B sellers who lack industry experience can compensate for inexperience by subscribing to trade journals, partnering with industry insiders and immersing themselves in the industry culture. Remember, United Methodist churches may also be more friendly to sellers within their network, so it's important to increase the size of your network as quickly as possible.
How to Find United Methodist Church Leads
Leads are the foundation of successful selling. The first step in lead generation is to analyze the local market. From there, you can widen the field to include the yellow pages, Internet searches and trade listings.
The names of United Methodist churches you obtain through your own efforts need to be qualified through phone calls, emails, and face-to-face conversations.
But the most dependable source of qualified sales leads is often a third-party lead list provider. For consistently high quality lead lists, we recommend Experian Business Services to our business partners. Experian has a reputation for providing updated and sorted lead lists that can be used for direct mail and other marketing efforts directed toward United Methodist churches.
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 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 United Methodist churches.
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