Okay, so now that we all agree that time are tough, let’s do something about it. Now is the time to be active in getting business. Sure there may be some challenges, but we are not called The Business Solution for nothing. Let’s talk solutions.
Managing Customer/Prospects - Direct Mail Campaign
For some businesses sending out a direct mail piece is a lot of work. We have a customer who has regular Open Houses and it use to take 2 weeks to prepare the address labels for the mail out. You might ask why so long? Names are in Outlook, names are in Trade Show spreadsheets, names are in Invoices, and names are in Get the picture? Once names were typed into a label program they had to go in and look for duplicate names and addresses that were missing. It was a very time consuming job, now with their new system it takes 40 minutes (and this includes time to load and watch the printer print out the labels). Not only is it fast, but now they have one central database to manage all their customers and prospects.
Managing Opportunity and Sales Life Cycle
So what is the problem? If you only have a few names in each stage of the sales life cycle it is easy to stay on top of it. But what if you have 100’s or 1000’s? You need to know who to mail out to this week. You need to know who to call this week. You need to know who you have a sales meeting with. You need to know who to create quotes/proposals for. You need to know which sales prospects you are trying to close. You need to know who to invoice and who/where to ship products to. On top of all this knowing, you have to do the work to get and complete the sales. If you are a manager or an owner, you want to see how sales are going. You want to make sure no one is falling through the cracks. You need to make sure you have enough product or service available to fill the order.To have evenly distributed sales throughout the year, you need to have lists at each stage of the Sales Life Cycle (Sales Funnel). Every week you would have a number of leads to follow up on; a number of prospects to follow up on; a number of sales to close; and a number of sales to process. There is so much to know and do. Fortunately, with a good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system the “knowing” part is automated so it is a click of a button to send this week’s list out for direct mailing or email blast. Click a button and get your call list. Click another button to turn quotes into invoices. Click another button and send orders to the shipping department for shipping.So what happens if I don’t have a good CRM system? You spend too many hours each day/week manually creating lists and labels then copying and pasting or rekeying into the next stage of the sales life cycle. You are wasting valuable time that could be used to make another sale.
Bottom Line – A Two Step Recovery Program
#1. I am not going to be passive and wait for sales to come to me. I am going to actively go after them.
#2. I am going to use a good CRM system to do all the grunt work so I can focus on getting the sale and filling the order.
Location: SinglePost
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