In our last article, we explored the pitfalls of using social media to locate decision makers – the people YOU want to sell to. Using 
B2B social networking sites to locate decision makers is time-consuming and too limited in scope to get the real results you need. But, there is a better way!
We left you with the following questions in our last post:
- What do “best-practice” salespeople do?
- What do optimally-effective salespeople do?
So… what DO great salespeople do? What are some of their best practices we can follow to determine if and how to use social networking as a lead generation tool?
Salespeople sell when they talk to decision makers – period. That’s how they make more sales. That’s how they make more commissions. Avoiding ALL other activities is advisable to maximize sales. Think of it in terms of a well-known business principal:
The Pareto Principle
This powerful idea, as it relates to sales, reveals that:
- 80% of sales are made doing only 20% of the tasks!
The most effective 20% of tasks a salesperson does, no doubt, includes primarily talking to the decision maker. The other 80% is everything else.
So in order to sell more, sales reps must spend more time on the 20% activity – talking to decision makers – and less time looking for decision makers.
Hypothesis:
- The most successful salespeople focus on the 20% of tasks that makes them most productive. In other words, they talk with decision makers more often than less successful salespeople.
- Looking for decision makers (the 80%) is time spent ineffectively.
- Instead of spending x hours per week LOOKING FOR the decision maker – isn’t it more sensible for a salesperson to spend that x hours TALKING TO the decision maker?
Salespeople who are spending valuable time looking for decision makers on social networking sites are engaged in an activity OTHER THAN SELLING – i.e. not an optimal use of their time. (Note: They wouldn’t have to waste time like this if you gave them a better strategy.) Additionally, most salespeople are getting paid a salary, so the $ clock is ticking while they are chumming for leads on a B2B site. Time is money!
So…how can you get your salespeople to spend more time talking with decision makers? The good news is that there is a company that specializes in finding corporate training and HR decision-makers.
Mentor Tech Group (MTG) helps save time for your salespeople, so they can spend more time SELLING! By using the MTG database of decision maker contacts in Training and HR, your salespeople will no longer have to dig around on social media sites to locate the right contacts!
Successful salespeople simply spend more time selling and less time digging for leads. Finding a partner to provide high quality, accurate lists of decision maker names and contact information is key. Marketing and selling to those leads on a consistent basis will then produce the real sales results needed to consistently keep the sales pipeline full.
Questions:
Is it wise for your sales team to spend SO much time searching for contacts to call?
- Wouldn’t it make more sense to increase the amount of time your salespeople actually spend talking with decision makers?
- What if your sales reps could spend as much 40% or 50% of their time focused on speaking with decision makers? What would your sales pipeline look like then?
Wait – before you answer: Now consider that maintaining a list of decision makers is a full time, never-ending proposition. Why? People move around – a lot. A contact list you have today is GARBAGE in just four months. (See below…)
Realities of building a contact list:
During a recent four-month period, there was a 35+% change rate in Mentor Tech Group’s 40,000+ contact database.
- That is, more than 1/3 of the contacts in our database had a change in their information in just four months!
- The rate of change for a recent eight-month period was 58+%, and this is not at all unusual
- The 12-month change rate in our database is often more than a whopping 70%!
That means nearly 3 out of 4 contact records in our database had a change in the past year. That’s A LOT OF CHANGE!
Can your sales people keep up with that change without help?
And do you even want them to try??
Trust me. It’s a full-time job.
Unlike social networking sites that drive quantity, not quality, investing in a high quality database of confirmed training or HR decisions makers will save your company valuable time and resources, especially if you are asking your salespeople to do more with less. Let them get back to what they do best – SELLING!
With MTG’s Market Intelligence at their fingertips they can call, email or send a direct mail piece to 1000 confirmed decision-makers in less time than what it takes for them to build a quality list of only TEN confirmed decision-makers using social networking sites.
Clever companies are going from Point A to Point B in a straight line – speaking directly to thousands of decision makers – and leaving the maintenance of their ever-changing targeted information to Mentor Tech Group.
Which makes for sense for your business?
- Making your salespeople find their own leads? (80% activity), OR
- Empowering your salespeople to sell (20% activity) by investing with a company specializing since 1999 in finding training and HR decision makers?
The choice is yours. To start saving money, please contact us at (651) 457-8600, Ext. 1.
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