Sales Process Steps Preparation Research Prospecting

Sales Process Steps: Preparation & Research – Know your product/ service and research the market potential.

Preparation is defined as the items that you simply do or the time that you simply just spend preparing for something.

Research helps in offering the tailored and personalized solution that improves the likelihood of closing deals.

Before a salesman enters the market to look for its customer it’s important to sharpen the weapons and knowledge.

Testing (often called client research) is a method of analyzing your client before putting money or time into advertising a product or services.

Example; like with producing television commercials, research helps you to find out how your target audience feels about your target. It also helps you understand your target audience’s personalities, what motivates them, and what information they need.

While it’s important to test with the target audience, you can also test without them as long as you understand the consumer and what their needs are.

If your products or services are for a hobby, such as starting up a business or a household, you can test a huge number of ideas without including your target audience.

Basically, what we’re looking at is a way to measure what consumers respond to without advertising and without spending a whole lot of money.

How the Process Works: I’m sure you’ve heard of A/B testing (A/B means In-Basket vs. Out-Basket), which is where you split your users (test group) in half and then ask them to complete two different tests.

One of the experiments is a classic A/B test, the other, not so much. You can ask your users to sign up for your newsletter or fill out a survey and then the other test, which you can set up in advance, is to allow your users to sign up for your newsletter. That way you have a control group (i.e. the people who completed your survey and who got in to your newsletter). 

You can also set up another experiment. In this test, you ask for your users’ email address and then simply leave the world open to what they do with it after they log it in. I’m sure you’ve seen this somewhere.

Another way to make some money without advertising is to use A/B testing with your products.

To get an idea of how important A/B testing is for start-ups and small businesses, just look at the two most successful start-ups of all time: Facebook and Google.

If you search for Facebook in history, you’ll come across countless pages about how it was able to save a group of businesses by allowing them to target users with customized ads.

Same with Google. If you search for Google in history, you’ll find pages about how it was able to save a group of companies by allowing them to target users with personalized ads (ads that weren’t visible to everyone else).

Even when you know that testing can be helpful, you should still do it. It can help you pinpoint what works best for you and also helps you develop the ability to test more quickly and efficiently.

How You Set Up Your Testing: I’m sure your customers/clients would like to know a little bit about your business. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.

Be nice, answer their questions, and build some trust in your company.

There’s a way to make them want to know more about your business.

Start off by asking them a question or two. In the case of marketing, it could be something like “what do you want to do today?” In the case of marketing to a specific group of people, it could be something like “how much are you paying to subscribe to our newsletter?”

Then try to get them to sign up for your newsletter or give you their email address.

You can follow up by telling them how to get in touch with you or to subscribe.

In the future, if you want to see what people liked or disliked about your new product or how to create a feature in it, you can test them on your landing page.

The first thing you have to do is test your new products, and keep them simple. Test if your email can be a marketing channel. Test if your website has a good, fast response. Test if your landing page is easy to use. 

Try using different marketing channels and tracking them for a couple of weeks. Then try again with a different section of your product or service. 

For example, if you’re having trouble getting traffic to your website, use Google Analytics to see if the Google Search box on the right side of the homepage gets most of the traffic. If that doesn’t get more traffic, you might consider adding some other kind of advertisement to the page (a countdown timer, popups, etc.).

The world is competitive; to outshine one must gain complete knowledge of the product/service being offered to the client.

There is no second chance to enter the game. If your armor isn't staked then your competitors’ will hunt you out of the game.

# Understand your product/service

# Make a checklist of Dos’ and Don’ts

# Do detailed research of competition 

# Understand your market and research the client requirements, before making product presentation 

# Imbibe your Script (eat-sleep-dream your script)

 

Prospecting – Finding your potential customer or targeted group.

Prospecting is an enterprise process for identifying and evaluating sources of commercial and financial opportunities, identifying potential customers, and performing analysis on existing opportunities.

The most important process in “Sales Process” is:

 PROSPECTING (PRO+INRTOSPECTING)

# The tactic of sourcing new leads and analyzing the appropriate/correct person or group to finally present the merchandise is called prospecting.

# To remain a sales pipeline stuffed with leads, you have to prospect.

# Prospecting, if done correctly is that the fastest because of increase the closing rates. 

Client Prospecting is the process of building a database of prospective customers and prospects, making it available to be sent marketing messages, according to Bob Winger, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.

Client prospecting is a very active effort, which includes researching and qualifying prospects and then segmenting them, he said. This is done to identify likely customers or prospects, as well as to set goals and priorities for the campaign.

We have learned that prospecting involves an analysis of market opportunity, potential customers and existing customer relationships, product or service attributes, competitive information, buying strategies, and other business related information. It is important to use appropriate databases to collect information for prospecting and analyzing available data.

Real Estate Market Opportunity: Real estate prospects can come from industry, office, and government sources. These sources include:

For example, if you own a retail building in Mumbai and you know that there is a 25 percent increase in the amount of interest for high end apartments, the owners are ready to start an increased marketing campaign in order to obtain a solid return on their investment.

At the same time, because of rising property values in Mumbai there is a potential tenant for the properties that can possibly expand or acquire the current market share. At the same time, you could open up for bidding in additional properties in Mumbai or on the opposite side of the country in case you need additional funds.

Through client prospecting, you can obtain information on prospects such as their purchasing behavior, demographics and psychographics.

A key aspect of using client prospecting is to use micro segmentation to separate prospects, which can be done through search, social media, email and content in the landing page, Bob Winger said.

It's not just about automated client prospecting, but also data insights from live customers to identify the best way to use client prospecting, he said.

"Marketers can use live customers as a source of qualitative feedback on which strategies are working and which ones aren't," he said. And that information can also be used to identify and target different demographics."

Enhanced prospecting is also driving customer insights, according to Winger. The most common customer insights generated through enhanced prospecting are:

Awareness: Are prospects on your site, and are they buying?

Conversion: Do prospects go on to buy what you're selling?

Optimization: Are you converting all your prospects?

Feedback: Do customers find your site valuable?

Potential: How are prospects trending over time?

Optimization also provides visibility to the business, which was a scarce commodity before.

Enhanced prospecting has also enabled businesses to gain an up-to-date picture of prospects so that they can be best prepared for customer acquisition, according to Evelyn Zohlen, CEO of Momentum Worldwide.

3 Stages In Prospecting:

(a) Targeting Audience – First of all find the appropriate market audience for your product. The market is analyzed basis the merchandise value/ product utilities/ geographical and demographic habitation source/ socio-economic factor of the realm.

(b) Data Sourcing – Basis the market research, collect the knowledge of the clients to be contacted. Data mining must be executed on the basis of prospect analysis.

(c) Qualifying the Data – (what’s right for me) After collecting the information it’s time to do dissection. Attempt to mapped out the information within the way that you just have the filtered list of people to be contacted as per your product. 

Prospecting Tools:

(a) Cold Calling – Helps to make direct contact with the client

(b) Direct Phone Calls – Helps in an exceedingly targeted approach

(c) Mailers – Helps to attain masses in no time

(d) Flyers – permits you to spread your message creatively

(e) Postcards – Makes an immediate reach to the prospect desk

(f) Events/Activities – Helps in mass interaction with prospects

(g) Social Media – Reaching the masses in every corner of the world

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