The Death of the Pushy Sales Rep: 3 Proven Tips for Today's Top Performers by In

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How can we increase our conversion rates? How can we start seeing more sales? How can we make lead generation more efficient for our company?

If any of these questions sound familiar to you or your co-workers, then you?ll definitely be interested in hearing these valuable tips. This advice has the potential to not only bring up your sales productivity, but to also fundamentally change the way your company relates to its prospects.
Sell Less and Converse More

Busy professionals are usually difficult to convert with cold techniques and hard selling because they place high premiums on their time. Consequently, B2B sales teams that focus on conversing with prospects and cultivating relationships are the ones that are likely to see more sales. Why? It?s because mutual dialogue provides multiple opportunities to show leads why they can trust your company.

Furthermore, social media has completely changed the way people today interact. We now live in a culture of constant information overload. Anything we ever wanted to know is just a browser tab away. The growth in popularity of content marketing simply adds even more information to the Internet. We're drowning in marketing and sales messages, so we turn to our peers for solutions. We seek expert knowledge, and we tune in to conversations. Every article leads to another article that leads to another expert that leads to another solution that leads to another answer. We're consumers of conversations, not sales pitches, and sales reps that engage us in the conversations we care about are the sales reps we trust.
Know What Your Prospects are Buying

    The world revolves around me. Me, me, me. My favorite person: Me. I don't want email from you. I don't want junk mail from you. I want me-mail.-Seth Godin

Your prospects aren?t interested in your company or in helping you sell more of the products and services you?re offering. That?s your concern. What your potential customers want are solutions to the problems their businesses are dealing with. Incorporating a new service or product into daily operations can be disruptive. Your prospect needs to know that these changes will all be worth it.

Speaking of Pre-Contact Research: You can learn more about your prospect?s current situation by reading industry-related press releases and newsletters.
Nurture Your Leads

?Mac? McIntosh, a B2B Marketing consultant and speaker, says that one of his business clients ?increased its annual sales by 43% without spending one dime more than it did before implementing our recommendations.?

Remarkable as these results may sound, McIntosh?s clients accomplished this simply by going through their contact database and reaching out to prospects who had previously expressed interest but failed to follow through. If you do the same thing, you?ll probably find a number of warm prospects who fit these criteria. Between the sales boost and the reduced spending, companies have nothing to lose by trying this out.

There you have it. Conversation, the assessing of prospects, and the practice of nurturing warm leads are all ways your company can increase sales. More importantly, what these tips have in common is that they focus on engaging people rather than selling to them. As William Clement Stone once said, ?Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the prospect."

References

McIntosh, M.H. ?How to increase B-to-B sales without spending more on marketing?. Sales Lead Experts. N.p.,
n.d. 19 February 2013. Web. <http://www.sales-lead-experts.com/tips/articles/increase-sales.cfm>

Godin, Seth. "Seth Godin: Purple Cow." Fast Company. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. <http://www.fastcompany.com/events/realtime/miami/blog/godin.html>.

Stone, W. Clement. BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/wclements193775.html>.

Other Links

http://www.membrain.com/how-to-increase-profits-in-complex-b2b-sales/

http://www.venturechoice.com/articles/win_complex_sale.htm