Oddly enough unlike the title of my blog (The Tommy Gun) a machine gun approach to sale is not necessarily the best. Target shooting is much more effective.
Targeted and strategically sales are always more profitable when dealing in the business to business (B2B) market. Selling to a large client can often be a challenge as more often than not there are a lot of hoops to jump through, especially if you have a revolutionary product from a small start up that has little market presence.
The following I hope is a couple of techniques that I have found to be successful:
Shooting the big fish
To generate market awareness with a large client (big fish) it is often best to have them as the end goal with specific and focused steps to reach that goal. A great way of achieving this is to sell your services to the large companies suppliers, if you manage this process well they will often endorse becoming great advocates for you and even assist in selling you into you end target company. More so the supplying companies are often smaller and will be able to make a decision faster - all at the same time you can refine your pitch so that when you have the opportunity your pitch to the large goal company is silky smooth.
Partnership shooting
Another great approach is to working in with a partner as often they will have the ear of the target company and be able to assist in the persuasion. This also positions you as the expert in that particular field and will assist in building your profile and respect with the target company.
Furthermore partnering will often give you greater PR and access to the partnered companies’ clients. Choosing a partner is a fairly important task as they have to share the same philosophies as you and obviously have to be in a similar market - i.e. design agency and email marketing agency.
The Audience shot
My last tip for the day is choosing an audience - much the same as selling to the suppliers, when I first started working with Calcium the first group I sold to was small to medium size advertising agencies as all of these companies were already dealing with my target audience, plus the fact that mailPrimer is a solution they quickly understood they soon became my strongest advocates and suppliers of business. This also gives me a passive entry to their client base and fast market awareness.
So that’s sales 101 always happy to hear feedback or to hear your tips for sales.