Increase Sales Prospecting Success by Narrowing Your Options

As a growing business, it's incredibly seductive to want to keep all your options open. After all, just about every company "could" use your products or services. And, in a turbulent marketplace, it's especially hard to pass up an opportunity to bring revenue in the door.

But if you want to grow your business faster, that's exactly what you need to do—in many ways.

Let me give you an example of why it makes a difference.

For just a moment, I want you to imagine that you’re evaluating various sales trainers for an upcoming sales meeting. Your salespeople have really been struggling to set up appointments with corporate decision makers.

In your interviews with possible candidates you hear this (for example):

Sales Trainer A: We offer a full range of training programs for virtually all your salespeople's needs—everything from opening doors to negotiating deals to closing sales. We've worked with companies in virtually every industry, too. It doesn't matter to us.

Sales Trainer B: We help salespeople crack into corporate accounts and speed up their sales cycles. We work primarily with technology or business services firms, whose sales process is very similar to yours.

Who would you pick to train your sales team? If you're like most decision makers, you naturally gravitate to Sales Trainer B.

Why? You want to work with companies who are experts at solving problems similar to the ones that your own organization faces because they:

• Require less time to bring them up to speed.
• Can bring you valuable ideas, insights and expertise based on their experience.
• Have stronger, more robust solutions that are already tailored to your needs.
• Are less risky and easier to justify to their colleagues.

Today's stressed out, overworked decision makers nearly always choose the expert over the jack-of-all-trades. They're looking for the perfect fit who also makes their life easier.

Even though this is the case, many executives from growing companies still loathe closing down their options. They can't bear to walk away from any potential deal—even if it's not a good one for their firm.

Focus
To significantly increase your firm's sales prospecting success, it's imperative to focus.

Consider these two options as starting points:

• Market niche: Became an expert in high tech, health care or manufacturing. To really jumpstart your company's sales, have a niche within a niche. Focus on software firms, medical clinics or discrete manufacturing.
• Specialty: Develop in-depth expertise in one aspect of your business. Instead of sales training, focus on negotiation strategies. Instead of being a marketing firm, be a social media specialist. Instead of doing all things related to document management, start by being an order entry specialist.

When you have this type of focus, it's so much easier to create effective value propositions, lead generation campaigns, marketing programs and sales tools. Your salespeople will become experts too, making them more valuable to their customers.

While it's counterintuitive to narrow your options, it's the fastest way to sales prospecting success.

To significantly increase your firm's sales prospecting success, it's imperative to focus.