Successful sales professionals can end their careers with outstanding sales opportunities. These have been generated through relationships, referrals, or walk-ins who are still looking for their options. Sales professionals invest their own time and money in attracting customers to purchase their company’s products or services. Some potential customers take months or even years to manifest a sale. Outstanding leads from a retiring salesperson can be very valuable to someone else in the same field.
Skill Level – Easy
Generate an organized spreadsheet of leads. Lead lists should be divided into groups of most interested, possibly interested, observers, and unknowns. Each name should include a phone number, email, mailing address, when the relationship was established, and what products or services interest them most. Successful sales reps will also have bits of information about the customer in writing. This data helps establish trust between the employee and the customer while also giving the sales associate a topic to start a conversation. Each section should be numbered chronologically from oldest to newest.
Consider the value of potential customers. Sales positions have a flat fee for commission received. When determining how to sell your sales leads, you need to consider the value of each lead from a commission standpoint. Even third-party companies that sell business leads rank them based on their location, buying tendency, and general interest in a product or service. 1% to 5% of a potential commission amount can be claimed as the price of a lead.
Tell your success story. For other sales professionals to have faith in your sales opportunities, they need to yearn for your success. Paint a picture of the time and effort that went into finding and nurturing the list of potential customers. He talks about each client as if he were a personal friend. Associate sales leads with similar customers that resulted in sales. Show the projected earnings for each lead and explain the increased earnings through referrals.
Sell the list of prospects. Depending on the market a company’s products or services are targeting, there may be multiple people interested in business sales opportunities. The fair and impartial way to determine who potential customers can buy from is to enter all the names into a computer program to draw hats or names and select one. Some professionals may choose to give leads to the highest bidder, while others may choose to split leads equally among multiple stakeholders.
tips
Microsoft Excel can be used to create a spreadsheet of leads. Features are available that automatically classify information into necessary categories, saving time.
warnings
Don’t make up clues to make a list seem more valuable. Five to ten leads who have established relationships with a company and have experienced attentive service from other sales associates are worth more than 100 leads with an “unknown” level of interest.