How to exhaust sales leads
One of the most confusing and infuriating activities of being a new salesperson is how to organize yourself with new potential clients. You may have tried creating stacks by customer type, customer location, target product, or even time of year. If you’re pulling your hair out and surrounded by shredded pieces of paper, try organizing for sales lead burnout.
Keep in mind that you need to consciously cater to these leads that will help you make money on your sales job. Organizing leads before you start looking for them and keeping them organized after you’ve exhausted them is critical to knowing what stage you’re in and what needs to happen next.
Rule: You must touch a lead 6 times
1. Call the potential client in the morning. (9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.)
2. Call the leader in the afternoon. (13:00 to 17:00)
3. Call the leader at night. (5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.)
4. Call the leader on the weekend (9:00 am to 7:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday)
5. Go out and hit the door with the lead.
6. Send the message “I miss you!” card to the leader.
A top salesperson will touch/process a sales lead a minimum of six times before the lead is exhausted. You make 1 phone call in the morning, another day in the afternoon, and another day at night. Do you think your sales work stops completely at 5:00 pm because that’s when your boss closes for the night? Stop complaining, drink an energy drink and splash some water on your face. The second shift starts at 5:00 pm and lasts until 7:00 pm, so be prepared and on the phone when your clients can focus on you for the night.
Now you can try one of the best sales strategies used by people who sell millions of dollars. They sell on Saturdays and Sundays. If you sell B2B, you should know that small business owners live, eat, and breathe in their business more than 80 hours per week. Even if the sign on the front door shows closed, knock on the door anyway (loudly) and wait 5 minutes to see if anyone answers. You can always slip your sales brochures and personal notes to the night watchman to put on someone’s desk. If you sell B2C, your goal is to drive to someone’s house in hopes of catching them there. You might get lucky and find them watering the roses, watching a movie, or reading a novel, but give it a try and try to schedule a weekday date or make a sale.
Call your potential customers
You will need 12 red, 12 yellow, 12 orange, and 12 pink pocket files and a black permanent marker. If selling by location, tag a red pocket file, IE, “Memphis – 38002 New Lead-Call Morning” as the title. On a yellow file, make a label that says “Memphis – 38002 New Lead-Call Afternoon.” In an orange file, “Memphis – 38002 New Lead-Call Evening”. We have a pink file, “Memphis – 38002 New Weekend of Prospect Calls.” Do you see the pattern? Be sure to keep your sets of cities or zip codes in order one after the other.
go out and knock on the door
If your sales calls aren’t producing right now, skip to the good old-fashioned #5 method of knocking on the door. Make a simple manila pocket file and label it “Memphis – 38002 New Lead-Door Knock.” Make sure you have all your notes on each cable up to date. There should be a note online with the date and time of each call made to the leader in the morning, afternoon, evening and on weekends written on the paper. Now, some vendors will tag these as morning or afternoon door knocks, so decide if you need that detail. Other than that, try to visit the prospect face to face.
Mail the “I miss you!” card
At your local discount general store, look through the packages of greeting cards until you find the ones with the blank inside. They’re probably about a dollar for 12, so get 60. Make sure you get the ones with colored envelopes so they’ll stick out like a sore thumb in the mail. People open the colored envelopes first and if it looks like an invitation it inspires curiosity.
Your handwritten message should be about saving them money, saving them time, or making them smarter. It should inspire them to contact you urgently. You have to handwrite the address on the envelope. Don’t stick on a pre-printed label.
“Mister._____,
I’ve been trying to contact you. The new Widget 2000 will save you hundreds of dollars every year and I have it for you! Call me ASAP so I can get this into your hands and lower production costs!
Cheers,
your sales person
Phone number to call anytime”
depleted lead
Don’t pull that cable! Make yourself a storage box with hanging files by city or zip code. Put a label “Out of Stock-Month-Year” on the hanging file. Optionally, you can put a “Revive-Month-Year” label on the folder and make a note in your mail calendar to look at them again.