Two foundational elements are crucial to the success of sales, without which, most sales organizations will suffer 
from:
- A weak sales pipeline
- Anemic revenue numbers
- Turnover of high powered sales reps
Odds are likely that you’re making at least one of these mistakes, but choosing to ignore them or assuming you have them mastered is a HUGE mistake.
Here’s the good news… You can easily fix the problem, IF you know what it is…
So, what are these two critical elements to the success of sales?
- Do you have ENOUGH LEADS?
The first question is simply this: Do you have enough new targeted prospects being added to the top of your marketing and sales funnel on a consistent basis?
Or, is your sales team forced to:
- Work through an outdated, limited set of in-house contacts?
- Hunt for their own leads online via LinkedIn, Data.com, “Top 100” lists, or other sources?
- Wade through a morass of poor quality trade show leads to find real buyers?
Here’s a FACT: Forcing your sales people to hunt-and-peck for quality sales leads can cause serious problems for your business, such as:
- Turning Professional Sales Reps into Research Analysts:
Once you open up the requirement for sales people to perform research to find leads, you create a monster. Your sales people will spend more and more time as Research Analysts, hunting online for “top 100” target account lists, sorting LinkedIn by industry or job title, reading through company websites, etc. to identify target accounts and key contacts. Now remember, they are doing all this work INSTEAD of making sales calls. Do you really want your sales people spending their valuable time doing this?
- A Free Pass to Not Make Calls:
Next, making your reps hunt for prospects also means you’re giving them PERMISSION – a free pass – to NOT make calls. This means they are spending less and less time picking up the phone to make sales calls. For some reps, hunting for leads may even be a welcome distraction from the real work – the outbound sales calls – which means the real selling work is simply NOT getting done. HUGE MISTAKE!
- Decreased Morale & Increased Turnover:
Finally, and maybe most importantly, by forcing your sales reps to dig around to find leads to call on, you are also driving them out of the company. When your highest achieving reps – your most valuable asset – finally get fed up with having to constantly dig for their own leads, they will move on to pursue more rewarding work elsewhere. Decreased value-added work, reduced morale, and the resulting diminished earnings, will always lead to costly employee turnover. Don’t create this situation, especially when there is a solution right at your fingertips!
If your sales people are spending time digging for the right companies and contacts to sell to, it’s time to make a change. While solutions may elude those marketing to other industries, if you market to Corporate Training & HR, you’re in luck! Mentor Tech Group is the data partner you’ve been looking for. We specialize in corporate training and HR, hand-building a database of decision-maker contacts to whom you can market and sell your services.
We have done all the hard work for you!
MTG specializes in providing high-quality market intelligence data for companies marketing and selling to the following industries:
- Corporate Training
- HR
- E-Learning
- Talent Management
The MTG database is unlike any other Corporate Training & HR market data source available in the marketing today. We offer:
- 100% human-verified data; Hand-built by our team of Market Intelligence Consultants who make more than 100,000 phone calls per year to ensure data quality
- Confirmed Decision-Makers contacts in your target industry: Corporate Training / HR / Talent Management / e-Learning
- Sorted by Job Function – not nebulous Job Title (We help you reach the people responsible for making the decisions!)
- Four month data updates, to keep up with the constant changes in this industry
Used year-after-year by many of the top-name companies in your industry, Mentor Tech Group data is simply second-to-none.
Okay – so let’s say you have a solution in place, and you now have enough prospects to add to the marketing funnel. HOW are you going to market to them in an effective way to help your team more easily identify interested buyers??
This brings us to the second critical element to assist sales in achieving great success…
2. Are you CREATING QUALIFIED “HAND RAISERS”?
Not only do you need to cast a WIDER NET by marketing to MORE leads, but you also must have a step-by-step marketing strategy in place to help warm up those leads. One of the most cost effective ways to do this is through the use of email marketing designed to build trust, evoke “hand raisers,” and initiate real conversations with decision-makers interested in learning more about your offering.
The best email marketing strategy is one that will bubble-up qualified prospects for your sales people to then work into interested buyers. The following email marketing best practices can yield such results:
- Consistency – Send campaigns once or twice a month at regular intervals, without fail
- Use Value-Added Content (NOT sales content) in your emails
- Provide value-added, educational content to provide benefit to your audience. Content should be 90% informational, and only 10% promotional.
- Use a provoking subject line to encourage people to open the email
- Avoid the top email marketing mistakes
- Use “Email Teaser” content – i.e. Don’t give away the whole article in your email. Instead, use brief bulletized content in your email, designed to quickly pique interest, with links requiring the recipient click through to read the entire article.
- Phone based follow up: Track and follow up on all email opens and click-throughs. These are the “hand raisers” potentially interested in learning more about your offering.
- Call on all click-throughs within 48 hours after the campaign.
- Continue to provide value in your follow up calls to further demonstrate your willingness to become a trusted consultant. (Invite them to receive an additional “insights paper”, invite them to a demo or upcoming webinar, etc.)
- Adhere to all CAN-SPAM laws: Track and remove all unsubscribes from subsequent email campaigns, and follow all US CAN-SPAM laws when using email marketing.
If you are marketing and selling to corporate training and HR, do you have these critical bases covered?
As a leader in your organization, have you given your sales people the tools they NEED to succeed? Are you:
- Marketing to a large enough pool of targeted decision-maker contacts?
- Using an effective marketing strategy to easily identify qualified, interested buyers?
If not, it’s time to make a change.
We all know that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is CRAZY, right? So, stop. Regroup. Then take action to make a change.
It’s not hard. It can be as simple as making a phone call… We can help. Just pick up the phone and call Mentor Tech Group today.
Let us walk you through the simple “success formula” other MTG clients have used to develop a sales pipeline of qualified Corporate Training & HR leads with real revenue opportunity!
It’s time to work with a high-quality market intelligence partner SPECIALIZED in your target market. Mentor Tech Group offers the most accurate, highly targeted lists of decision-maker contacts in corporate training, HR, e-learning, and talent management available in the market today.
Corporate Training & HR is our only focus, and that makes all the difference!
Call us to schedule a sneak peek of MTG’s market intelligence database, and begin to develop a plan sure to improve your marketing results. We’re here to help, whenever you’re ready.
Phone: (651) 457-8600, Ext. 3
