Labor Day’s coming, which means it’s time to ratchet up sales
The rush to the end of the year is almost on us. You won't find the Labor Day-to-New Year's Day span on any fiscal calendar. It's not an official reporting period; it's the unofficial window of opportunity for business to focus on closing deals and end the year on a high note with revenue.
Here are five tactics to help you close as many deals as possible before the end of the year.
Start spreading the news
Toot your own horn; people like being with a winner. When a new client comes on board or when you expand your workforce, tell people. When a customer project produces significant results, tell people. Spreading the news does a couple of things: First, it lets customers and prospects know you produce results for your customers and are successful. Second, it reduces a customer's anxiety (more about this later).
Let history be the guide
The 80/20 rule says that 80 percent of the business comes from 20 percent of your customers. Figure out where you're winning (i.e., the 20 percent), and focus on more of those types of customers and prospects. Strategize with your sales team and identify the top 10, 20 or 30 prospects who look like your current base of satisfied customers. Then reach out to them. Find warm introductions. Send them helpful ideas that you learned from current customers. By connecting with prospects who have profiles similar to those of your current customers, you have a higher probability to close business and generate higher returns on your sales efforts.
The self-help path to business
Provide prospects and customers with self-help diagnostic tools related to the company's products and services. For example, Realtors could offer a simplified calculation worksheet so homeowners can estimate the value of their current properties. Insurance agents could offer a worksheet so customers and prospects can determine if their coverage is sufficient. At the end of each tool, add a “call me” sentence encouraging the recipient to call if there are problems, questions or issues. If the assessment tool is valuable and accurate, someone who calls will be pre-screened as a viable prospect.
Focus on existing customers
Your current customers already like you and buy from you. They're your best source for new business. But don't just call them up and ask, “You got anything for me?” That's a quick path to “No” and a reduction in the trust you've built with that customer. Rather, research current customers, and understand what they buy and have bought from you. That level of understanding helps you position additional products and services.
Also, understand why they buy and what your products and services do for them. That helps you learn where their anxieties lie.
All that leads to our final tactic …
Reduce anxiety
Buying decisions are emotional, not intellectual. Granted, intellectual analysis helps determine if something is worth buying. But the actual decision on whether to buy is an emotional one. The greatest emotional motivator is fear or anxiety. All of your marketing and relationship efforts should help you understand and reduce the customer's anxiety. That can lower the barriers to saying “Yes.”
These tactics should help focus the marketing and relationship efforts and make the last four months of this year more productive. But these tactics also work during the other eight months of the year. Start in September and carry them through the New Year. By next September, you will have already made your year a great one.
Ken Cook is co-founder of How to Who and co-author of How to WHO: Selling Personified, a book and program on building business through relationships. Learn more at www.howtowho.com.
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