by Shannon F. So you’ve been given a leads list of companies planning an office move. If you’re a moving company or an organization that provides office furniture, equipment, and services, this is actionable information that could have lucrative results – but you lack confidence when pursuing these prospects because they didn’t disclose their information directly to you. You would hate to come off as pushy or invasive. The truth is: top sales reps buy as many lead lists as they can get their hands on. Effective salespeople know they should keep adding lead sources until they can’t handle any more, but they also know that there’s a right and a wrong way to handle prospects who did not directly disclose TO YOU their plans, needs, and intent to buy. 1. Be selective. Scrutinize the leads list to see which prospects are a good fit. By doing your research ahead of time, you won’t waste time pursuing leads that are outside of your territory, too small, or otherwise not a good prospect for you. 2. Try to find a better contact in the company. Do you have an associate or friend who knows someone in the organization you are approaching? See if you can get an introduction. The rule that people do business with friends (not strangers) still holds. 3. The first time you contact a lead, you should NEVER try to sell. Send an email with free information, suggest a blog post or article that might be helpful, or […]

In the past, we’ve discussed how trigger events such as an office move are the best indicators of an impending purchase. But what happens when a prospect refuses to admit that the trigger event is actually happening? This is a customer scenario that we see frequently:

Sales Rep Bob contacts a confirmed office relocation lead, and the company (let’s call them ABC Co.) promptly tells him: “You’re the fifth salesperson to contact me today. I don’t know where you got your information, but we’re not moving our business.” Sales Rep Bob becomes discouraged and assumes that ABC Co. is telling the truth: they’re not moving. He gives up on the lead. Several months later, ABC Co. relocates their office, using the services of Bob’s competitor.

by Shannon F. If purchasing a list of sales leads doesn’t sound like permission-based marketing to you, keep reading. At InsightPRM, we provide targeted office relocation leads while also encouraging our customers to say “please” before aggressively marketing to those prospects. In fact, we’d like to take the word “aggressively” out of that last sentence and replace it with “politely.” You’ll be most effective if you follow these three Victorian-inspired etiquette rules. Don’t contact someone without an introduction. In the Victorian era, it was unheard of to call someone without a formal introduction. Even if your sales lead provider gives you some great contacts, never call those first. Instead, see if you know someone who knows someone within the company, and get a proper introduction. Your mutual contact should say something along the lines of, “Hello X, my acquaintance Z is ever so desirous of meeting you. With your consent, I’ll bring her around in my carriage tomorrow at half past two.” (Arranging an introduction is actually much simpler than it used to be. Simply do a Linkedin search for contacts you know or wish to know at the company you are hoping to do business with. If you have a Linkedin connection in that company already, he or she should be your first contact. If you don’t know someone at that company, you surely know someone who knows someone. Actively build up your local Linkedin network until you have a means of introduction at any company you wish to […]

by Shannon F. Many small businesses that we encounter prefer doing things the old-fashioned way—even if that means recording customer and prospect information in the margins of a mildewed ledger by the light of a dripping candle. We’ve found that making sales cold calls doesn’t actually take much time—it’s preparing for and logging those calls the old-fashioned way that can be time-consuming. Thumbing through spreadsheets to find your contact takes a couple of precious minutes, and after you’ve made the call, you’ll waste even more time scribbling notes, setting a follow-up call date in your calendar, and looking up the prospect’s email address to send a follow-up message. If you are doing everything manually, there are simply not enough hours in the day to make all the calls you need to drive revenue and achieve your sales goal this year. You better learn to like working by candlelight, because you won’t be able to afford your electric bill. The thing is, we understand why so many salespeople like doing everything on paper. It’s simple and intuitive to get your leads in a spreadsheet and work through them with nothing but a notepad and a telephone. It’s just slow. And unfortunately, today’s salespeople need to speed up productivity to reach their busy prospects. Gone are the days when you could get in touch with someone via a single easy phone call. The good news is that there are some pretty fast CRMs on the market that are simple and intuitive to […]

By Shannon F. Depending on where you live, there may still be graying slush in the street and a half-melted snowman on your lawn, but the first day of spring is still a time to heat up your B2B sales numbers. We’ll spare you the clichés about spring as a time of rebirth. Here are three real reasons for making the first day of spring count! 1. It’s true: people make more, and better, decisions in the spring. They tend to have increased energy and enthusiasm now that the Second Quarter is beginning and the sun is shining a little harder. Start reaching out to these people at once! You’ll find that prospects who were sluggish about wanting to buy from you in the post-holiday months are suddenly starting to reactivate projects and ideas that were dormant over the winter. 2. Hiring peaks in the spring. The Second Quarter is often a time for companies to evaluate their personnel and consider adding new members to the team. If a company is expanding significantly, they will likely have the budget and the need for products like office furniture, IT equipment, and more. 3. Most office moves take place in the warmer months. An office move is one of the biggest events in the life of a company, and it’s when businesses will spend the most on B2B products and services. In the spring, construction and renovations typically take place at the leased office space. This makes spring an ideal time to […]

  by Shannon F.   Literally all of our InsightPRM clients offer products and services that relocating companies need—like Commercial Real Estate, Telecom, IT Services, Moving Services, and much more. We stress to these clients that it’s not enough simply to target companies that are moving in the near future. Having only short-term prospects in your pipeline is the sales equivalent of going grocery shopping and just buying one box of frozen bagel pizzas. (We apologize in advance for this extended analogy.) Sure, you’ll eat for a day, but you won’t know where your next meal is coming from. Just like stocking up on staples to have on hand for future dinners, packing your pipeline with possible leads can keep you from going hungry during a period when you don’t have enough short term prospects. That’s where Lease Expiration data comes in. Our clients can use the database to check out prospects whose leases will be ending within the next three years. Why is that useful? Because having a year or so to market yourself to potential customers is an awesome advantage. By the time the customer needs your product or service, you will have had the opportunity to enter at a consultant level instead of merely as a bidder. We tell salespeople to keep on top of long term leads even if they feel it’s too early to start making cold calls. Our most successful clients send mailers and free information to prospects as soon as the lease expiration […]