Study your existing clients

It is far harder to find a new customer than sell to an existing one, yet many organisations spend time and effort doing just that. It is also easier to sell to new customers who are like your existing clients. On the management training side of my own business it is a very broad client base, yet on the sales training side it is more niche, so we can look at this.

Typically I deliver sales training to companies in publishing media IT and Telecoms, though this expands to manufacturing and engineering work when I work as an associate trainer. I have never carried out sales training workshops for chemical companies, automotive, retail or banking so I never go actively looking for this type of work, unless it looks for me!

So I focus on the sectors that I know and sell additional sales workshops (Up selling) or management training workshops (Cross-selling) in areas such as coaching skills, recruitment skills or emotional intelligence.

If I am actively to go looking for sales training work (Although fortunately most of my work on the sales training side comes from referrals) I need to do the following

• Firstly target by sector and target organisations in sectors that I know and have worked in.
• Secondly target by size and look at organisations at the right company size, too small and there are not enough sales people.
• Thirdly target by geography and decide how far you will travel
• Fourthly target by profitability, probably not worth going after companies like Woolworth's!

Once you have this plan analyse how many potential customers you will have and then the next stage is to create the strategy to get them on board.

Graham Price

http://www.salesacceleration.co.uk/