I was reading an interesting books “Ants at work : how an insect society is organized“, and came across description of foraging activity in harvester ant colonies that seemed apropos to sales. Ant mounds have patrollers that go out looking for food and different mounds can have different amounts of patrollers. When there are very few patrollers out looking for food, they tend to head straight out well worn paths to the areas that have been productive in the past. They spend most of their time in the areas that are well-traveled. Conversely, when you have an ant mound with a lot of patrollers, they tend to spend a lot more time searching outside the main path, searching every nook and cranny.
Sales territories can be like this. As the product or company succeeds and sales get larger and larger, but the territories stay the same, many of us are like the patrollers that head straight to the target rich environment. Small accounts are missed, low budget accounts are missed, and we spent most of our time targeting the low hanging fruit. Meanwhile, the organizations with a lot of patrollers out pick up the pieces of those small accounts and are well fed.
We can’t change the sales structure, so how do we change from appearing to be a low-abundance patroller mound to a high-abundance one? These are just my opinions, but here are a few things I think that do not work and a few that do work.
Doesn’t Work:
- “Social Selling”. I can always tell when a company or division where I previously worked has just had a seminar on “Social Selling” because all the sudden all my old team members show up on Twitter. Luckily, most of them just join and then never do anything. But, occasionally, one of them will hook up a LinkedIn Elevate or Hootsuite account and start blasting Billboards. These are ads that no one looks at and doesn’t create any revenue. But, LOOK AT IT, IT’S COOL, IT’S SOCIAL SELLING! Best example of this is LinkedIn, where 99% of what gets posted are billboards. Social Selling is hard, you have to bring value for a long period of time before anyone will actually trust you. If you are a brand, then you have to provide troubleshooting, customer support, and personal interaction before anyone will pay attention to you. If you do those things, then Social Selling is a great idea.
- “Mass Email”. You are 20 years too late for your mass email lists to get traction. If you are giant company and 0.1% traction can make you million, great. But, one rep sending mass emails will just annoy customers and cost you sales.
Does work:
- “Targeted Emails”. We recently launched new LED light cubes that drastically improves the tiling on our EVOS FL AUTO, EVOS FL AUTO 2, AND EVOS M7000. This was a pain point for our customers and I wanted to let them know we solved it. Additionally, the cubes are close in price to our previous ones so this wasn’t a painful upgrade. I sent out an email to all our existing customers showing the data and prices, this included many small accounts that I rarely get to visit (pre-COVID). I didn’t receive a single negative response, we sold cubes to a number of customers, and more asked for prices for the next grant cycle or end of year spending. Emails that bring value to a customer are better than those seeking to bring value to you.
- “References”. You’ve closed a sale and everyone is happy. What should you do? Ask for references of others that might be interested in your product, but look further than down the hall or on another floor. Where did you customer go to school? What companies were they at before this one? If it is a smaller account in your territory, ask if they have any contacts there that might be interested in hearing about your product.
In sum, bring value and leverage that for a broader audience.