Salespersons get regular sales opportunities. The opportunities appear from happy customers, unexpected phone calls, and unplanned meetings (sales). However, most times, sales teams are not attentive to the opportunities presented before them. The reason is they are either doing some sales process or attending some meetings.
But sales reps have to look out for various sales opportunities or seize the opportunities whenever they come to the surface. So, there must be some ways that your sales team can identify sales opportunities before the competitors. Here are six easy ways to point out the new prospects, and they work for both B2C and B2B sales:
Let’s not wait to dive into the six best ways of identifying sales opportunities for your B2B or B2C small business.
In sales, lots of sequential steps take place, leading to the ultimate event, the sales transaction. Sales-qualified leads are mostly leads that have an interest in buying the product or service from you. Mostly, these prospects can afford it at the moment and are ready to make the purchase.
Sales-qualified leads or SQLs are mostly generated from efforts of sales prospecting like salesperson-to-salesperson communication, cold calling, or marketing sales campaigns. However, lead generation is a lengthy process and can be expensive for SQLs. The reason is that SQLs require a great deal of sales resources. So, sales experts have to ensure spending the sales resources on only sales-qualified leads with the most potential of converting to sales.
But what are the ways? You can just ask leads a few questions regarding their budget. For example: “What’s your ideal budget for the complete purchase?” “Can you share the highest amount you have spent on a similar object”? It will not only help you to save an ample amount of time but also prevent you from following up on any unqualified leads.
There are some other ways you can qualify your leads for sales offers, like sales forecasts. It will depend on sales history, financials, or competition analysis. Also, you can qualify for a few sales leads scrutinizing the sales cycles of other companies. Check the leads who have bought similar products from the companies, the length of the buying process, etc.
From the buying patterns of these leads, you will understand whether they will be interested in your product or not. Sometimes, the prospects already know their limitations and share clear information with you about their problem and want them solved. Then it will depend on your solution and what you are offering for them to buy it.
Sales-qualified leads go through the filtering process, but they come out on the other side as ready to buy. However, not all of those leads come from one place. Most times, the SQLs come from all sides of the world and of different age groups and different genders. Besides that, income levels can vary due to different occupations.
Not all of the leads have the same needs to be catered. When it comes to SQLs, you won’t be able to apply the same blanket sales tactic. Therefore, the marketer must know that not every message is for every lead. The messages have to cater to a particular category of potential customers.
As it is not possible to connect with all the leads one-to-one, there has to be some alternative. So, the sales team and marketing team must create buyer personas. The buyer personas give a general portrait of the audience of your business. It’s almost a fictional profile.
The function of the buyer personas is to group your audience into one bracket with similar individuals. Buyer personas create avatars for each type of strong personality that we come across. There can be a fast, active person who needs to do a quick reading before their purchase. As there are lots of personas, the buyer personas must accommodate them all.
There’s a way to choose criteria for each avatar. During sales, you may have to organize the prospects based on buyer readiness. You can also segment the SQLs based on pain points, location, income, or occupation. When a SQL lead matches a particular buyer persona, it creates a quick sales opportunity.
Let’s be honest; sales opportunities don’t have to come out and be presented in front of you. Why not create opportunities? But how can you do it? You will need customer referrals.
This is the time to turn your focus from sales-qualified leads; you can tap into the existing customers of your brand. Of course, you have to do the segmenting, like which customer is loyal and who buys most often from you. Also, do not forget to connect with those customers who have been with you for a long time.
Then, you can reach out to existing customers via email or a phone call. You have to inform them that you are starting a referral program. Do ask them to refer your service, product, or brand to anyone of their knowing. When word of mouth about your company reaches people via your satisfied customers, it impacts sales positively.
But why would your customers participate in the referrals? To make the referral program a huge success, you have to give incentives to the participating customers. Freebies or discounts are some ways to incentivize. There can be some big discounts or rewards for the most active participants in these referral programs.
Never neglect the importance and strength of “word of mouth”. When the lead hears a recommendation from your existing customers– family members, coworkers, friends, etc.-there would be a higher chance of your offer to work.
Affiliate programs or third-party referrals can drive the sales of your company higher. As you know about it, you won’t be able to wait to milk the opportunities coming your way from everywhere. So, we will suggest you build a third-party referral relationship.
There are billions of companies striving to boost their sales besides your company. All are attracting their own leads, qualified or less qualified. What if you connect with another company or influencer’s new qualified audience?
When you have a third-party referral program or affiliate program, you will have it. It boosts sales opportunities just like the customer referral program. Your affiliates also earn revenue from you when someone buys from the affiliate links of your services or products. In such cases, you should offer them money instead of freebies or discounts.
In today’s time, it is one of the best ways to get the word out about a product, service, or brand name. It pays off heavily. When you leverage social media to initiate affiliate marketing, it generates optimal results. As consumers see referrals via social media, they are more likely to buy. Affiliate marketing leads to higher sales.
There are no better ways to get leads than going out of your office and visiting events, expos, and conventions. Of course, don’t want to visit the places randomly. You should visit the places with the right strategy. Before you get any event ticket, create a list of the potential customers that are at a convention or expo. But do make it intentional to visit such events where you will find your target audience.
However, do not talk to potential customers forcefully. It’s best to keep your conversation friendly and casual while discussing your company and its services or products. Business cards are the best tools to hand out. You should end the conversation on a decent note before you move on to the next person.
When you evaluate the contacts thoroughly, they can get in touch with you. Keep all the contact info in one place through some CRM software. It will help you to follow up with sales calls and close some deals.
Software CRM nowadays manages customer relationship management or CRM. Here, you can manage all the contacts in one place, segment them, nurture them, contact them, and send automated responses. Also, the software lets you send newsletters and SMS broadcasts to your customers.
Sometimes, fewer sales opportunities can be an issue. But, most times, sales representatives feel overwhelmed by the amount of obtainable sales opportunities. Even though they have a good amount of opportunities, they have to find affordable yet high-potential openings.
If you use CRM software, then sales reps can organize the sales pipeline, track real-time sales progress, and identify the key factors related to individual sales opportunities. As the lead enters the sales funnel and moves through it, all the interactions get logged into the software.
You can review customer communications through the software and track when the lead is ready for sales. Also, the software can identify the best leads with high scores for you. It can also change the customer score automatically depending on their behavior. With CRM, you can reach out to less potent leads later on.
There are various ways you can improve the sales strategies after you identify the sales opportunities. Therefore, you have to identify the right sales opportunities, like qualified leads and overall leads. CRM software can help you with the myriad details of the sales process with convenience.
