leverage sales calls with inbound strategy

If you could make one sales call generate the sales volume of two, three or more calls, would you? Several years ago, I discovered how to do just that. I’ll explain.

Automatically Leverage All of Your Sales Calls with This Inbound Strategy

In my road warrior days I traveled from one printing business to another, demonstrating our bindery products to get more customers on board one at a time.

My background is post-press which is the niche our products served. My sales growth strategy at the time was conventional: make phone calls, send letters, get appointments then hit the road. It’s the only thing I was ever taught and the reality is there is nothing like face-to-face personal visits for establishing a connection.

During these visits I noticed their eyes would light up whenever I shared a useful tip or technique.

Life suddenly got a little bit easier for them and the conversation got a heck of a lot easier for me.  In fact, sharing any type of info that was useful or fun had a similar impact. Often these little bits of shared experience were just as valuable as the products themselves. This worked both ways because I too, learned many new things with each person I met.

sales call frenzyThe simple idea is this: sharing such experiences with customers had the effect of cementing that relationship, of creating a bond. Individual email and phone conversations kept us connected and sales grew.
 
But with a customer list growing from dozens in to the hundreds and spread all across North America, there was simply no way to make regular visits to everyone to keep that good feeling percolating and to personally share new tips and insights. There were very real time and financial limits to what I could do as a solo salesperson.
 
One day the obvious dawned on me: the written word could do some of the work for me.

Sure, in a perfect world, face-to-face is the “ideal” way to do business. But it limits the growth available to one person. There are only 24 hours available to you and me each day, and only so many people we could possibly visit per day, even with unlimited resources. I could certainly keep the regular one-on-one alive for a few dozen customers but how could I do that for a few hundred customers, never mind thousands?

A printed newsletter was the answer.

It freed me from the limitation of one-to-one interaction.

It freed me from the limits of trading time for dollars.

With a newsletter, I could personally speak to every single one of my customers and prospects every month, almost as if I were there in person. It was also more personal than email as well as more fitting for someone invpower of printolved in the printing industry!

So I simply started sending out a rather scruffy looking newsletter printed, stuffed and stamped from the kitchen table at nights. We had already started using sequenced mailings (click here for more on how that works) which had doubled our sales in the space of one year.

When the print newsletter was added, our sales doubled again the following year, nearly doubling our roster of clients as well.

This was powerful!

  • Prospects I hadn't closed in person eventually purchased in response to the newsletter.
  • Prospects who wouldn’t entertain a personal appointment with me made the buying decision after getting our newsletter.
  • People I had never contacted, who had signed up for our newsletter, became regular customers.
The net effect was that we had truly taken my solo sales effort and multiplied the sales three-fold, without having to do three times the sales calls.

You can do the same. The printed newsletter is an effective, powerful way to keep the connection with customers alive and to answer questions and establish credibility with prospects.

It reminds customers that you are still around to help and to share. It produces genuine interest from prospects and makes them feel comfortable with you and with your company.

You too, can start down the same productive sales growth path today by sending some type of regular written communication to your prospect and customer list. Read more about what other newsletter marketing experts have to say and get tips on implementing your own newsletter marketing program.

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