Comments on: Sell to the People Who are Buying

By: Karen Scharf, small business marketing consultant

Karen Scharf, small business marketing consultant — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 13:50:42 +0000

it all boils down to how well you know your intended market. That’s the key in my opinion. Small businesses which often caters to a particular local should fine their niche market and cater to their main buyers.

By: Cecilia

Cecilia — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:13:31 +0000

Thank you Chris for adding to my post. It is key to target qualified leads, but the key issue now is to increase your customer base and expand your horizons. I was this morning talking to one of the directors of Direct TV in Argentina, the growth they are experiencing down here is huge, The company is doing much better than in the US; even if you sell Direct TV, there is a limited amount of people you can sell your products in the US, they are now enjoying the benefits of expanding to Latin America which has allow them to keep their growth projections and a lot of stakeholders very happy.

By: hamilton

hamilton — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:45:17 +0000

In reply to Chris. So, so true, Chris, about the bad things that seem to follow when you have to convince someone to do business with you. And that's typically preceded by a prospecting effort (or lack thereof) that doesn't get the word out to enough people. That's when you find yourself spending too much time with too few people.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:06:42 +0000

I totally agree. Too many companies identify a list of, say 25 companies, that they want to target. Then they spend all of their efforts on those 25 prospects – or should I say suspects.

If they’re lucky, they’ll get one new client out of the bunch. What forward thinking, salesmanship oriented marketers realize is that only when a prospect has pain that matches you product or service offering. If you focus on a limited set of prospects, it could be quite a long time until your message resonates.

A much better strategy is to cast the net wide and keep in touch at least monthly. That way in any given month, some number of prospects will be experiencing a pain you can solve. We’ve found that one of the worst client relationships you can build starts when you have to convince someone to do business with you.