Hunting whales and white elephants//the complex sales

Well, I have had trade sites on my mind alot lately, because of another thread going on... Here is an idea to make getting a big deal simple.

1: Cold call manufacturers or any company that does bulk sales
2: Set them up an account on a trade site
3: List a couple of their products and put a product offer out there
4: Prospects will start emailing them within a week wanting quotes on large deals...
5: Leads roll in ten times faster than they do on search engines
6: Now these people think you are brilliant
7: Sell them a site and marketing plan and tell them that was only the tip of the ice berg.

You dont have to be an seo pro to set up accounts on trade sites and get them some leads, you can even offer it for free, in order for a chance to earn their business, because it only takes you a couple of hours to set the wheels in motion for them...but you have to focus on a different kind of customer, who does larger, international type deals.

If they have never advertised on a trade site before, the incoming leads so quickly will freak them out, and you will have scored a big point right from the start. These kinds of companies do million dollar deals...

Again, Im answering alot of questions in terms of trade sites , only because that's where my mind has been for a few days... Im actually going for a directory site model myself...but that is one way they can be used to get you in doors with big companies and make a point about your ability fast and hard.

Do that with five or six companies you might find yourself with a couple of potential $50,000 marketing contracts on your hands.

I dont do $50,000 webdesign and online marketing campaigns, in the sense that most offliners think of...but I have dealt with alot of those big companies in other areas. Helping them put together deals online in the 50k range... just never upsold them $50,000 sites afterward, but Im sure it can be done, using an initial lead generation campaign on trade sites and impressing them off the bat.

That may seem like an extravagant idea, but anything I have ever done that produced extravagant results started with an extravagant idea.

-John

With major account sales, try to break the company in to smaller units. What departments can benefit from your offering?

Try to get a foot in the door with lead-in offer. Pick one service you offer and use that to establish a beachhead. Don't go directly against embedded competitors. Flank them with services they don't offer.

You need to provide value right away. You should have already researched their company, competitors and challenges. Show them how you provide business value. Come in punching with ideas and proposals that can produce a solid ROI.

Lay off the trite questions about their kids or what their favorite sport is. Worry about establishing a personal relationship after you've created a business value relationship.

If you have a great offer, it's not hard to make the sale.

I jumped into local biz marketing because I offer a true win/win deal. I ask to get paid only when I actually generate a client sales. That puts the risk on me, but in return I earn on average $400 commissions. Since it's the local space, ranking isn't terribly difficult.

With this model, I don't have to sell it. Most businesses jump at the chance to only pay when they get paid. I don't care for selling, but I love referral marketing online so I deployed this model and it works great. A little SEO is needed, but it works great with PPC. I use both PPC and SEO.

The key is negotiating high commissions. Research CPC in Adwords to get an idea what the industry is willing to pay for new business. I assume a business pays for 100 clicks for one sale, so I take the average CPC and multiply it by $100. I then discount it a bit to arrive at a commission figure.

My idea of a complex sale is when you have multilple people involved and each of those people could be a potential decision maker. Maybe not the person with the final say, but people who are asked to see your proposal and offer up their opinion on whether the company needs to move ahead.


A lot of people are of the opinion that multiple decision makers or poeple who have a say in the process are just obstacles and should be treated as thus, and/or that you should play different departments against each other as one way to get through this process, but my opinion is to make them allies.

When you approach a company you are starting off with your own opinions and perceptions based upon your research about the company and what you feel or believe are their needs and wants.

It is possible that your opinions and perceptions could be very accurate, but it is possible that they could be off the mark.

Because of this, I feel that each one of these people that you will hvae to meet are people who can help you adjust your proposal as you go through the process so it is even more fine tuned and more accurately in line with the companies goals than when you first started.


So you turn each of these people into allies by asking questions and gathering information and either adding or deleting parts of your presentation based upon that.


Yes, urgency can still work. Just remember if you are working with more than one person, than the type of urgency and the goal you want that urgency to accomplish will be different for each person.



Not necessarily.

Just because the amount is higher doesn't mean that sale will take longer.

But higher amounts might mean that their level of trust in you and what you can do for them will be more important.

So you might need to elicit more trust and build up more value into your presentation.


Another point and this is my opinion is that just because there is more money involved (ie, you're asking for $5,000 instead of $250) does not mean the sale will be more complex.

In fact the opposite can true. There are a lot of times when dealing with higher amounts that the prospect has already done their homework, and has a better idea of what they want and what fits with their company and their needs. And they are quicker to make judgements not always based upon your sales presentation but upon you and how you come across (their belief in you and your ability to deliver.)

So they could make snap judgements based upon that and their own past experiences.


So when you mention telemarketing are you just talking about complex sales over the phone?

Just so you know my experience and what I have mentioned above is all based upon face to face sales experience and not phone sales. Although some of that is involved.

I've done B2C all my life, where the decision maker is (a) the check writer, (b) the influencer, (c) the end user, and (d) even the coach (husband and wife).

B2B is totally and entirely different, especially in medium- and large-sized companies.

I learned A TON and would whole-heartedly recommend sales training from Miller-Heiman for more of the specifics on how to strategize "the whale sales".

In some cases it can take knowledge of and relationships with the influencers in the
company. For example, if you look at the organizational chart, you might think the VP of
marketing would be the logical place to start, but it might actually be that the head of IT has more influence within the company for your proposal.

There was a thread here a couple of years ago - I think a WSO - where the OP got a large marketing contract with McDonald's and it involved outflanking the competition with help from the inside. Something like that was a component.

A friend of mine got a $70,000 initial contract with a large hospital and it took 4 years to get that in place. This was for organizational development consulting - so very intangible and dealing with a lot of sensitive company and personnel information and dynamics. And, he had a lot of contacts within the organization.

Dan