Surprising Sources of Sales Leads

 Do you periodically reach out to failed sales and former customers? If not, you could be ignoring viable prospects.

It's easy to think of a lost customer as lost forever. That might be true, but if you don't stay current with former customers, you could be sealing your fate unnecessarily.

WHY YOU SHOULD REVISIT FORMER CUSTOMERS

The customer who let your contract lapse or failed to include you in their selection process did so for any number of reasons. Yes, sometimes your company made an unforgivable mistake or did something equally fatal. Often, it's subtler. Either way, if you give up on them, they're likely to remain former customers forever.

If you take the initiative and reintroduce yourself, you might find out-

• Your company was perceived to be unsuitable for a reason that is not currently valid. (Your prices weren't competitive; now they are. You didn't offer a one-stop-shop experience; now you do. The salesperson who used to cover that territory was abrasive; his/her replacement is well-liked.)


• Or the decision-maker who blackballed you or was unshakably loyal to your competitor is no longer there.


• Or the person who used to routinely include you in the company's selection process has moved up or moved on, and the new person doesn't know you to include you.

Possible outcomes: a renewed relationship, news that you truly aren't a match anymore, or a frosty shoulder.

WHY YOU SHOULD REVISIT FAILED SALES

Similarly with failed sales, they may not have chosen you when a particular decision was made. That doesn't mean they'd never consider you again, but it's your responsibility to stay on their radar. If they are marketed to by a sufficient number of companies in your category, they might not include you the next time they open their selection process. By writing them off, you turn "no" into "never."

WHO SHOULD REACH OUT?

Some companies are very good about asking departing customers for an exit interview and asking failed sales for a post-selection debriefing. Unfortunately, many of these companies assign this task to the salesperson or account manager the customer or prospect just rejected. That's cruel! Think about it:

• It's very difficult for one adult to say directly to another, "This is how you disappointed me," or "This is where you fell short."


• If a former customer or failed sale is willing to be candid, the average salesperson or account manager is likely to get defensive in response. In other words, they reward candor with an argument.

Instead, feedback from lost customers and failed sales is better solicited from the VP of Sales or Account Management (or Operations). What at first blush sounds like an unwise use of very valuable time turns out to be the best way to isolate root causes and reduce the number of future lost customers and failed sales.

You may ask why a former customer or failed sale would cooperate and offer honest responses to these questions. The answer is simple:

Companies need vendors.

If you lost the customer or the sale for reasons that can be addressed to their satisfaction, you might be the vendor that offers the best deal the next time they need your product or service.

Once your team members get past the understandable discomfort of asking for candid feedback and guidance, you might win (or win back) relationships you thought were lost forever.

Ann Amati, Principal, Deliberate Strategies Consulting, helps companies use guidance from their current and past customers to grow future sales. She has a 20-year track record of using deep-dive interviews to create positive turning points in her clients' relationships with their customers.

In her national practice, Ann has clients who sell millions to companies that make billions and sole practitioners/LLCs with more modest practices. She is the author of, "What Your Customers Aren't Telling You That You Need to Know," a collection of case studies, tips and tools for companies in commercial and industrial sales.

Make More Sales By Being Contrary

 Here's something I've been playing with, and my results have been pretty good, too.

A few months ago a friend was launching a big product with lots of cash prizes for the top affiliates. I knew there would be tons of affiliate competition, with every affiliate trying to out-do the others with bigger and better bonuses.

How to compete?

I decided not to.

Instead, I thought about what every affiliate's bonus pages would look like: Highly polished, slick, professional, lots of graphics, videos, etc.

Odds are they would all start to look very much alike, right?

So I thought... what if I did something different?

What if my page looked like something you might get in the mail - black and white sales letter, using the Courier typewriter font, very old-school looking...

And what if, instead of a highly polished professional photo of myself, I used one where I just woke up? Or one where I just finished exercising, or just finished the yard work?

In other words, I looked like the guy next door and not some slick marketer.

Taking this thinking to the next level, I decided I didn't want to spend time or money on creating a bonus. Everyone else was doing that, so why should I?

Instead, I would hold a live class. The homework would be to go over the program before class. Then in class we would implement, step-by-step, what was in the program. And I would record the whole thing, so people could just follow along.

In case you're wondering - it worked beautifully. My sales were a very decent 5 figure number, and my commissions were half that plus bonuses.

And one more thing - I cheated, too. I had my virtual assistant run the class for me. She got to learn some great new skills, and I put less than 2 hours into the entire project.

The takeaway: When you have a lot of competition, it's time to stop directly competing and find another way.

If they are using tons of graphics and slick videos, you go with a 1980's black and white typewriter look.

If they are offering bonus packages filled with 5, 10 or 20 products, you offer no products (I offered hold-your-hand training, which in my opinion is worth far more anyway.)

You get the idea.

Do you know what would work even better than that?

MAILING the actual letter. Yup. Talk about old school. If you collect real addresses of your BUYERS, you might consider doing this on big ticket items.

I know marketers who do this. They are few and far between, and they are KILLING it. They only mail to buyers, which greatly improves their conversions. They use a service to send out the mailers for them. And they make more on one of these mailings than most successful marketers earn in 6 months.

Which brings me to my second idea... if you don't already have the mailing addresses for your buyers, start collecting those now.

When you have a sizable portion of them (at least 200, preferably 500) approach a marketer with a product your list would love. Make sure there is plenty of profit in that product. Take the sales letter, adapt it to a black and white mailer (cheap to produce) and send it to your buyers.

See what happens. Tweak, rinse and repeat.

You can easily DOUBLE your income using this method.

Know why? Again, because it's contrary. It's different. Almost no one is doing it.

Your customer gets maybe a half dozen pieces of mail in a day. Two are bills. Two are sales flyers from local businesses. One is a catalog.

And then there's that mysterious white envelope. Yeah, it's going to get opened. Yes, it's going to get read.

Wow! They're surprised. Someone they know from ONLINE is sending them REAL MAIL.

They don't throw it out. Instead, they open their browser, type in the URL and ORDER THE PROGRAM.

Sure, not everyone does, but... enough do. Believe me, I've seen this work time and time again. Which is why I'm about to start sending out sales letters via snail mail (Shhh, don't tell anyone!)