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VHQ Article - Managing Sales (EA).pdf

Managing Sales...Keeping your enterprise clients in business

Enterprise Agencies and business support organisations have a difficult job at the moment. The task encouraging start-ups to take the plunge and then nurturing businesses is never an easy one, and the troublesome economic conditions will obviously impact on this.

Fortunately the support sector has a number of levers to pull with a portfolio of services that small and growing businesses can access. But is this enough? VHQ Solutions' experience of SMEs is that there is one area where they require help above all others ... finding and winning new business.

It is always difficult to strike a balance between prospecting for new leads, delivering projects and maintaining a healthy sales pipeline. It is particularly hard for the smallest firms whose owners are often "technical specialists" and lack the skills, time or inclination to really drive sales.

When the economy is healthy the result is often feast or famine, where work comes along in fits and starts. In a recession the result is often just famine, leading ultimately to business failure.

So, how can Enterprise Agencies help their clients become smarter at nurturing prospects, managing sales opportunities and working the sales process to maximise their conversion rates?

Generating Leads

Enterprise Agencies can use their own position in the marketplace to help promote their clients' businesses. This could be as simple as providing online member directories or profiles that provide inbound links to a client's website. Or it could involve online PR campaigns that take advantage of free PR sites, blogs and even social networking sites.

Small businesses applaud support organisations that provide and promote networking events. For many start-ups and very small enterprises especially, face-to-face networking is still the primary way of meeting new prospects, making personal contacts and generating sales leads.

Where the support sector can add real value is if they can use their knowledge of clients to do some "match-making" and introduce potential buyers and sellers or link complementary businesses, helping them to collaborate, often pooling their skills, to find new business opportunities together.

Contact Management

It's great to get businesses meeting new prospects and promoting themselves through as many channels to market as possible. Our experience is that many businesses find it hard to nurture their contacts. They can neglect to record contact details, meeting notes accurately or subsequent actions accurately and often fail to properly manage follow-up tasks effectively. They certainly seem to struggle to work as a sales team, sharing important information and controlling sales activity.

For many VHQ clients the key to success has been recognising that contact management has to be a company-wide activity. Having all your business contacts in one place - not as personal contacts on your PC - means the company can access these for e-shots, mailings and other marketing activity.

It may seem difficult, but being more systematic about handling leads means that routine tasks can be handled by a PA, secretary or even outsourced to a virtual administrator. The burden on the owner-manager is reduced and the accuracy and effectiveness of contact management is improved.

As a result, clients are able to foster better relationships with their contacts (including existing clients) of which some will become genuine sales leads and need managing if they are to turn into orders.