One of the buzzwords to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic is the term “virtual”. Virtual meetings, virtual happy hours, virtual appointments, so on and so forth. What once was done through face-to-face interaction is now done virtually as companies continue to find ways to operate.
While face-to-face communication can’t ever be fully replaced since it engages senses such as smell, body language, environment, 360 degree perspective; we are being forced to adapt our communication to the situation.
For door-to-door operations, we know people are home and available at a higher rate than ever before – big opportunity. For commercial outside sales teams, it depends on if your target customer is operating or not, but we know things have slowed down and decision makers have free time on their hands they didn’t previously and will use this time to consider solutions that will give them a competitive edge.
As outside sales teams are being forced to adapt, we wanted to share some tips and tricks to continue to drive revenue. Some of them only apply to times of quarantine while others may stick as part of your day-to-day workflow in life after COVID-19.
Refine Your Target
Whether you recognize it or not every business has an ideal customer profile (ICP) that gives them the best chance for success. If you haven’t done this work, it’s highly encouraged to take the time to define the attributes of your ideal customer based on their propensity to buy your product or service. This can be demographic data such as – homeowner age, credit capacity, green friendly purchasing, age of home, etc.
For business-to-business operations, you can do this through firmographic data such as – industry, annual revenue, years in business, employee headcount, etc.
Virtual Edition:
There are large databases available to you with these attributes readily available such as SPOTIO’s lead machine, data.com and zoominfo.com. Once you define your ideal customer profile, simply input these attributes into the database, run the report, and input them into your CRM before you begin prospecting.
This will dramatically increase your chances of success as you will only be spending time with potential customers that have the highest potential for becoming customers.
Knocking/Swinging Doors
For residential and commercial businesses alike, many high velocity prospecting sales reps walk from door-to-door/business-to-business and in effort to set an appointment or win new prospects.
Virtual Edition:
Find your territory on a tool like SPOTIO or Google Maps Street View. Walk the area or neighborhood virtually and identify the prospect that fits your ideal customer profile, add them to your pipeline and instead of knocking, call them.
Appointments
Traditionally, the appointment will be set through a face-to-face interaction and the second face-to-face meeting is the “appointment,” where the salesperson does an in-depth product demonstration.
Virtual Edition:
To make this a virtual motion, many companies are doing this through virtual video conferencing.
For example, residential construction sales reps are going to the prospect’s home and jumping on their roof (social distancing in full effect) and video chatting with the prospect to show the damage and the ensuing work to be done.
Another modification of this is to set up a video conference meeting through tools such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, Uberconference, etc and have the prospect walk you through their location so you can bid the project. On the business-to-business side,
Contracts
Now that you’ve identified the ideal customer, virtually prospected the account and set the appointment, ran virtual appointment, you’re now ready to send a contract or proposal. Oftentimes this is done in person and contracts are signed via traditional pen and paper.
Virtual Edition:
Send the contract through tools like Docusign or SPOTIO’s e-contract functionality. With a few clicks you’ll have the contract sent to the customer and they’ll be able to review, sign, and send back the contract through their email.
As you embrace “Virtual Field Sales” to conduct business today – and going forward – we hope you’re able to implement some or all of these suggestions for your company.
SPOTIO is here to help you and if you’re interested in seeing how the platform works, request a demo here.
Best of luck!
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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at [email protected] or comment below.
SPOTIO is the #1 field sales software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.
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