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Sales Training: Strategies to Generate New Business

Here are some examples of promotional activities, that we used in the early 1990s, to help generate new clients - known as ‘hunting’:

Mailshots
Cold Calling/telemarketing, using an agency
Cold Calling, using our own employees
Cold Calling, done by our consultants/experts
Networking (developing business through existing contacts)
Collaborations with other companies in the field
Advertising
Website development
Stands at business conferences
Newsletters
Mailshots
Occupying a marketplace position
Presentations at conferences
Producing give-away literature and resources

Most of these yielded some success, but for some of them there was too high a pricef for us to continue with them. For example, cold calling by consultants was too costly in terms of time, and demoralising. What worked better was to use another method to generate the sales meeting, which our consultant would attend.

By the mid 1990s, most of our work came from existing clients (known, rather unpleasantly, as ‘skinning’), to the extent that we didn’t need to invest effort in selling (we didn’t have any growth objectives). The types of approach we found that could help to keep work coming from existing clients included:

Build friendships with clients, rather than just having a professional relationship (this is personally rewarding as well as helping to generate business)
Provide ad hoc advice/support free (as you would a friend)
Visit the client onsite as frequently as is reasonable and practicable
Structure your pricing to make it very easy for the client to use your services (many organisations seem to regard an established client as a cash-cow; we took the opposite approach, that the ‘easy sale’ deserved a good discount)
Provide products/services that the client is pleased with and will be inclined to talk to others about
Make the service as tangible as possible (eg: provide a report demonstrating benefits achieved)

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