How to Increase Leads and Sales for a Super-tight Niche
Everyone wants to increase leads and sales and this situation was no different. I had been asked to take a look at a business run by a friend of a friend of mine who lived in Brazil. Among other things, his company sold painting services to supermarkets. Specifically, they had a unique system of painting refrigeration units that blew the doors off of their competitors.
Though my client wanted to increase leads and sales he faced two problems. First, though it was vastly superior his service was nearly twice the price of similar services offered by his competitors. The second problem he faced was reaching the decision makers. In this case, it was most often the store manager or the business owner.
I learned as much as I could about the product by sitting in with the sales rep as he prospected for business. His only way to increase leads and sales was to cold-call on the phone or in person all day long. He was lucky if he was able to set one appointment after an entire day of prospecting. And man, this guy worked. I actually felt sorry for the guy but it wasn’t his fault. The company wasn’t providing any leads and he had to eat, right?
Anyway, it wasn’t anything I haven’t seen before and I knew that we would be able to find a solution. We decided to leverage the fact that they offered a service that produced tangible results. The difference in the metal fridges after they had been painted was very impressive.
We took some before and after pictures of some work that they had done and created a simple postcard. The front showed the before and after picture and the back had a very brief explanation of the service and a simple call to action. In this case, it was a phone call for a free estimate as the company didn’t have a website and had no interested in starting one.
Prior to this test, the sales rep would leave a business card with the store when he was unable to meet with a decision maker. You can imagine how many business cards the manager of a supermarket would receive in any given week. Needless to say, he never got called back and there was very little hope of an increase in leads and sales.
However, when he began leaving the postcards, he saw a massive improvement. Approximately one person in 15 would call to learn more. After much prodding, I convinced this very traditional company of two things:
- To mail out their postcards rather than hand-deliver them
- To give estimates over the phone rather than in-person
Between the delivery of the postcards and the streamlining of the selling process, this company was able to increase leads and sales like crazy. In fact, it quickly became the most sought-after supplier of this very niche market. Within six months, they had to hire a second and third painting team to manage the work.
Perhaps most encouraging was the fact that the sales rep’s days were no longer filled with painful cold-calling and spinning his wheels. Once the (admittedly) very simple but highly effective marketing system was set up he was too busy taking orders to waste his time cold-calling.
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