Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

Taking over an industry, one Sales 2.0 step at a time

This past week I delivered an inside sales training course to a client that makes devices used to diagnose electrical problems. This company makes terrific equipment, has begun to take market share away from its biggest competitor (who owns 90% of the market), and has hired me to train their inside sales team to take over and own the market in one year. In a coaching session that occurred last week, we cooked up some bright ideas that the competition probably won't be using. I'm going to tell you what they are, but I'm not going to divulge the client or the industry to protect our program. I've been teaching the techniques we're using for years now, but there are a few new twists because of some tools we're using today that fall into the Sales 2.0 realm. So read on, and use them to take over your focus industry as well.

My client has sold many devices into the mining industry, but there are a whole lot of mining concerns that haven't yet bought its equipment. One non-client is pretty well known, but has gone through bankruptcy proceedings in recent years, and we suspected there might be new owners. We googled the company, and found a story about them on Wikipedia, giving the new name of the company. We then did a search in the "people" field of LinkedIn, searching for the name of the new company. And we found a TQM (Total Quality Management) director.

We cold-called the TQM director and told her that we specialized in troubleshooting devices for the mining industry, and she referred us to the right executive in charge of that function. We're now on a roll with that company. There are three very good lessons to learn from this story, and you can apply them all today. One is about turning a "horizontal" solution into a "vertical" one. Another is intelligently using internet tools that are still considered a bit non-traditional. And the third is that there's nothing as good as a great cold call.

1) The Vertical piece. My client specializes in a solution, not an industry. But because the company has sold successfully into the mining industry, it is a de facto expert in mining solutions that relate to its devices. My client's reps are going to call every mining concern in the country. And I predict they'll soon own that segment in the market, because they're experts, and they're telling new prospects about it.

2) The Research piece. To uncover data we had to know, we used Google, Wikipedia, and LinkedIn. Sure our target prospect had prior trouble. But like many companies, they've been bailed out. They changed the name of the company, and are geared up again and making money. LinkedIn enabled us to find an individual we couldn't have found otherwise.

3) The Cold Call piece. The rep I coached loves cold calling. He's completely fearless, doesn't give a fig about rejection, and has an attitude that in reflective of the fact that he won't let anybody kick him around.

We're using a number of superior techniques to take over an industry, step by step, vertical by vertical. I've just described three of them. Thinking out-of-the-box and being fearless are two of the supporting elements that need to be in place for it all to work, and my client's reps are already making huge strides in that direction. Add those three techniques to your Best Practices playbook, and go out and tackle an industry yourself, starting this week.