Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Freight Brokers Freight Agent/ You must Improve Sales Prospecting Efforts to be successful

Freight Broker or Freight Agent prospecting is a numbers game. To determine how many cold calls you need to make to meet your quota? Figure out the average number of leads it takes to generate a sale, then determine your average customer sale, and you’ve got a clear path to fulfilling your sales goal.

But while a sale is largely about the numbers, those numbers are based on something even more elemental: the data. If you are operating on low-quality leads with outdated contact information, poorly qualified prospects, and duplicate content, you’re wasting time – and money – chasing ghosts. The solution: Employ top-of-class technology Industry Background

With the widespread use of online search tools, cus¬tomer relationship management systems, and prospecting tools, salespeople can feel like they’ve got the world at their fingertips. At the click of a button, anyone can cheaply and quickly comb the entire world for leads and industry information. But the easy availability of data is not just one of the sales industry’s most exciting innovations; it’s also one of its biggest challenges. In the open online environment, there are no gatekeepers; salespeople have access to endless amounts of data, with no immediate way to confirm the quality of the results.

This unrestricted access becomes a problem when viewed in light of current economic conditions. At no time in recent history has the pres¬sure to work more efficiently and effectively been as overwhelming. Fright Brokers are faced with the need to bring quantifiable value to their companies, and finding the tools to allow them to increase their ROI should be a main driver in their business decisions.

Recommendations: Five Steps to Improve Sales Prospecting Efforts

In order to leverage their time and resources more effectively when prospecting for new customers, freight brokers should look for sales tools that will allow them, not only to take advantage of the availability of data, but also to refine, present, and leverage that data for immedi¬ate use in a variety of different ways. Freight bokers should invest in tools that will allow them to do the following:

1. Improve data quality. When it comes to prospecting, it may seem that throwing more names into the funnel will result in more sales – and that’s true if you’re dealing with quality data. Many low-cost data services offer thousands of leads at rock-bottom prices, but they have a higher number of “dead” leads in their system – contacts that are incomplete, duplicated, expired, or otherwise unusable.

2. Target your prospecting more effectively. Data in and of itself means little; it’s what you do with that data that counts. So how do you turn a database of leads and customers into a powerful tool for future prospecting efforts? You find a way to read and interpret that dat. know who’s a target, but you must also know where they’re concentrated so you can home in and maximize your efforts.

3. You can stream¬line by using proper prospect lists. So many businesses unquantifiable. That’s why it’s so important to be able to pinpoint your efforts... proper data and prospecting has a unique advantage, because sales is a numbers game, and you can know fairly quickly if an investment in prospecting data is paying off. The equation is clear: You know what you’re putting in the funnel, how much it costs to fill it, and what’s coming out the end. And a high-level, B2B, sales-information partner can do the heavy lifting of managing data, leav¬ing sales professionals free to focus on goals and strategy.

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