I try to spend a large portion of my time on sales so like a lot of other salespeople, I'm always intrigued by how others sell.
If I'm buying a car I'll tell the salesperson that I'm in sales and give him/her the approach that works best with me just so we can skip a lot of BS. If you've ever had a car salesperson go into the back to "ask their manager" if they can do something special for you, you know what I'm talking about it. I'm convinced that car salespeople are given a book of sales tricks to use.
I went to Lowes last week with my wife to get some deck furniture to replace a table that smashed into a million pieces (what a mess). My wife and I were blown away by the level of service we got from one of their people. I had to track someone down but ultimately found somebody on the top of a big ladder. She came over, asked us how she could help, located the deck set we wanted, got us a cart, and muscled it on to the cart for us. (I did offer to help with the last part but she was too quick for me). To top it off, she even checked us out at the register. My wife and I got to talking in the car about this since it was so outside of a normal Lowes experience. I told my wife that she was the Assistant Store Manager which I saw on her name tag. I tend to notice these things.
Today I get a call on my cell phone from an unknown number. My first thought is oh great, my cell phone number is on some telemarketer list, what a hassle. I answer the phone and it's a man who says in a very professional voice "Hi, I'm Steve from the XYZ Landscaping. We did some work on your property last year and we're just calling to see if there are any landscaping projects you could use some help on." Well I just finished spreading 7 yards of mulch and made my annual promise to never tackle any landscaping project more than pulling a weed so there are LOTS of projects they could help me with. This call couldn't be more timely. He asked me what kind of projects, I told him some details, he asked for my email, and promised he would email me a quote.
Keep in mind this wasn't some professional Oracle salesperson, this was my landscaper!
This is called Proactive Account Management and is probably the easiest and most effective sales technique. A lot of companies, including Billtrust, don't do anywhere near enough of this. The main reason is that sales teams have compensation packages typically geared towards driving new business. The incremental revenue for add-on sales doesn't make sales people enough money so they don't focus on it.
If your company doesn't do enough Proactive Account Management, what are you waiting for?
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