Making the Right Connections

Generating new leads, making contacts and building your network are all important parts of the sales process, but could you be wasting your time? The key to successful sales is to get through to the right person — the decision maker. It is true that you might have to meet a lot of people along the way before reaching the people with purchasing power, but that is only really worthwhile if you are making the right connections to get you nearer your goal. Expending too much energy with individuals who are never going to make the purchase and who cannot help you make the next connection can be a huge waste of time. What might be difficult at first is learning who will or won’t be able to help you make connections. It is always a good idea to befriend receptionists or PAs. While they won’t necessarily be in positions to introduce you to the right people, you may get the next best thing, which is access to direct contact. They may either be persuaded to put your call through to your identified contact, or they may be helpful in advising you on who the most appropriate contact would be in their organisation, whether or not they deign to direct your enquiry straight to them. Building your contacts is about quality rather than quantity. You will need to be able to research the market and the organisations of target prospects within it. In order to make the right connections, you will need to be knowledgeable about staffing structures and lines of responsibility within an organisation. Learn who has the power to make decisions or who is controlling the purse strings before you start making your advances. Time can be wasted if you choose to start off blindly just to see where it might lead. A one-off gamble might be worth it, but it is not sustainable when you have targets to achieve. Imagine you are looking for a new job and you know that one of the many sales recruitment agencies in Birmingham is dealing with the employer you would most like to work for. It makes sense that you would introduce yourself to that particular agency. Look at your sales approach in this way and you will stop pursuing hopeless leads and start researching your prospects more effectively. If you were actually looking for a new job, being knowledgeable about sales recruitment agencies in Birmingham will put you in a good position and mark you out as someone capable of doing their homework.