Over the past few days we have had some response to our post on the “4 Keys to a Successful Sales Strategy.”

The specific interest was in how firms could pursue a cost effective sales strategy through one day of sales per week. Here's a brief picture of the people and methods that we use here at CBD:

Experience

We believe that effective use of the phone coupled with good project leads over short focused periods of time is the single most powerful marketing tool available to most contractors.

For this plan to work, you'll need dedicated and skilled operators. As many of you will already know, cold calling new leads is not always easy and demands experience and confidence to get past the many unsuccessful calls that any salesman will have. (To read an interesting article on sales failures, look here).

So, how much experience should a sales person have? It’s a tough call, but as a general rule of thumb it’s best to use someone who has been doing cold calling in the constrution industry for significant amount of time. Whilst this can be limiting, the idea is that firms should be able to compensate for not spending a great deal of time on sales and marketing by having experienced professionals focus on sales for shorter periods of time, thus saving costs overall.

Here are three areas that an experienced construction sales person will focus on:

• Sales leads. The development of new relationships with work providers is made much easier with good leads, well selected and well focused.
• Time management. We would suggest that an ideal split of time in the day is one third of the day focused on new leads followed by two thirds spent on recalls and ongoing contacts.
• Recalling. One cannot overemphasize the value of recalling. Most builders will make the first call and then not come back to the contact. The quality and dedicated pursuit of contacts chosen for follow-up is what will set you apart from your competitors.

Time Distribution

How does one effectively time manage? The description outlined below is a possible break down of the typical eight hour day of sales.

• Six hours or more should be spent on the phone developing projects – this is includes the creation of new projects and also the development of old projects by recalling.
• Some time should be set aside for ensure that 1-2 new sales appointments where there are projects to discuss are locked into place between potential clients and your managing directors.
• Preparation of letters is a tedious but essential task. Doing this does not require much effort, and in our opinion, it is time well spent.
• Research on the appointments that you have created should also be a priority. A small chunk of your day should be spent collecting some of the basic details concerning the individuals involved in this potential project.
• Debriefing at end of day is a good way of concluding your day of marketing and leaving the ends in the hands of others is crucial to make sure that the value of the time spent in sales is maximized.

Bear in mind that a sales administration system and a sales database are both important elements of the system. Accurate information on contacts, conversations and projects is crucial for ongoing leads and relationship development. However, both must be efficient and easy to use – it is too easy to spend a great deal of time on data entry and reporting. That is not to say that we do not appreciate these activities, they are both important in their own right, but they need to be managed property by ensuring that they do not consume vast amounts of time, as shown “here” by Paul McCord of Sales Careers Online. These elements are important but the over-riding requirement is to maximize time on the phone “doing the business”.

Results

Experience shows that just one day a week can be very effective in developing new business. Results from this committed time are already covered, here – but effectively, this strategy should result in a new contract at least every 6-7 weeks with a tender conversion rate of 1 in 4/5.

A typical day’s sales . . .

• A briefing with the MD/Director,
• Several new project leads for follow up,
• Information that will allow the prioritization of project leads in hand – new and those which are the result of recalls.

Hopefully this post outlines this strategy with enough detail to satisfy those who are interested in it. However, you have any more questions; don’t hesitate to get back to us through a feed back form found here.

The post is based on part of a lecture given by David Crick, Managing Director of CBD, at the University of Leeds, November 2007.

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