If You’re Responsible for Selling, Call These Companies First

If You’re Responsible for Selling, Call These Companies First:

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This is the story about an old sales guy and a methodology that holds valuable even today. It takes place in the 70′s and involves the Yellow Pages, and a rotary phone. The great part about this lesson is that it sheds light on the concept of sales intelligence.

So, the salesman actually had two phone books. One was a new copy and the other was one version old. He was providing services to other companies. The salesman would go through the phone book and on his first pass, he would only call the companies who’s ads had gotten larger in the new version. His first comment was to congratulate them on their growth. And there in lies the lesson, the old sales guy found out something important: It is wise to sell first to companies who are growing, and he could determine this partly by their increase in ad budget.

It sounds like a no brainer, but I cannot tell you how many times I’ve noticed companies NOT doing this. These days, the pressures are intense to sell more, and to do it faster. Selling to growing companies first is a great way to accomplish this.

So how do you find out who is growing?

Well for one you can look at lists. The most obvious ones are those by Inc. Magazine. They publish the 500 | 5000 Lists. The popular Biz Journals also have lists for each metropolitan area. Those could be great sources.

Additionally, sales intelligence tools have features which enable you to measure how fast a company is growing. The end result is that you can see which of your target companies are growing on a regular basis. Let us know if you’d like to learn more about growth measurements for your leads and contacts right inside of your CRM, through a web app, or through an easily customizable email alert system.