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Warren Wechsler's
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New Business - How to Find It, How to Get It, and How to Keep It

Warren Wechsler, bestselling author and national sales and motivational speaker, provides many valuable resources free of charge to sales trainers and sales managers. Some restrictions apply to the use and distribution of this information. For more valuable materials, visit Warren's web site www.totalselling.com. All materials and content © Warren Wechsler, 2001 – All rights reserved.

If you're in business like I am, you're probably thinking, "Where is that new business going to come from?" If you're a sales manager who manages salespeople, you're probably asking yourself, "Where is that new business going to come from?" If you're a business owner and you've got lots of people going out there telling the world about your products and services, you're probably wondering, "Where is that new business going to come from?"

Anybody in business, in sales, in sales management is constantly asking that question, "Where's the new business? Where's that new business coming from?" And you know what? There are very few people that specialize in bringing that new business in the door. And that's the subject of today's show: new business - how to find it, how to get it, how to keep it.

The person who can generate new customers…after all, customers are the lifeblood of anybody's business. The person who can generate new customers, in my opinion - now I might be biased, but that's OK - but in my opinion, the person who can bring new business in the door, that rainmaker, that hunter-type person who can go out there and find the food for the tribe is the most highly valued person in a sales organization. Now the persons that service the business, that deliver on the promises, absolutely they are important. I'm talking about another level of importance. That person who can go out there and face the most rejection that anybody in the organization will ever face, in my opinion, is the most valued person in our companies. That new business development expert is the person that should be held high in the eyes of all the other people in the organization.

Why? Developing new business is the hardest thing that any salesperson is ever asked to do. Think about it. If you call on a current customer, they're going to remember you; they're probably going to like you. Yes, there are problems; you're going to overcome those most probably. And then you can get to business. "How are you today? What else do you need? How's the current product working? Here's a new idea."

Those calls are generally easy to make. And in fact, in my view, it's maybe not the topic of today's show, but I don't think we do enough of that. Even before you go out there and start looking for new business, why not take care of the current customers? After all, there are only three ways to grow your business. Number one is to go back to your current customers and have them buy more things, more services, more quantity. They bought ten last week; maybe they'll by twenty this week. Or if they bought a widget, maybe they'll buy a gidget. I mean, that's so obvious that you go back and sell more products and services to your current customers, introduce new ideas.

The second way to grow your business is to go back and sell more often, more frequency. If they bought once a quarter, maybe they'll buy once a month. If you're in that type of business where they reuse products and services over and over again, sometimes, just by showing up at the right day when they happen to be low, means that you get the order instead of one of your competitors. So selling more often is the second way you can grow your business.

And the third way is to go out and find brand new business. Someone who's not working with you, you go out there and all of a sudden - well maybe it's not always all of a sudden - but they become a new customer. Sometimes it happens instantaneously; sometimes it takes two or three years. Those are the three ways that we in the sales profession grow our businesses.

Now, if you called a current customer, maybe out of a hundred approaches, eighty of them will talk to you, and maybe twenty or forty of them will buy. Those are tremendously great odds if you're in the sales business. If you call on perfect strangers who don't know who you are, you're likely to run into rejection ninety-seven or ninety-eight or ninety-six times out of a hundred. Conversely, that means your success rate is only two, three, or four percent on that initial call. That's a hard thing to do day in and day out. That's why I always suggest that most organizations have a blend between taking care of current customers and doing this what I call trail-blazing, that is, going out to find that brand new business.

Well, no matter what business you're in, it's like Red Motley said in the 1930's, "Nothing happens until someone sells something." Let's look at this topic of new business and see how we should go about it.

The first thing is we need a strategy. We need to have a sales strategy or a sales plan. What I mean is, who are these best potential customers going to be? What do they look like in terms of industry type, company size? How many employees, how many sales did they have? What percentage of their overall sales did they spend on our product or service? Where are they located geographically? What's the quality of the decision-maker status that we're looking for? It is the president, the owner, the purchasing agent, the man in the field, the woman behind the desk? Who are we aiming at? Where do we position ourselves? What our strengths and weaknesses? What are our opportunities and what are threats to us within the marketplace? What about our competitors? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? What are their opportunities to penetrate our market? What are threats to them that can help us?

In other words, what I'm getting at is before you even think about making that initial call on that brand new prospect, wouldn't it be great if we were setting ourselves up for success, not failure? By understanding our unique positioning, by understanding where we're strong, understanding where our customers are weak…this is the first step. Having that strategy, having an understanding of where we're going to go.

It's like we've talked about on this show before, if you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up in a place you never intended, meaning that it's real important to have an effective sales strategy or sales plan in going after new business.

And again, I mentioned it earlier in this show and I'll repeat it, why not start with your current customers? And take a look at that list. In fact, write down your top ten customers. In fact, here's the Sales Idea of the Day. I'm going to implant it right here during the Sales Knowledge part of the show.

Here's your challenge for today. Write down your ten top customers. Take out a pencil, take out piece of paper, and list you top ten customers in column format. So you've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten on the left, and right after that the ten top customers of your business. And now off to the right in the margin, write down where those customers came from. Now I don't mean they came from Georgia, or they were born in Pittsburgh. I mean, how did that business come your way?

When I ask this question in my live seminars, generally the answers are either a cold call; I inherited the account and I grew it; it was a referral from a current customer; it was a call in, whatever. So what I'm having you look for when you look at those top ten is what trend or what trends do you see? Are they all a specific type? Are they large companies, small companies? Are they all companies where you have access to the highest-level decision-maker? Do you find that most of those came as a call-in that started as a small acorn and grew into a big tree? What are some patterns that you can look at to see where you should be making those new business calls? That's one of the things that we need to do under sales strategies is look at our current customers and figure out where our potential new business might come from.

It also gives us an idea on where we ought to be seeking out referral business. Let's say that on that top ten list, three of them are - let's say you're in an accounting profession, and three of your top ten are closely held distributorship-type companies. Well, hmm. What does that tell you? It says that for one reason or another, you've developed an affinity or a good relationship or expertise within closely held distributorship companies within your trading area. Heck, if three of your top ten come from the same type of business, then I'd say, "Well, gee whiz, there might be twelve or fifteen or twenty-two or one-hundred-eighteen companies just like that in my trading area that I am not doing business with. We can see how effective having a sound strategy or sales plan is in going after new business.

Another component of this is targeting. You might say to yourself, "I know I could be good at selling to high-tech companies that need additional staffing." Let's say we're in the high-tech staffing business. So now you might say, "OK, what are some companies that might need that type of high-tech staffing?" And you put together a list of targeted accounts.

All these things in setting up targeted accounts, looking at your currents customers, seeing trends and patterns, is what - actually what it's doing, it's helping us reduce that rejection we're going to face on those initial calls. If we can get instead of three or four positive responses out of a hundred to be maybe eight or ten or twelve, we've just increased our effectiveness by 300%. That's what salespeople resonate to. Look, we don't all want to go out there are face "no" every single day, calling all these people who are going to say, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." Anything we can do to improve our odds is going to be great, especially in going out there to develop new business.

That's the strategy piece. I've talked about positioning. What in the world does that mean? Positioning means you know what you stand for. Look at my business, for example. I am a sales trainer, a sales seminar leader, and a keynote or featured speaker. In addition to that I do some sales and management and consulting, helping my customers understand how best to work with their sales forces. So if you were to ask me, "Warren, what is your positioning?" My positioning is I help business-to-business sales organizations who want to increase their sales and help their salespeople be successful.

That's a pretty neat positioning statement. So my customers know that it's business-to-business, it is helping them increase sales, and I help them help their salespeople be the best they can possibly be.

Now they might ask, "How in the world to you do that?" And once you understand your positioning you can simply fill in the blank. I do that through keynote speaking, one day and half day seminars, and offering myself as a resource to sales executives and sales managers, helping them put together plans and programs that will help their salespeople.

Do you see what that means when I say positioning? So now people know that I don't do customer service or team building or self-esteem seminars. While those are all great topics, that's not something I specialize in. They also know I don't do business-to-consumer. Very few of my clients are in the retail business. Most are business-to-business. Now if you have a retail business that does business-to-business, obviously that works for me.

Positioning is very important. It's like the saying goes, or maybe I'm making this up. It just came into my head. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. What do you think, Smitty? Can that be a Warren Wechsler quote?

[Sounds good to me.]

If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. Warren Wechsler, February 28, 2001. I like that. I've never had a quote before. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. What that means is that you have to understand what your own positioning is.

OK, so now we've talked about strategy, we've talked about positioning.

Here are the tactics on how we're going to be successful in this whole concept of new business. We need to set aside a time, figure out how many calls we're going to make, and track our progress. That sounds really simple, but you know what? In this whole concept, in this whole area of new business, I can't tell you how many times that the people I work with have been victimized by another saying that I'm not going to claim credit for, which is, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." "Oh, I meant to make those calls. I meant to get on the phone today and make those business calls, bu-u-u-ut…A good customer called and I had to take care of it. A-a-a-nd I had to track down that order, a-a-a-nd I had to get that proposal out, a-a-a-nd I had to look on the Internet and check my email."

What happens is you get to the end of the day and you realize you've made absolutely zero new business calls. Heck, you're going to get rejected at least half the time, probably sixty or eighty percent of time. Is that something you wake up and say, "Oh yeah, I think I'm going to work the phone for four hours today and just get rejected for three hours and fifty-two minutes of that." Obviously nobody likes that. What we have to do is schedule the time to make the calls.

This must be quote day because that reminds me of another quote. One of my favorite clients said, "You know, Warren, it's simple. You make ten calls before ten o'clock in the morning." Think about that. If you made ten outbound calls every business day before ten o'clock in the morning, your funnel of prospects and your client base would grow so fast it would be almost dizzying in its scope.

All right, so you make the calls. And the second part of that is you track your progress, meaning that it's important to say, "OK, how am I doing? I've made ten dials; I got through to three decision-makers; I found one interested party." What I've just described is one of the classic ratios in the sales business. Ten dials, you get through to three people, there's one that has some level of interest.

Now, if you track your progress and you find out that you make ten dials and only get through to one person, then either you need to adapt what you're saying, or you're not being able to get through to the decision-maker, or you're trying at the wrong time of day, or you're just not being effective in your approach. That's why it's so important to make the calls and track your progress. Let me see those statistics. When I work with my clients, I have them track dials, approaches, decision-makers contacted, and outcome. And just by looking at the stats over a couple of days, I know exactly where I can help that salesperson improve themselves.

OK, two more points. One is, you have to organize yourself both alphabetically and chronologically. Alphabetically meaning if you call the Brown Company, you have to have a way to capture that information under the letter "B". And within that alphabetical file, who did you talk to, what's their title, who else do you need to speak with, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Everything that can be captured alphabetically to organize your information is one set of information you need to keep track of.

The other is chronological. "I called them today, February 28. They weren't in, but they're going to be back Friday, the second. They won't get in till ten o'clock. I'm going to make the note to call them at 10:30." Or whatever. All those things that are driven by the clock are called chronological.

Many of the databases and contact management programs and sales force automation software programs and customer relations management programs all have ways for you to integrate the alphabetical and chronological information. If you don't use any of those electronic means, you simply need a paper day-timer and a calendar program. And that works as well.

OK, the final point is you have to set goals in what you're trying to accomplish in your new business development. How many appointments do I want to have? How many new accounts do I want to open? How much new business do I want to generate?

And then the final part is celebrate your successes. If you hit a target, if you got three appointments, then do something fun. Walk around the block. Play a round of golf. Take your spouse out to dinner. Buy a new Lincoln. No, just kidding. You wouldn't want to buy a new Lincoln if you just got three appointments.

But if you open a new account, do something fun. Buy a new pair of running shoes. Or buy that new dining room accessory that you had had your heart set on. And when you set the big goal, and you hit that, if you arrange a new business goal and you hit it, or you hit the revenue target, or whatever, then by all means, go out there and buy that new Lincoln or Lexus or whatever your car of choice is.

All right, in a nutshell, I've just showed you today how to go about this whole idea of new business. It is the most demanding, it is the most rewarding, and it is the most sought-after skill than any person or company is looking for. And now you have the skills to go out there and be a new business development expert.

This was a partial transcript from Warren Wechsler's weekly radio show. Warren Wechsler, bestselling author and national sales and motivational speaker, provides many valuable resources free of charge to sales trainers and sales managers. Visit Warren's web site www.totalselling.com Also, listen to Warren's weekly radio broadcast Wednesday's at 4:05 - 5:00 pm Central time, on KMCD-AM 1570AM. Shows are broadcast live on the internet at http://www.warpradio.com/asx/KMCD-AM.asx