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18 FEDA News & Views O ne of the most common com- plaints I hear from my clients is this: "I can't seem to motivate the salespeople to call on prospects and develop them into new customers." There is a relatively simple, fun and inexpensive way to remedy this situa- tion. It's called a sales blitz. Unfortunately, few companies are even aware of it, and fewer yet use it. Here's the problem. Most B2B sales efforts are organized around a sales rep who is responsible for a specific set of accounts, or a specific geographical area. Typically, that rep is expected to grow the business with current customers as well as to identify and develop new customers. Clearly, most salespeople are better at one part of this two-part responsibility than the other. Usually, developing new customers takes second place in a salesperson's priorities. Staying within their comfort zones and focusing on keeping current customers happy becomes a higher pri- ority on a day-to-day basis. As a result, few new customers are developed, and sales management is continually frus- trated with the company's poor perfor- mance. Rather than continue beating a dead horse by trying to motivate the sales force to create new customers, one alternate approach is to implement a sales blitz. What's a sales blitz? It's an organized effort by a company to focus all of its sales force on a specific task in one spe- cific territory. The most common task is to identify, qualify and engage potential new customers. But, a sales blitz can also be used to quickly communicate some hot new product or service to a market. A sales blitz has the advantage of focusing the entire sales force on a spe- cific task. That alone will bring you far greater results than if you'd just left it to each salesperson to do on their own. But there are some additional fringe ben- efits. For example, the preparation for a sales blitz provides you an opportunity to thoroughly train the sales force in one identifiable step in the sales pro- cess. Their competency thus improves. Additionally, you can usually measure their activities more specifically than normal. So, they become more compe- tent and confident and you more knowl- edgeable in the activities of your sales force. Here's How it Works Let me illustrate with an example. Let's say that you have a group of eight sales- people who are each expected to build the business with current customers as well as create new ones. You are continu- ally frustrated with their performance in creating new customers. Out of the group of eight people, you're lucky to have one new customer a month. Since you are not satisfied with this, you decide to do a sales blitz for new customers and select one geographical area or market segment on which to focus. In this case, one of your salespeople has a relatively new territory so you select that terri- tory as your focus. You decide that for a period of three days, you are going to pull your entire sales force out of their territories and direct them into the new salesperson's territory. You bring them together and explain the project. Their task is to identify, qual- ify and engage as many prospects as possible. The information gained and the doors opened in the process will then be provided to the territory rep, who will be expected to follow up and turn a significant number of these qualified prospects into customers. You create a form for each salesperson. They must collect the information speci- fied on the form from each prospect. The information could include basics such as the name and title of the key con- tact person, some information about the account, and a sense of the opportunity for your company. You then train the sales force in how to do just that one aspect of the sales process—make a cold call, collect some qualifying information, and fill in the form. You spend a day role-playing and practicing. Next, you provide them with a list of current customers (off limits) and a list of potential customers. You break the group into four teams of two people each and on the map outline four dif- ferent areas for each. You announce that at the end of each day, you'll hold a short meeting. At that meeting, you'll recount success stories, share informa- tion and tactics that have worked for various team members, and count up the number of contacts made and forms filled out by each team. The team with the most completed forms will be the day's winner, and each member of the winning team will be awarded a gift certificate. Why It's Worth It At this point, you have organized the group's efforts by identifying the spe- cific job to be done, provided the tools (forms and company literature), trained them in the task, focused them on a specific area, and added some structured time to learn and to be recognized. On each day of the blitz, you stay in cell phone contact with each group, encouraging them throughout the course of the day. At the end of the three days, you will probably have accumu- Frustrated with Your Company's Inability to Develop New Customers? Try a Sales Blitz By Dave Kahle