Hi, Habr. I am going to publish a small cycle of materials dedicated to the business of web studios (interactive agencies) and its development. I'll start with a few sales materials.

In a crisis, sales have become a bottleneck for almost all small and not very web studios. I want to share my thoughts on the organization of one of the three components of sales in the company.

So, sales in web studios are divided into three types:

• New sales from the incoming stream (the customer requests it himself). The expansion of this channel is the main task of external marketing and PR companies.
• Repeated sales on current customers. The increase in sales in this area is one of the important tasks of the customer service.
• Cold / active sales (contact is initiated with the customer who has not shown interest in the company before).

I will dwell on the organization of the cold sales process, since this channel is not developed in the vast majority of companies (and if it exists, it works inefficiently). The devil is in the details, so I tried to give considerable attention to the nuances of the process.
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Immediately make a reservation - about any spam and other mass indiscriminate actions are not discussed.

1. Organization of the process

If you are a small company, then you will be enough to send one person. He must be autonomous and self-sufficient, preferably he will report directly to the director.

An employee in the position of cold sales should be motivated to achieve results (the easiest way to achieve this is to introduce a bonus from the volume of the project sold or profit on it). In the case of getting a “fix”, there is a high probability that the employee will “sit on the fifth point” and will not be focused on achieving results.

The person who will engage in active sales should be competent, hold a high position and have the right to make decisions as part of the sales process. The middle and top managers of a large customer will have absolutely no interest in speaking with a “junior assistant account manager”. It is desirable that the candidate already has his own database of contacts and contacts in the market (although it is very difficult to find such a person).

An employee who will be engaged in active sales should be relieved of other duties. Do not entrust active sales to the current manager who processes the incoming stream or works with clients. Achieving the result of active sales is much more laborious than achieving the same when processing incoming requests - and these responsibilities will simply fall out of the person’s outlook as less priority.

The employee must be stress resistant. If the work of a regular sales manager is accompanied by permanent failures, then here it is squared. To achieve the result will only persistence and planning.

If you are a large company and are planning to open an active sales direction - first run the technique on one employee. The expansion must be horizontal, employees must be in competition with each other. The hierarchical structure is bad because the head of the department, as a rule, ceases to be “playing”, and this is usually the most qualified specialist.

Planning (and the very concept of a sales plan) in this area is a rather complicated issue, since active sales are a very risky process with a large failure rate. If you enter a plan, I recommend making it not monthly, but quarterly. This will smooth out local ups and downs. Adjust the plan depending on the dynamics of previous periods. Consider ROI, the benefit in this area is quite simple to do.

Do not expect instant returns - a new employee in the direction is unlikely to make the first sale in less than one and a half or two months (if only because he doesn’t have a pool of contacts and clients returning after thinking).

2. Allocation of CA

The first task facing an active sales specialist is to understand what, for what price, and to whom he is going to sell. The selection of Central Asia can go in the following areas:

type of product

Determine which of your products / services (promotional website, online sales automation system, virus promotions, etc.) you plan to sell. These should be the most competitive of your decisions.

Price segment

Determine the price segment of your decisions and select companies for a cold call, considering it. Most likely, the transnational giant is not interested in the site for 30,000 rubles, and a small printing house will not pull a budget of 60K euros.

By the way, active sales are a good way to try to vary your pricing policy. For example, to raise the price (on the main stream of incoming risk is more, you can lose a lot). If it works out - an occasion to think about changing the pricing policy across all channels.

Branch division

Make a list of the industries for which your solutions are best suited. Identify the most active in the Internet industry (and the least covered by competitors, ideally). Highlight the industries that are willing to allocate online budgets in a crisis.

Position representative of the customer

Segmentation by specialist position is very important for proper cold entry. It will allow to communicate with the person in a language understandable to him and offer products that are interesting precisely in terms of his area of ​​responsibility. The main groups of positions of the customer:

1. Business owner, director
2. Marketing and / or Advertising Director
3. Commercial Director or Sales Director
4. Head of Internet Direction
5. Brand manager
6. IT director
7. Representative of state structures
8. Representative of a large RA
9. Representative of a major system integrator

Depending on the position of the contact person, the products that interest him will change, his own goals and priorities, his language of communication and professional slang. Speak to people in the language they understand. The marketing director should talk about expanding sales channels, positioning - and suggest projects aimed at solving his problems, but in a conversation with a technical specialist it is better not to use this terminology, but to talk about automation, integration and information architecture. These are fairly obvious things, but very many neglect them.

The last two items from the list (representatives of the Republic of Armenia and system integrators) relate to the development of partner channels, this is a slightly separate topic, which I will focus on another time.

Having determined the above parameters, at their interface you will receive a list of segments, for each of which the product, price, customer’s industry and the desired position of the contact person are understandable.

When a segment is defined, you can begin to search for a specific customer and initiate contact with him.

Additional segmentation

To determine the list of specific companies from the segment of maximum interest, use the following techniques:

• Active vacancies of companies. Look at job search websites for lists of active Internet-related jobs. If a company is looking for an Internet project manager, the likelihood that your offer will interest her will increase. By the way. Offer such a vacancy to your former employees - and, possibly, get a loyal person to you on the side of the customer.
  
  
• Information about rebranding, start of new advertising companies. Conduct regular media monitoring on advertising, marketing and PR. If a company is rebranding, it will soon need to update its Internet projects. The same goes for large mergers and international companies entering the Russian market.
  
  
• High advertising activity in the network. Pay attention to companies actively promoting their services on the Internet. They have budgets, experience (most likely) and they will be very enthusiastic about the interesting idea that you proposed.
  
  

Contact initiation

Search for contact information

You have decided on the company and the desired position of a potential customer. Now begins the "hunt." You need to find out everything about this person (starting, of course, from the name), and most importantly - his contact details in order to contact him directly. How can I get this information:

• Search engines. Search by company name and position of interest. Do a search on the news - as a rule (for large companies), there will be a number of interviews and statements of the person you need (and therefore his name). When you know the name and surname - do a search on them and the name of the customer's domain - perhaps you will directly find the email of the right person. Look at the contact information on the customer's site (although the personal addresses of top managers rarely indicate there).
  
  
• An interesting way would be to “think the email off”. If you know the name of the person, but could not find the e-mail, try to find the mailing addresses of other employees of the company. If they look like i.ivanov@zakazhik.ru, then you will most likely be able to think out the real email of the person you need.
  
  
• Call the secretary. Call the company's general phone number and ask for the right person's e-mail. Right on the forehead. Say that you must send him information. It does not always work, but sometimes it works.
  
  
• Use social networks, blogs, twitter. Knowing the name and company of a person, look for his profile on social networks, blogs, etc. Even if you do not find contact information, you will still have the opportunity to write to him through the service itself. If a person is not registered on the social network, ask the contacts of the right person from his colleagues who are there.
  
  
• Use people who have already left the company. Ask them for the contact of the right person from his past company. Since the person has already left, he will not get the impression that you personally want to “push” something to him (or his current company) - and he can help. As simply as possible, this is realized in business-oriented social networks (for example, My Circle). Another way to use people left is to call the company and link to such a person: “We discussed the project with such and such, but he quit — tell me the contact details of the person who took his place to continue the conversation.” But this is not a very beautiful way, I do not recommend.
  
  

First appeal

So, you have contact details and basic information on the person you are going to contact.

Phone, email, message on the social network? It depends on the individual qualities of the specialist, the composition of the proposal and the personality of the customer. If you are lost in a conversation on the phone with a stranger, it is better to write a letter. If you want to invite a person to a seminar, it’s better to call and then send full information about the event. If you have a large offer with specific, detailed ideas - send it by mail, and then make sure to receive it by phone. And so on.

What and how to offer

Address! Your proposal should be as targeted as possible, directed specifically to this person to this company. This is the most important point in the whole described method. Do not turn a surgical scalpel into a dull sledgehammer.

Of course, if you came up with the idea of ​​an interesting web service for the automotive industry, you can offer it to several companies. But such an appeal to a particular company should still have targeted details, take into account the specifics of the company, refer to its activities, strategy, positioning, etc.

The main rule is that your offer should be interesting to the customer and contain useful information personally for him. Standard text about the company and website development services he already receives in tons in the form of spam.

Consider a few suggestions:

• Offer ideas. The most effective way is to offer the customer an interesting project idea on the Internet for his company. Describe it in as much detail as possible, indicate what tasks will be solved with its help, why it is his company that needs it. This will show the customer your professionalism, interest in work, openness. Do not be afraid that the idea can be borrowed - in this case, the person will feel obliged to you and turn to another task (not always, but as a rule).
  
  
• Abstract offer of cooperation. If there are no killer ideas, you can interest the customer with a description of possible ways of cooperation and demonstrate your deep knowledge of the company, its activities, tasks and priorities. Refer to the current advertising strategy of the company, identified development priorities in any interview. Praise the TV commercial (if it’s really good), tick off the last major completed projects, the success in the automation of information systems.
  
  Try to outline possible ways of developing Internet activities: “ Considering that in recent times you have changed positioning as a producer of yogurt for young people, it would be wise to focus on viral projects in the network, designed for your Central Asia (if I remember correctly, 17+, urban residents, mostly girls). Your XYZ competitors are already conducting similar activity, although it should be noted that ... ”. And so on.
  
  
• Creative offer of cooperation. On the other side of the screen are real people, and not always the top manager of a large customer is a soulless business machine. Surprise him.
  
  “ Hi. I wanted to express the respect of your company, sneakers "abc" - fly, I wear them with great pleasure for the second year. The movie about the dude with the guitar came out completely plague, watched and laughed at the whole department. We are a small web-studio, and we are very tired of working with tedious corporate employees, beating our head against the wall of a cand scoop. We want to do something really cool on the Internet for a company that produces these crazy things ... ”
  
  Such an approach may seem like a delusion, but if you clearly align the text and correctly place accents, it works. And it is very important to write from the heart.
  
  Having made such an offer, one must be prepared for the appropriate behavior in further communication with the customer. Turning this approach, and then mumbling in a meeting about positioning and market segments is stupid.
  
  
• Free seminars. Conducting free seminars on various aspects of activity (for example, “trends in the development of web services on the automotive Internet,” “methods for developing creative ideas for the web,” “automating online sales,” etc.) is an effective tool for attracting customers. Attending such a seminar allows him to get interesting information and does not commit to anything. And you, in turn, have the opportunity to show your professionalism, to learn more about the customer and his needs.
  
  Choose a seminar topic for a specific audience, and not vice versa. This will allow to inform the audience really useful information.
  
  It is not necessary to rent a spacious room for a seminar - you can limit yourself to a mini-seminar in your meeting room (and if the customer is interested, you can arrange a company tour on the spot).
  
  Provide information to the seminar, useful to the customer - show your competence in the subject. Refer to the cases (not even yours) from areas close to the seminar audience. Do not make a seminar ad. After saying a half-hour speech about the merits of your company, you will not tell anything interesting to the customer and lose it.
  
  

Some important "NOT":

• Once again - never use mass mailings and addressless
• Never promise the impracticable, do not deceive the customer about the size and achievements of your company. Anyway, the truth will be revealed.
• Never make a conversion if you have nothing to say or offer. Lose the opportunity to make an interesting proposal in the future.

Actually, the sale

After the contact has been initiated, and the customer has become interested in your offer, the normal sale process goes, which is (globally) no different from processing requests from the incoming stream. But the main goal has already been achieved - you have increased the number of customers interested in your services.

How to effectively conduct the sales themselves and participate in tenders, I will try to tell in the following material. Thank you for your attention =)

The review did not include such an aspect of active sales as work at conferences and other public events - but this is a completely different story.

Terekhov Andrey, expert group "Tagline"