I received a great question from Richard who asked me about moving from a face to face to email selling sales model. Here’s what he asked:

“We are trying to move our prospecting and sales processes to email selling and want to know how best to start the process. We have existing longstanding clients who have become accustomed to in-person contact with us. Any advice would be appreciated”

Ok, here are my general thoughts on this for you to ponder over!

There are two areas you need to look at to kick things off.

1. You need to define your new email sales process for new prospects

2. You need to have a migration plan for your existing clients

In terms of the new process then that’s pretty easy because they will know no-different.

But in terms of your existing client base (and I assume that they are currently making you the majority of your revenue) then you need to “give” them something in return for the new model.

Personally, if I were in your position I would meet with them face to face to explain the reasons why you are doing what you are doing. Is it to keep costs down that you can then pass on to your clients? Is it to give a better service?

Never communicate these reasons in an email. It will be very cold and can be mis-understood.

Instead, face to face it is. Then you need to work out a concession for them.

What’s it going to be?

You see, less work for you (i.e email interactions instead of F2F) might mean more work for them (more searching on your site, anwering emails)

So you need a sweetner of which only you can know what that is.

Example:
“John, I wanted to come and see you in person today to go through some of the changes that we are making at ABC. We’ve restructured ourselves so we can serve you better. It will mean a small change in the way that we do business but the ultimate benefit will be that you can get your hands on our products and services a lot quicker, it will save you time and the fees that you’ve been paying in the past will be reduced too”

Now, who isn’t going to be receptive to that!

Hopefully you get where I am coming from on this. I’ll leave it up to you to fill in the blanks!

Happy selling.

Sean

Sean McPheat
The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling
MTD Sales Training
MTD Sales Blog

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