Webinar: Initiating New Opportunities & Gaining Insights Into Customers—May 23, 2006

Scott Savage
Senior Consultant
FranklinCovey's Sales Performance Group

To view a recording of this webinar, please visit our Webinar Archives Page.

The pressure is relentless to grow new leads. Ideally, the job of generating qualified leads should come from both sales and marketing. This webcast is an opportunity for marketing and sales professionals to learn how to do just that. We encourage both marketing and sales leaders to attend and learn how to better initiate new opportunities and gain intimate customer insights.

There are 3 different ways to initiate new business opportunities. We can:

1. Wait until someone contacts us
2. Steal someone else's opportunity (in the form of a competitive bid or RFP, etc.)
3. Gather data to create insight and understanding into the market or the potential client organization and initiate our own opportunity.

All three are valid approaches in gaining new opportunities, yet each has its own unique up sides and down sides. The challenge with the first two is they are simply too reactive, therefore they're not a predictable or disciplined way to build a robust sales pipeline. However, initiating our own opportunities is the only proactive approach which assures us greater, predictable success.

In the webcast you will how learn to:

• Build strong value messages to obtain meaningful and relevant client meetings. "Right Topic".
• Create and establish clear "Ends in mind" mutually with your client which will enable a decision by the close of the meeting. "Right Outcomes".
• Find the right balance between Advocacy and Inquiry during the meeting. This will allow us to build rapport and to adapt where necessary to changing client needs or observations.
• Close the meeting skillfully - whether asking for the business or creating appropriate mutual next steps.

If you end an initial meeting with a client and you don't have significant insight into the client organization - you have most likely failed! This session will give you insights on how to prevent that from happening.

For more information

Deborah Lupp or Gary Holler
Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM)
Smeal College of Business
The Pennsylvania State University
484 Business Building
University Park, PA 16802-3603

Phone: 814-863-2782
Fax: 814-863-0413
E-mail: isbm@psu.edu