CRM, weekly targeting and persistence. In our mission to spread Conhoist into the market, we’ve taken our sales game to a new and more systematic level. And so far, it’s been a blast.
Conhoist is a brilliant product if we do say so ourselves. The crane system makes construction sites more efficient, shortens construction time, provides a better working environment and reduces CO2 emissions. But of course, potential customers will only realise this if there is someone to tell them about Conhoist.
As product developers, we are building a sales organisation for Conhoist that will go out and tell the world about the product’s benefits, which is a new task for us – at least on this scale.
When you have to keep calling again and again, it helps to be in love with the product you are calling about. We do the rest with a new and systematic approach.
Systematic sales
Conhoist has a huge potential. That’s why we’ve taken a systematic approach to selling the system.
We started by identifying and segmenting all customer groups: contractors, scaffolding rental companies, builders, construction advisors, organisations and manufacturers.
Then we trawled the web and talked to every contact we have. We fed all of this into our CRM system and then categorised it according to how important they are right now so we can prioritise the calls.
Some are short-term, some are long-term – and we must prioritise people from all groups, despite our limited resources in the sales department.
To make things a little more fun, we also have a motivation system: We set aside 1.5 hours daily for sales activity and then set some targets for the week. We may need to reach out to 17 people, and they must be distributed across specific segments. And if we get the meetings, it’s worth 3 points – so there’s also a bit of competition.
A warm reception
Conhoist is in the market, but we still have to develop and do all sorts of other things around the system. That’s also why it’s such a relief to have a sales process in place that is quite motivating – and that works.
We cheer each other on and find joy in it. And it’s actually a super rewarding job because we have a product that people want to hear about: 3 out of 4 want to talk to us. And when they speak to us, 3 out of 4 want to hear more. Every time we reach out, we get both good conversations and new contacts, so there is a high level of responsiveness, which only makes us optimistic about the future of Conhoist.