3rd Party Has Spoiled Catering Sales Professionals and their owners...
Time to get back to VBR Selling ASAP
Third party catering providers have really spoiled catering sales managers. In many ways they’ve “softened” them to how hard it really is to generate new catering customers. It’s spoiled their owners as well. When orders come directly to you, it’s wonderful. It’s like a slot machine that pays every-single-pull…
As a result, when those sales subside, and the dictated budgeted growth numbers start to feel daunting, many catering sales managers begin to face pressure and anxiety to make it better. But after living your life as an “inside cat”, you will find that once you venture outside the four walls, that it can be a scary world out there.
That’s why we need to go back to teaching VBR Selling to our Catering Sales Professionals. “Valid Business Reason” Selling helps your CSMs by giving them specific talking points for every conversation. It shrinks the sales cycle by showing them how to connect to a target’s “use case”, and how to create visualization through “menu connectivity”… so the target can get better answers faster, and you can determine quickly if the target is indeed a quality prospect as early as the first call.
VBR Selling starts by lining up call targets with events taking place on the calendar. Then backing up four to six weeks, to create a logical sales cycle, that allows your CSMs to communicate prior to decisions being made, but after targets are ready to discuss.
Once you establish targets and a timeline, your CSMs will begin their outreach. The outreach must reference the event (e.g. Teacher Week, Nurses Week, Back to School, Lawyer Well Being Week, etc), vs a simple “do you cater? can I send a menu” type call. “Do you cater?” calls are just a direct marketing call, and not a sales call. Marketing assumes a need based on metrics/history. Sales calls will confirm the need, if we ask the right questions…
By calling targets during a window prior to a need is the best way to initiate and cultivate new relationships. Calling CPA Firms in June OR Big Box stores in March won’t pay dividends early. But, calling CPA Firms the last week of January and Big Box Stores in late September, will. Timing with catering is everything. More to come on the subject in the coming weeks.