During my early career as a technology reseller the individual reps were responsible for generating their own new business. There was no marketing, collateral or advertising for our products and services. So the only way we were going to grow our sales was to pick up the phone and call prospects to tell them our story. This worked very well but took a tremendous amount of time and patience. However, as time went on being able to scale and drive business over a certain level got a little tough. So what I tried to do is figure out what other lines of business, solutions and or other product offerings would compliment what I was trying to sell. Since my product was a technology networking infrastructure and maintenance solution, phone system integrators seemed like a great complimentary partner. More and more companies were relying on their network to enable voice communication. Most voice integrators did not specialize on the network piece and my organization did not have a voice practice. It was a perfect fit. As luck would have it, I ran into an old colleague of mine who was the senior rep at a company that specialized in voice. He and I had multiple conversations and meetings to figure out the best plan of attack. As time progressed, we had a great symbiotic relationship where he knew exactly how to refer me to prospects as did I. Not only did he and I increase our sales, but our two companies also became very close where other reps and directors were building relationships as well. It was a win win.
PS: This same voice company was also supporting about 10 customers' network infrastructure that I did not know about as a favor from the owners of the company. One day the owners of the company decided that they wanted to give up supporting these customers cause it was not their specialty. You could probably see where I am going with this, they ended up transferring those relationships to me and my company increasing my revenue and commission in an instant.
The moral of this story is Think Outside of the Box when trying to earn new business. The methods of madness might not be the traditional ones that initially hit you!
Shawn
