How to become an unsuccessful Qimtek member

Sarah is a sales & marketing content writer, with ten years of experience within the engineering & manufacturing industry.  Working both at Qimtek and on a freelance basis, she can usually be found hammering away at a keyboard or with her head in a pile of engineering drawings. 

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Despite best efforts to make our live lead service universal for all to use, Qimtek’s membership just isn’t for everyone – I call it the Marmite effect. Some love us, some hate us. Success, often being the deciding factor.

But why is this?

Sales is difficult and quite honestly, a thankless job at that. But let’s face it, it’s simply unavoidable. At work, at home, in your personal time – someone, somewhere is trying to sell you something, or perhaps it’s you who is trying to sell something.

The difference to being a successful or unsuccessful Qimtek member lies in how hard you grab the sales process by its proverbial horns.

Here are our top 5 tips to becoming an unsuccessful Qimtek member:

1) Keep your clients in the dark:
Networking is just pretentious.

Business owners and entrepreneurs alike will tell you that you simply cannot grow your business without networking. Whether face-to-face or over the phone, it’s vital that you’re in touch with people who can drive your business forward - or at least connect you with those who can. If you do not make contact with buyers or even indicate your interest on the enquiries you receive, how do you expect to ever grow your business?

2) Correspond via email only:
It’s the 21st century and with the advent of modern technology, there’s simply no need to speak with a real person anymore.

This couldn’t be further from the truth; people buy from people and face-to-face selling will always be the most effective and lucrative way to conduct business. Whilst you can certainly personalise an email, you simply cannot emote or show your passion in the same way you can when communicating in person, or respectively, over the phone. Rapport building should be a priority of any business looking to expand.

3) Take your time:
What’s the rush? There’s still 3 days left to quote on that enquiry!

By failing to quote quickly, you could miss out entirely. Remember that the early bird catches the worm - some of our most successful members contact buyers and provide quotes within 48 hours - some even quicker than that! With modern ERP systems, putting a quote together is very simple and far less time-consuming than the older spreadsheet-and-calculator combination.

4) Go it alone:
You don’t need help! Your experience and skills far outweigh that of anybody else’s.

Qimtek has a fully-dedicated membership support team with a proven record of working with our members and advising on the best ways to secure a return on their investment with us. In addition, members are encouraged to lean on our team of professional sourcing advisers, who, needless to say, know their buyers inside out and provide an excellent secondary source of information. At one stage or another in our lives, we will all need to ask for help!

5) Tarnish everyone with the same brush:
Buyers are liars.

Tarnishing buyers with the same brush will inevitably result in months of wasted membership fees. Believe it or not, not all ‘buyers are liars’. The majority of those sourcing via Qimtek have genuine requirements and genuine orders to place. It may surprise you also that they’re not all looking for the cheapest price. Quality and lead time continue to be at forefront of decisions, with price playing second fiddle in the majority of cases.

Following these 5 steps will not only help you to become an unsuccessful Qimtek member, but they’ll also contribute to a decline in sales and new business overall.

For those who are serious about new business and expanding their customer base, our other blogs; Boosting Your Company’s Brand Awareness, Tips on How to Market Your Business Locally, and 5 Top Tips When Hunting Down New Business may be more of an interesting read.