How to Find New Customers

Even the best salespeople will lose some business all the time. It could be anything from a competitor having a promotion, to a customer renewing their fleet and needing fewer replacement parts. The fact of the matter is there is always a small percentage of business that you will lose on a monthly or yearly basis. While good customer management (tracking product category sales year over year) and constant contact (weekly, monthly or whatever is required) puts the odds in your favour, it will still happen.

If you have good relationships, and you’re lucky, customers will let you know when you’ve lost a line of business with them on account of price, availability, need or whatever the reason may be. But without good statistics and discipline, it’s very hard to spot trouble areas. In any case, we aren’t trying to just maintain, we’re trying to build. No matter which way we look at it, we need new customers regularly.

How Your Customers Advertise Their Need for Parts

By definition, any prospective customer of a decent size needs to hire mechanics. The number one way to find mechanics is still advertising. This is despite the number of signs and flags announcing that a company is hiring mechanics. Go online and maybe even in your local newspapers and look for mechanic jobs for transport vehicles/fleets. If an ad is vague, there’s nothing wrong with calling them and asking where they are situated.

While on their classified ad or website, take a look at what they are looking for. Are they simply looking for someone to pump fuel and do oil changes? Are they looking for a seasoned veteran able to rip apart and rebuild modern diesel engines? This information will help tailor your approach to this prospective customer. Even if the advertisement is for an existing customer, it will help you to understand what sort of work they do or aspire to do.

Look for Transport Providers

Be it Google Maps or however else you would look for local services, do the same for transportation. Google Maps or similar is great because it allows you to look at their property from the satellite and road view. If you see the location as a second-story office in a strip mall, they may not repair their own fleet. Or their fleet may be parked/repaired elsewhere.

For fleets that clearly park and are repaired on-site, show up and ask for the person responsible for the fleet or the garage. Make it clear, however, that you are looking for a name to make an appointment. You are not barging in unannounced trying to take up their time.

For fleets that are clearly not in the same place, call or show up (preferably show up) and ask for the same information, a contact. Make it clear that you understand they don’t work/operate in this place but that you’d like to speak to the person responsible for the fleet/garage and find out where they do work.

Boulevard Clues

Drive around, or park near a busy intersection. I don’t recommend doing this during selling hours. But if you’re going to stop for a coffee or lunch, make it profitable by parking by a busy bit of road and look at the trucks going by. You might see fleets you never thought to call on. To be sure many of the trucks going by will be from out of town but you will see not only your customers but some prospects as well. If you only see your existing customers, it’s still not a waste. Look at their equipment. Do you see accessories on their trucks or trailers you’re not selling them? Or maybe equipment they don’t have but could/should like wheel rotation indicators or toolboxes.

Never drive by an industrial park or section of an industrial park that you don’t know like the back of your hand. Many fleets do absolutely nothing to advertise their location on or offline. They don’t care if their customers find their office/shop and maybe even would think it a bad thing if they showed up. Some fleets don’t want to be hassled by sales reps of every kind every day and so they make themselves hard to see. These may be, or they may seem a little anti-social, but they can make fantastic customers.

Make a couple of detours, wander a little, and look for nooks and crannies where fleets may exist. Even a small fleet of just a few trucks can make a difference in your numbers. They may not need a lot of products but they also won’t need a lot of your time, and often you can make higher margins because they don’t have as much volume nor as many reps calling on them regularly.

Conclusion

Get creative. Think how would a mechanic (the person installing the parts you sell) find a job? How about a driver? How would a manufacturer find a transport service? Even if a fleet has nothing to do with the maintenance or repairs of their vehicles, where do they get their work done? This could be a clue as well. There are probably more small repair shops in your area than you know about. Sometimes they only serve their community/language and are very difficult to find. These fleets may know where they are and they may be your next best customer.