With the recession underway, many companies that are looking for ways to reduce spending have tightened their travel budgets by cutting back on air travel, enforcing stricter travel allowances and substituting trips with web and video conferencing.

Indeed, according to a recent corporate travel spending survey by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE), 33 percent of the 131 companies surveyed indicated they would be spending less on travel year over year.

But oftentimes there’s no substitute for meeting a prospect in person – especially if your competition is going to make the trip. Deals are made on relationships because customers want to work with vendors they know they will be able to trust, and familiarity through face-to-face meetings helps build that trust.

So while web meetings and video conferencing may play a role, they are not a substitute for meeting in person. Does that mean that organizations cannot save on sales travel? Well, they might still be able to save through smarter planning of sales trips.

A Better Approach

If you don’t want to risk deals by reducing face-to-face meetings, and you still need to save on travel budgets, your best option is to optimize trips to meet as many customers or prospects during a trip. Here are some steps to accomplish that:

1. Develop target lists by metro area using radius searches
2. Pick a travel window for each metro area and start planning early
3. Call prospects by geography and use your planned trip as a reason to meet

Of course, one of the challenges to this type of approach is that not all of the prospects you will be meeting are going to be ready to purchase something from you. After all, you’re arranging this trip based on your schedule, not their purchasing plans.

But there’s a way to address this issue.

1. Spend the weeks up to the trip using web conferences and phone meetings to build interest
2. Adjust meeting lengths to spend more time with the most interested prospects
3. Start planning for a future trip 3 months out for prospects early in the cycle

Using this approach, you can build a regular rhythm of trips to particular metro areas and really get the most out of each visit by planning ahead of time and meeting the greatest number of prospects. And because you’re building a regular schedule beyond just one trip, you can plan where each of your prospects is in the pipeline and what you need to do in the next meeting to move them forward.

And, an added benefit is that you can save on travel fares by booking ahead of time, since you will be planning these regular visits more in advance and on a more regular schedule.

Adjusting for Your Sales Cycle

In the example noted above, a 3 month return trip was used, but you may need to adjust this for your sales cycle. If you sales cycle is short, you may need to return more frequently. If you have a longer sales cycle, you may adjust it up slightly, but be careful not to push it too much on the other end. After about 3 months, prospects may start to forget about you. If you do a great job staying in touch with the prospect between trips, you can probably push it to 4 or 5 months, but getting beyond that can be tough.

Putting it into Practice

To get going on this type of approach, start by looking at your pipeline and see where you would potentially want to have some trips about a month out already. Also look at your territory and see where your prospects are concentrated.

If you work with an inside sales rep or a telemarketing rep who helps you set up your sales meetings, it’s critical to discuss this approach and build out a plan jointly with that person.

Tags: Sales Prospecting