Viral Sales Models

Following on from Tuesday’s post I’ve been asked to explain what I mean by a viral sales model. In short it is a form of 3rd party distribution and for it to work the product or service has to be simple and the target market large enough to attract intermediary interest.

Continuing with the finance examples, in the B2B space, its difficult to beat Asset Finance. The target market is c.$2.4M businesses and demand is strong. As a consequence, there are hundreds if not thousands of specialist asset finance brokers throughout Australia building customer books. Asset Finance BDMs sell to the broker network and the broker network in turn sells to the end user. Where does “viral” come from? Well, a BDM signing up 10 brokers who each write 10 deals a month for that BDM has turned 10 sales into 200 pieces of business.

I must give credit to my former colleague Chris Evans for making me think more deeply about the potential in these models. During one of our early conversations, he explained to me how he had stopped asking brokers for referrals when he was selling unsecured business loans, instead turning the focus onto training. Explaining the qualification criteria in more detail and showing them how apply online on behalf of their customer. They loved it because they retained control, he loved it because he was multiplying the effectiveness of his time and the customers loved it because they only needed to deal with one person. Everyone a winner!

Can you make your product or service simple enough to have an army of intermediaries selling it for you? Can you adjust your onboarding to enable a third party to do it for you? It’s bigger than kicking goals if you can. It’s a complete game changer! https://93twenty.com.au/sales/