Cold calling isn’t just soul destroying; it’s downright inefficient as far as sales tactics go. According to Open View Partners Sales Labs, some estimates say cold calling requires 10 hours of work just to schedule one appointment! You know the drill: randomly ringing unsuspecting prospects, pitching them your product’s advantages as quickly as possible before they hang up, and sighing in despair before dialling the next number on the list. Fortunately, there’s another way to create new business opportunities that won’t leave you quite so drained and discouraged.
Know Your Leads
Some call it awareness campaigns; some call it warming techniques. We call it inbound marketing, and I’m about to tell you how it can dramatically increase the success of your outreach efforts. What elevates an inbound lead above a regular lead is the data you have on the marketing interactions leading up to the point of contact. This data gives you an idea of what the lead is researching and enables the sales person to engage the lead by referencing the actions they took and probing for implications surrounding these actions.
The way to get this data is through implementing marketing automation software, which tracks visitor behaviour and allows marketers to gauge intent. Data from marketing automation serves as a good jumping off point to visit LinkedIn profiles and company websites. Steve Richard, co-founder and Chief Content Officer of sales training and consulting company Vorsight, recommends combing through LinkedIn groups to discover points of commonality between you and the lead. Other points he suggests to connect on might be a new product launch or strategic planning announcement made by the organisation. Just performing a few minutes of research on each lead before the call enables the sales person to break out of the cookie cutter sales pitch and take a consultative approach. Connecting with context builds trust and opens the doors for constructive two way communication.
Make Sure Your Leads Know You
Just as it’s important for a sales person to have insight into the lead, it’s important to note how familiar the lead has gotten with your organisation. The more content the lead has viewed, the more likely it is they will buy. When Hubspot analysed the relationship between page views and purchases, they found that leads who viewed at least 30 pages of web content before a sales appointment made a purchase 80% of the time. The industry average for sales appointments is 10-15%. The problem is that businesses think visitors only want to read 3-10 pages, which demonstrates a lack of understanding of the power of content.
“It’s about the ability to move people down the funnel with content,” says Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion. “Content should be the gift that keeps on giving. You should implement content into your sales process from now until the end of time.”
That said, it’s important to measure the effectiveness of the types of content being produced beyond just pure download stats and make sure the content is warming up the right kind of leads. The best leads are the ones that know their problem and want a solution! A sales qualified lead has goals, plans, challenges and timelines. Hubspot recommends marketers ask the following questions of sales reps face-to-face:
Adjust your content accordingly. Pull the pieces that are consistently bringing in the wrong leads and collaborate to develop more accurately tailored content. Capture these engagements so that you can work from a list of leads that have demonstrated interest in what you have to offer. Prove that you deserve to have the conversation and that you aren’t treating them like the next in line on a cold call list.