Mon, 23 September 2019
How Do I Deal With Unresponsive Inbound Leads? There are tricks on how to deal with unresponsive inbound leads. Dealing with people who come to your website and who give their phone numbers and emails but don’t want to talk to you doesn’t have to be difficult. It is true that many who visit your site want the freebies and they ghost you for reasons you can’t comprehend. The sales reps are frustrated because the appointment is not getting through, nor are the emails, or the calls. This happens because we’ve conditioned the buyers this way. We’ve taught them the concept of opt-in. They give us their emails for emailed permission-based marketing and we call them or mail them to get an appointment. Other companies are doing this as well and buyers know the pattern and are now looking for ways around it. They often give a bogus email address or an old one that they no longer check making it next to impossible to get in touch with them in the first place. Deal with unresponsive inbound leads There are two ways to deal with unresponsive inbound sales. The first one is connected to marketing. Examine what you’re offering to the prospects and extend your offer beyond your freebies. They may not be ready to purchase yet and they just want to review your offer so give them something else they can munch. Include another link to something else within your gift. Try to put an invite to your webinar. They can click inside the opt-in to see what the webinar is all about. Engage them further and nurture them into actual leads. Give them something a little bigger, perhaps a one-on-one free consultation session or your phone number. Turn the opt-in into a strategy session to be able to talk to your prospects. For qualified leads, engage them further by giving them more information. They will qualify themselves and they will give you their phone number and have a conversation with you. Once they go to your webinar, they become converted leads which allows you to give them a pitch or offer your product for 15% off. Give the prospects what they want in order to get what you want. #SalesTips Give them the piece of content and education on the webinar to get the conversion going. As a salesperson, deal with unresponsive inbound leads by giving them what they want first. You can also use a thank you page as a dual opt-in or a webinar sign-up page to further turn your unresponsive inbound prospects to interested prospects who want to learn more about the business. Stop the old school strategy Deal with unresponsive inbound leads by letting go of your old school strategies. Stop sending a generic email which contains the usual information about the company, the features and benefits of the product, or the invite for a phone call or appointment schedule. Emails such as these are long and asking them for a phone call at the end of it is a huge jump. Shorten your email and change your subject line. Go for simpler yet impactful opening such as, “Did you get the download for this or that?” The recipient will see your name, your signature, and all the other necessary information and he is bound to answer a resounding Yes. They need to recognize you as an individual. This is when you ask! Ask your question when they’ve already responded to your previous mail. If they reply with a Yes, ask them for a phone call to answer any questions they might have. If the prospect shows interest and gives his phone number then quickly respond by giving a phone call. The key is to follow up right away. Have a 2-step strategy for prospects who are not ready to buy right away. Make it your goal to make them reply to you before you ask them to have the sales talk with you. Remember that buyers these days are cognizant of opt-ins so warm up to them by using this 2-step strategy. If you’re doing insight sales and you’re responsible for all inbound sales, you might want to ask them what prompted them to download the content. Do what you can to engage them in a conversation. “How Do I Deal With Unresponsive Inbound Leads?” episode resources Build stronger value and have more meaningful conversations with your prospects. Close more deals and challenge yourself to go out and do big things every single day. For sales concerns, you can connect with Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This episode is brought to you in-part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a helpful guide for sales reps and sales leaders to improve their pitches and presentations. It has 12 modules and you can get the first two modules for free! If you like this episode, don’t be shy and give us a thumbs up and rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. We produce podcasts weekly so make sure to subscribe to get more of these sales talks that matter! Share this with your friends and teach them how to subscribe as well. If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register! If you’re a reader who loves reading and listening to books, you can also check out Audible as well and explore this huge online library with thousands of books. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial. |
Mon, 9 September 2019
Our Inbound Leads Are Causing More Work Than Good Sales Often, you hear salespeople say, “Our inbound leads are causing more work than good sales.” It’s always on the question of who should follow up on inbound leads and how to go about it effectively.Many small organizations are having a hard time utilizing their inbound strategies effectively. We don’t have all the variables and all the situations within an organization. Still, we can assume that there are three people on a sales team. The sales team Assume that a sales team is composed of three people: the marketing person who does almost everything, the junior assistant who helps with content creation, and the outsourced person who does the marketing strategies. Among the three, who should follow-up the lead? Not all leads are created equal. This means that before deciding who will follow up the lead, the lead should be evaluated first. You don’t want your salesperson pitching to a lead that in the end would go to another competitor. Do a pre-qualification Do a pre-qualification in your organization to know if the people you are going to have the conversation with are ready to consider the deal. Set a benchmark and rules for what you consider a marketing quantifiable lead. Consider the following questions:
The answers to those questions will lead you to your ideal customer. It would also help you identify the triggers that qualify them to be a marketing quantifiable lead and a sales qualified lead. The work is far more efficient because when a lead comes in, your salespeople can vet them and follow the pre-qualification factors you’ve set to see if the lead can generate new business for the organization. This is also helpful in maintaining your current customers. There’s no time wasted in sifting through leads and trying to figure out which one works and which one doesn’t. Create a system Create a system to efficiently manage the workload. The marketing team can do the pre-qualification to increase the odds of the lead being converted into something real. Whenever a lead comes in, let marketing take a look at it and check the website and the title of the person. Then let the intern or junior marketing rep take over the other tasks like looking into LinkedIn, HubSpot, Marketo, or other platforms you have to find the data that you can transfer into your CRM. You can then sign that into the sales team for it to become a sales qualified lead. The system prevents wasting time on people who aren’t real prospects. Marketing can help fix the problem of having to go back to the beginning of the funnel and pre-qualify the leads again because they’re not yet ready then.
Website leads matter The sales team sometimes takes for granted the leads that they didn’t hunt for. A good example is leads coming in from the websites. Salespeople have this notion that they can get more of those so they ignore them. It’s the mentality that since they didn’t work for it, it doesn’t mean much. You must recognize that the organization spent thousands of dollars to get that lead. The organization paid for the marketing and the sales rep to produce content on your site. You have writers and you have graphics on your site. You have all the different infrastructure to make sure that your website functions. It is disheartening when a sales rep doesn’t take that into consideration when a lead comes in via the website. Whenever an inbound lead comes in, it is best to use your flow process to follow-up particular prospects. It should be written and put in your company’s playbook so that everyone can read it and use it with every inbound lead that comes in. Follow-up right away A stat from insidesales.com said that a lead that’s contacted within five minutes is 100 times more likely to convert than leads that are followed-up 90 minutes later. When a lead comes in, follow up right away. You're more likely to convert than if you wait. #SalesHacks Strike while the iron is hot. Do a quick research and evaluate whether the person is real, see if it’s a true marketing qualified lead, and toss it over as a sales qualified lead if it ticks all the boxes. The sales team can take a quick visit to the person’s website, check their LinkedIn profile, and the pages they’ve visited on your site. Tools like HubSpot and Active Campaign allow you to see where they’ve signed up and the number of times they’ve looked at the pages. You can then use these data to have a meaningful conversation with the prospect leads. Focus on the people that matter Include in your flow process the phone call and email for the first time then do the same things a day later. Connect with them on LinkedIn and share some of their content for seven full business days. Do the same things that you would do with a cold person. Nurture the lead and try to grab his attention. Even if they’re not ready now, then at least you can toss it back into the marketing pool and revisit it another time. With the right system and by focusing on the people that matter, your work is going to be minimized but the return is going to be much higher. Filter your inbound leads and let the marketing do the review. Recognize the good ones and toss them over to the sales reps to reach out and convert. “Inbound Leads Are Causing More Work” episode resources Email Donald for more questions or connect with him via LinkedIn. This episode is brought to you in-part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a helpful guide for sales reps and sales leaders to improve their pitches and presentations. It has 12 courses and you can get the first two modules for free! If you want to take your sales to the next level, then I recommend that you join us with our group coaching. Our next semester begins mid-September. If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register! If you’re a reader who loves reading and listening to books, you can also check out Audible as well and explore this huge online library with thousands of books. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial. If this episode answered your concerns about why your inbound leads are causing more work than good sales then don’t be shy and give us a thumbs up and rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. We produce podcasts weekly so make sure to subscribe to get more of these sales talks that matter! Share this with your friends and teach them how to subscribe as well. |