One of the biggest challenges sales organizations face is securing customers who aren’t ready to buy. Maybe they’re considering a competitor’s offer or having internal issues that are delaying their decision-making. Whatever the case for their indecision, your goal is to convince these prospective customers to eventually buy from you.

To accomplish this often elusive task, you need to be savvy about the way you follow-up and deal with prospective customers. Here are our top keys to guide you in this feat:

Set a Deadline

Some clients only make decisions if we set a deadline. It’s important to recognize early on that there are many reactive organizations out there. Come up with extra services, upgrades, and  more coaching. However, only if they can make a decision by a certain date. And it works. Just the fact that you are offering something that expires soon may well drive prospects into making a decision.

Multiple Touchpoints

Email is the easiest and quickest way to follow up with prospects, but don’t limit yourself to one form of communication. When following up, you can reach out with a phone call, through snail mail, or by sharing a video link. All of these give you a better chance of engaging prospective customers, increasing their likelihood of buying.

Building Prospect Trust

While the ultimate goal of following-up on your prospects is to close sales, your messaging to indecisive customers needs to exceed just selling. No prospect wants to constantly be barraged with messages that scream “buy my stuff.” What you should do instead is to use the follow-up as an opportunity to establish yourself as someone they can trust. When they are finally ready to make their buying decision, they will be more likely to buy from you since you already have an established relationship by then.

Follow-up Timeline

Set a follow-up timeline based on your typical sales cycle. Let’s say if the typical sales cycle is one month, perhaps you should follow-up with your indecisive customers twice per week for the next four weeks, once per week for the following two weeks, and then monthly for the next 12 months.

Most importantly, don’t give up. You’ll be surprised how effective reaching out to a prospect six months after your initial contact can be. Most importantly, because your competitors will rarely follow-up with indecisive customers for that long, you’ll often be able to close sales without any competitive pressure.

Follow-up System

It’s important to establish a system, particularly with follow-up sequences that last many months or even years. Without systems in place, it’s too easy for someone to drop the ball and for necessary follow-ups not to get done. This can range from simple follow-up alerts in your CRM system to hiring a marketing manager whose sole focus is helping sales staff secure more sales from follow-ups.

Reassure Nervous Customers

When you feel any indecisiveness in your customers about the longevity, quality, the material used, mention to them examples of the products, maybe a sample product, or talk about comparable or very much alike projects and build a trust base with them. This will counter the indecisiveness from moving in.

Set Realistic Expectations

Customers will always have very high expectations for the product or service they are paying for. It can be in terms of timeline or budget. It’s really essential to set expectations right with the customers right from the start and keep it honest with them.

Conclusion

In today’s competitive business world, it’s all too common for buyers to delay making a decision. Those firms that can leverage this fact via effective follow-up will dominate their markets. Remember the old adage — you can’t improve what you don’t measure. Measure the effectiveness of your follow-up campaigns. Determine what’s working and do more of it. Likewise, fix or refrain from continuing the efforts that aren’t yielding results.

Lead generation is a serious undertaking, and not all businesses have the time to devote to bring in leads. This is why many businesses are turning towards lead generation companies as they may hold the answers to all their lead generation needs. 

Businesses turn to lead generation companies or appointment setting companies to help them bring more sales leads. This can be a good solution, but you have to make sure that you choose the right one. So if you’re thinking about outsourcing lead generation, be sure that you do your research first. 

So, today we’re going to talk about how you should pick and choose the right lead generation that fits your business. 

Lead Acquisition

The quality of the leads will tend to vary based on how they get them. For instance, if they have telemarketers calling people randomly to build a list of leads, those leads are most likely not going to be any good. If they have built out a comprehensive content marketing strategy that attracts potential customers, though, those leads are going to be more promising. 

Qualifying Leads

Essential questions you should ask yourself while selecting your lead generation: Do they call your prospects? Or do they just collect contact information through a form and send the leads directly off to their clients? Take a look at their process and try to determine:

1. Will it generate the sort of leads you’re looking for?
2. Will the leads be expecting you to reach out?

The best lead generation companies will have a conversation with your potential leads to make sure they’re a good fit for your business. 

Leads Exclusivity

You need to know if you will be the only one receiving the leads or do they send them to multiple companies? If the leads aren’t exclusive you’ll have to fight for them. We advise that you don’t buy leads like that unless you have a sales team in place who can handle the competition. 

Lead generation companies that provide exclusive leads charge more, but depending on your ability to follow-up, the bigger the price tag might be worth it. 

Shortlist The Well-known Organizations

In today’s world, there is an overwhelming list of options when it comes to companies or firms that are offering leads to B2B companies. However, an experienced company versus a newcomer will have a noticeable difference in the type of leads they sell, and how sustainable they are. Explore the reputation of shortlisted organizations by browsing their social media platforms, testimonials or feedback from previous clients on their website, and independent reviews published online on the different mediums.

Is the type of content on their website consistent and expressive? What kind of networks do they interact with? Do they offer fair and flexible budget plans? Are their customers loyal? These are the markers for a long-term business and more exposure to the market conditions means better results. 

Client’s Conversion Rates

Once you invest in a lead generation agency or firm, you should be getting returns that are linked to your business plans. The offered services must be able to fulfill multiple marketing goals and report back higher customer satisfaction rates. Take a realistic approach to measure marketing and sales efforts, both from the business’ side and the lead generation agency concerned. Keep being proactive about doing the things that are working well, and focus less on the things that aren’t helping much. 

Review The Guarantees And Terms Of Service

Before you seal the deal with a particular company, have a frank discussion on the kind of expectations you have in mind and what their services can realistically prove support for. It’s always great to hear from confident and capable professionals who give a results guarantee, but vague statements and an unclear plan of action are red flags for you to discontinue negotiations with them. 

Be sure that you create a frequent communication channel that specifies the format, and establish who will be the point of contact on behalf of your team. Being open to feedback is vital for the company to be successful with your projects, so be open in order to avoid any unnecessary misunderstanding. If things are going well, feel free to explore the possibility of longer collaborations instead of the current assignment. 

Conclusion

For many, the lead generation industry remains as unpredictable as ever, but there are many types of fish in the sea. To figure out which catch is the best suited to your requirements, your marketing and sales team have to do the necessary research and single out those organizations that are going the extra mile, versus unverified agencies that are profiting from random contact lists. 

Exceptional lead generation firms are pros at helping their clients master the market dynamics and create winning talking points that add to the brand. At the early stage, a business should take a closer look at the full scope of a specific organization and what exactly they can offer to expand in a new market, or streamline existing operations for better profitability.

Every senior sales professional knows that social media provides a unique opportunity to connect with prospects and customers. Never before has the distance between seller and buyer been so short, allowing you to merge the worlds.

Social media and social selling have become integral parts of every reputable organization’s blueprint for sales success, but it doesn’t merely begin and end with creating a profile and uploading some posts.

Expert social selling is part science and part art form and when done correctly will help you shorten the sales cycle, nurturing your leads and boosting close rates compared to other tactics. That is because with social selling you can get right to the heart of why people buy and then meet them when they are at their most receptive.

In this article, we explore our top social selling techniques that will help take your sales efforts to the next level this 2021.

Create Relationships Not Sales

Nobody likes the idea of being ‘sold’ something. It makes customers feel like they have been taken advantage of or fallen prey to a salesperson’s skills and manipulation. Even if you have the best product or service in the world, a seller needs to create a relationship with prospects before making a sale.

This concept is especially true with social selling because people are inundated with offers on a regular basis. Be genuine, be a real person, and take the time to form relationships before trying to make a sale.

Serve Before Selling

Showing you are human and forming a relationship are great social selling tips, but expert sales pros need to provide value before someone is really going to trust what’s being said. Just because they may have opted in or shown some interest doesn’t mean they are saying “please sell me something.”

Serving before selling means giving away valuable information for free. It means solving problems and offering solutions without a dollar value attached. By thinking, “how can I help you?” instead of “what can I sell you?” will mean you are on the right track.

Take Time to Build the Foundation

You can’t be an expert unless you build a strong foundation for social media platforms. So many sellers seem to just create their LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram accounts haphazardly and end up not getting the most out of them.

Think of each one as a mini-website of its own and place relevant information in bios, profiles, and pinned posts so that potential customers will find it professional and will want to do business with your company right from the start.

Do Your Research

When you decide to reach out to another business via social media, take time to do some research beforehand. You don’t want to throw out some blanket pitch for each and every account contacted.

Even if you take five or ten minutes to research the company and its needs, you’ll be ahead of the game and will be able to communicate in a way that’s unique to that organization.

Interact Regularly

For social selling to be effective, you must interact with followers and connections regularly. Also, those interactions must be genuine and not seem forced or like you are pushing for the sale. Start conversations with your network and keep them going until they reach a natural conclusion.

It’s also essential to add value on a consistent basis and become a trusted resource in your industry. Offer solutions, provide relevant information, share success stories, give useful advice or have conversations about topics you have in common.

Continue the Conversation on Other Channels

Social selling experts don’t just limit their communication with a particular prospect to one channel. If you are connected on Facebook and interact there regularly, don’t think you can’t also be connected on LinkedIn or Twitter. Different platforms seem to have different feels or nuances, so go with the flow and connect on as many as possible.

You may find that a company appears more business-like on LinkedIn and more playful on Instagram. Take that opportunity to form a bond that encompasses a range of different thoughts and emotions and you’ll likely have greater success in meeting your objectives.

Don’t Neglect Existing Customers

In the quest for new sales and new revenue, it can be easy to neglect existing customers on social media, but that would be a mistake. Remember that it’s six times more expensive to win a new customer than to retain an existing one. If they have bought from your company once, they will likely buy again, but it can’t just be assumed they will.

For existing customers, ask more profound questions and take the time to nurture relationships to keep them feeling special. Look into their social media profiles and bios to get as much information about them as possible and keep them engaged.

Keep Profiles Up to Date

One of the social selling techniques that even experts tend to miss is keeping profiles relevant and up to date. You want your profile to be a place where any company or potential customer can visit and find out all of the relevant information they’d want to create or continue a relationship with you.

It must look clean and crisp, have updated media to reflect current offers, and provide value. Also, it mustn’t be complicated or challenging to get in touch if someone wants to reach out.

It’s also essential to ensure your image looks professional and makes a good impression. Company accounts may have the logo as the profile picture, but if you use an image of yourself, make sure it is in line with company values and looks like someone you’d want to do business with.

The Takeaway

Above all else, you need to exercise patience when it comes to expert social selling. Even with advanced metrics and analytics, building and maintaining valuable relationships takes time, and there is no ‘quick fix’ that will enable shortcuts.

You can use those tools to let you know what is working and what isn’t, but patience with the process is key.

These tips and techniques should help sellers across industries to harness the influence and power of social selling. The key is personalization, persistence, patience, and a positive attitude that looks to provide customers with solutions.

There have been many uncertainties in 2020, and organizations that are still standing strong until now have to prepare to adapt their approach on a strategic level in 2021.

Even with the technological advances we made this year, there is still a lot to be learned and to be prepared for in the coming year. 

To help you elevate your prospecting skills, we have listed our top sales prospecting strategies for 2021. 

Email

Hyper-Personalization

personalization matters. According to Campaign Monitor, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. And, Experian found that personalized emails get 6X higher transaction rates.

That’s huge. But just adding your recipient’s name in your email subject line and email copy won’t be enough to sway most consumers in 2021. Consumers are now looking for hyper-personalized content that gives them information relevant to them, and that feels like it was meant only for them. In fact, according to Lucid, roughly 20% of people will unsubscribe from a newsletter if the content or promotions don’t match their interests.

you can start sending hyper-personalized content by using segmentation and dynamic content.

Email list segmentation is the process of grouping email subscribers into smaller segments based on certain criteria. This could be anything from location, purchase history, interests, behavior, and a lot more. Using these segments, email marketers can create content that is specifically for each segment instead of sending the same message to everyone.

This process is made a lot easier if you have an email marketing service that allows for the use of dynamic content. Dynamic email content is any personalized part of a marketing email that changes depending on your email list segments. You can create hyper-personalized emails by adding variables to your mailing list and segmenting your list.

Interactive Emails

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) will mean great things for interactive emails. Using AMP, you can add interactive content directly into your marketing emails. So, if you want to show off a few different products, you can add a carousel and shopping options right in the email instead of linking out to a landing page.

This means that your subscribers will be able to view products, shop, and more straight from your email. No clicking, clicking, clicking to get to the right page only to click more to complete a purchase. Every time you reduce friction, making it easier for subscribers or shoppers to complete an action, you increase the likelihood that they’ll actually complete that action.

Automation

As you can probably tell, personalization can be pretty labor-intensive. And that brings us to number six on our list of email marketing predictions for 2021: automation.

When you combine analytics with email marketing, you can trigger hyper-personalized email marketing campaigns that are based on user behavior. This might look like allowing your subscribers to choose the information they want to receive from you and how often or sending personalized shopping recommendations based on purchase history.

Phone

Lead with a snappy intro, and get right to the value

We’ve already talked about how not to start your prospecting call.

So, how should you start?

In a few seconds, you need to tell your prospect about vital information that will keep them on the phone:

• Who you are
• What your company does
• Why they should care

Getting this information out in two or three short sentences allows prospects to quickly determine whether or not they want to listen to what you have to say, which saves both parties time and energy

Ask questions that confirm the challenges your clients face.

“What challenges are you facing…”

While this is a common question to ask prospects, it may not be the best.

In reality, asking this question tells your prospects that you don’t know all that much about their company or industry.

Before you get on the phone, you should already know what challenges your prospects are facing.

So instead, ask questions like these:

• “From the other [industry] businesses that I’ve talked to recently, I keep hearing that […] is a huge problem this time of year. Is that true for you as well?”
• “It seems like everyone is talking about this issue with […] lately. How has this affected your company?”
• “Do you find that […] keeps happening to you as well?”
• “How often does your team face […]?”

This will show prospects that you are up-to-date on what’s going on in their industry, and your solutions will be tailored to their problems.

Ask questions that reveal where they are in the buying process.

Above we mentioned how important it is that you find out where prospects are in the buying process before you start selling to them.

So, how do you find out which stage this prospect is in?

The questions you asked above will tell you if your prospect has already recognized that they have a problem. Then, you can move on to questions like these:

• “What solutions are you currently using to work around […]?”
• “How is that solution working out for you?”
• “What kind of ROI are you seeing from your current solution?”
• “Is that the ROI that you were hoping to see with this solution?”
• “What’s your goal ROI for this solution?”
• “What other providers are you considering at this point?”
• “How soon do you need this problem to be solved?”

These questions allow you to customize your pitch to this client’s needs and show you how close you are to nailing this sale.

Tailor your message to each individual prospect.

Obviously, a large amount of research should go into each prospect. You need to know details about their business, their ideals, and their company goals. Here are two quick ways to do that:

1. Devour the content available on their website. Check out the About page for information about their ideals and goals, and read some posts on the company blog to see the latest news about the company itself.
2. Scrolling through their social media profiles will also help you dig up valuable information. Find out what they’re doing and where, what conferences they’ve attended, what other B2B companies they are working with, and what kind of brand personality they are trying to portray.

Then, you need to tailor your pitch to that particular prospect. 

This will involve quite a bit of work on your part. However, that work will pay off in the end. One study found that 61% of buyers would be extremely influenced to take a meeting by content that is customized to their brand.

So, get involved in their company. Be genuinely helpful in getting them the solutions they need, and make your presentation speak to what this company actually wants

Social

Content Marketing

The goal of content marketing is to create and share relevant, engaging content that gets your audience interested in learning more about your brand, products, or services. The most common types of content marketing include blogging, infographics, visual content, ebooks, and lead magnets. 

Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) companies alike can use content marketing to grow their email lists, inspire social shares, increase downloads, and generate more leads or sales. The beauty of content marketing is that you can get as creative as you like and easily track success with content marketing analytics. 

Leveraging User-Generated Content

Did you notice that when you respond to users’ comments on your social media account, they tend to reply? What does it show?

It is a great way to engage your target audience. When you respond to their social media comments, you gain their trust in you.

However, only responding to their comments is not the only solution. User-generated content is a great way to create trust among your target audience and attract and subsequently convert them into customers.

Understandably, consumers are more likely to believe what fellow consumers say about your products and services. They tend to think that the fellow consumers will be truthful about whether your business offerings are worth buying.

It would help if you showed your target audience what your existing customers say about your products and services to attract their attention. It will put you in an advantageous position to enable you to convert them into customers.

However, things are not that rosy. You will find it challenging to find the right content about your business, as all customers do not post about their purchases and experience with your products and services.

Therefore, you should make sincere efforts to encourage your customers to share their experiences with your brand on social media platforms. And make sure that you do not fall behind in asking your customers to use your official hashtag so you can easily find them on social media.

So, when 2021 sets in, ask your customers to post their experiences about your brand on social media. It will broaden your reach to your target audience.

Mobile-optimized Content

Mobiles have increased across all sections of people. And most people nowadays use their smartphones rather than desktops or laptops to check their social media accounts. With that in mind, you should create mobile-optimized content for your social media platforms, as posts designed for desktops or laptops do not always fit well on smartphone screens.

Likewise, post images that are optimized for mobiles. It will also help if you post vertical videos instead of horizontal ones so they fit on mobile screens. And post short captions to your multimedia posts so that both the image or video and the caption are viewable on the screen parallel.

When you optimize your mobile devices’ content, you can attract a big chunk of social media users to your postings.

Getting the first round of clients can be difficult if you’re first starting up. There is quite a bit of research involved, and you need time to set up.

However, it’s only hard in the beginning; once a startup has built some momentum, acquiring new prospects starts getting easier.

In this guide, we take a look at how new startups can find their first batch of potential clients and start processes that will continue bringing in prospects.

Start With Who – Define Your Ideal Customer

Before going any further, it’s critical that any startup defines who their ideal customer is. This helps you narrow down your strategies to a select group of people making customizing the message and delivery easier.

Start building an ideal customer profile by asking questions like:

• Where can this solution be used?
• Who will this product appeal to?
• Can it also find special uses in other industries?
• What business size does this product apply to?
• Where can these solutions be deployed geographically?
• What are their pain points?
• What are their objectives?
• How much is their budget for these “particular” solutions?

Once you identify what your ideal customer is, it’s time to check out what characteristics they also have in common. This allows you to narrow down campaigns to target these specific characteristics.

Work With Your Current Contacts

Your current network can provide you with a rich supply of referrals, ideas, and even connections with other people that might be interested in your product or service.

However, don’t just work with your own contacts, invite your team to help out and incentivize them as well. In this way, the firm gets to duplicate its methods, creating a multiplier effect.

Start Building an Outreach List

An outreach list is basically a list of potential leads that you build up over time. Since the firm has access to their ideal customer profile, it’s now easy to start looking for prospects that could be interested in what your firm has to offer.

There are plenty of places to start looking for contacts:

• Highly-specific Google Searches – these target searches of existing lists of people in the industry.
• Business Directories
• Area Specific Lists
• LinkedIn

Another option is to buy data from a third-party and work on creating email campaigns that target them.

Start an Email Campaign

Once you have a ready-list of individuals that fit the bill, it’s time to start crafting email campaigns to market to them.

• Use an email application to make the process easier.
• Create separate emails for different subgroups within your initial lists.
• Craft more than one version of the email so that you can A/B test what works best.
• Make sure that it’s personalized so that it resonates more with the recipient.
• Check the results of your campaign.
• Alter your course of action whenever necessary.

Launch a Webinar

Webinars are a great way to get people interested in startups and indirectly advertise services to prospects.

There are different things that you can cover in a webinar: it could be a tutorial session, a question and answer event, or even a virtual product or service launch.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn remains to be the largest professional social network, and there are plenty of ways to harness its power to bring in a steady stream of passive and active leads for your business.

According to a recent study by HubSpot, LinkedIn was 277 percent more effective than Facebook or Twitter. And, that’s not all, last year, it was voted as the most trusted network. Firms have to start investing marketing resources in LinkedIn.

Here are is a quick checklist to get you started:

• Optimize your profile – you’re essentially turning your LinkedIn profile in a sales funnel, so make sure you have your website readily available in the description, there’s CTA for people to contact you, and the information listed is concise and powerful enough to elicit a response from people visiting. Think of it as a lead magnet.
• Start connecting with people – start firing away with requests to network with people.
• Post often – make sure you post (or repost) articles, thoughts, etc. often help project an image of confidence and activity. You want to come off as an industry leader so that people can trust you.
• Cold message people in your network – there are even tools available for you to automate this part of the process.
• Get everyone to contribute – the entire marketing team should have optimized profiles that are streamlined to reflect the values of the company. This also increases the area of reach as opposed to just one profile doing all the work.

Outsource to a Professional Lead Generation Agency

The quickest and most cost-effective way of getting new leads for your startup is to outsource the work to a lead generation specialist.

There is no more need to build complicated lists, spend resources on hiring marketing staff, and you benefit from the specialization and experience of the agency.

They can provide companies with email marketing, telemarketing, and even LinkedIn outreach options and packages that can bring in a consistent stream of leads.

Join Communities on Facebook

There is a lot of potential business on Facebook, and it’s the platform that almost everyone is subscribed to. Therefore, there’s a fine chance that your potential prospects are there.

The quickest way to jumpstart your Facebook marketing is to start by joining groups that are relevant to your industry. Once you’ve joined a couple of groups, the trick is to start engaging and slowly network with like minded individuals.

Bringing in new clients doesn’t have to be a daunting experience; there are a number of ways to jumpstart your startup’s growth today.

Australia is a major destination for foreign investors, and it was even ranked as the world’s eight most attractive destinations for foreign direct investment back in 2018. 

The country offers significant opportunities for foreign investment in a range of sectors, including agribusiness, mining, and minerals processing renewable energy, medical technology, and wealth management. Investors regard Australia as an excellent place to invest because of its population growth, highly skilled workforce, strategic location, strong record of economic management, and stable governance and regulatory environment.

Whether you’re still thinking of opening a business in Australia or are already an operating one, growing your customer base and further expanding your business is always going to be a major concern. In fact, it is going to be the base of your business’ success and of course, it comes with great challenges.

So here are some practical strategies to help you grow your customer base and expand your business. 

Know Your Customers

You have to understand your customer’s needs and develop products and services that will meet those needs. One of the best ways of gaining insight into your customers is by personalizing your service and encouraging them to provide you with their honest feedback. 

Nurture Existing Customers

It’s important to have strategies in place that will nurture your existing customers. These may be as simple as staying in contact with them via newsletters or even by just letting them know about any promotional events you might have ahead of time.

At the same time, look for opportunities to get more work and build your customer base. Also, make sure that you find the right balance between nurturing customers and finding new ones. 

Attend Networking Events

Make yourself available and invest time to build your networks. After all, it’s not just about what you know but also who you know.

By attending networking events, it allows you to build relationships with other people and encourage them to refer customers to you through word of mouth. 

Giving Back To The Community

It’s important that you build brand awareness in your local community. It is a great way to easily attract new business and of course, new customers. Consider hosting sponsorships or participating in a community event to raise your business profile. The more visible you are to your potential customers, the higher the chances of making new connections which can turn into leads. 

Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool, if not, the most powerful one that will help you promote your business to your potential leads and gain valuable insight through social listening. Through social listening, you can find out what your customers are saying about you and you can gain insight into their behavior, identify keywords and trends that appeal to your target market as well as to improve your customer service. Social media is a great tool to help you build your business profile and attract new potential customers.

Refine Your Strategy As You Go

Make sure that you monitor where your customers are coming from so that you’ll be able to measure whether your marketing strategies are successful or not. Don’t hesitate to experiment to see what works best for you. Refine your approach as you go along if you see that something is not working and focus more time on activities that achieve the best results.

Conclusion

There is always room for improvement, so it’s important that you keep on the lookout for opportunities to try out something new or keep yourself updated with the latest growth and marketing trends so you won’t be missing out. We hope that these growth strategies, no matter how simple they may seem, are going to help you further expand your business.