Imagine, if you will, a world in which you made sales one at a time. It starts with calling a client, multiple times usually, and one day you finally get them on the phone. You start your conversation as you rehearsed, talking to them about your company and their pain points.
You finally get to the pitch and they tell you, check back with me in a month. All that time you spent on the phone didn’t pan out to a sell and at best another attempt to make a pitch. This is a normal sales cycle and there is nothing wrong with it.
Well, that is as long as you want to be limited by time. But what if there were a better way, what if you could warm up your leads through lead automation? You could make more sales calls in a day by limiting the number of cold calls you have to make and converting would-be clients into warms leads before you even pick up the phone?
I used to work at a job making cold calls all day. Well, two actually but we’ll focus on the one I didn’t loathe. In my job, I had to call companies, find their pain points, explain how our product helps and then get them to a follow-up call for our sales team to get ahold of them at a later date.
I did this for a race registration and management company you’ve probably never heard of but their clients you definitely have (think of that sarcastic Marvel Avenger that also has a race of the same name).
The goal was simple, call companies off my list, set up the follow up with a sales team member working in that state, put them in our pipeline, and then pass it off. It’s simple enough but we had an entire team of individuals doing this.
Let’s be honest, most people don’t have that kind of team working for them and most cannot afford to pay those salaries (my team alone would have been mid-six figures per year and there were two teams). So the rest of us need to get creative with our marketing ventures.
In my business, we do this a few different ways. One of the ways we do this is by creating opt-in forms on our website. This allows an individual or company to request a callback or sign up for our newsletter.
Inside each newsletter, there is a button that allows them to sign up for someone to call them. In it, we ask for basic information about who they are, what they do, and also what their budget and timeline looks like. This is more for us to know what a client can afford and what they cannot so we’re not wasting anybody’s time. This approach isn’t the best solution, but it is a cheap and quick way to start filtering new would-be clients. We’re also implementing a chat-bot within our site so clients can reach out to us directly without having to wait for someone to read their call request info.
A chatbot works similarly to a contact form except we can program different responses based on their answers. This is my favorite approach for warming up leads and it can also be used to sign them up for our newsletter (a win-win). This helps the lead automation strategy 10X!
There are many different approaches out there to use but when you have a small team, or perhaps just yourself, it’s better to use automation to grow your clientele. You won’t always have the time to set aside and feel out clients, locate their pain points, and find out if they are the right fit for your company. But, with this approach done properly, you’ll have a better understanding of who they are and they will know who you are as well.
So put down the phone, quit writing single emails or direct messages, and start automating your process a little. You can still use those skills you’ve been using for years but you’ll now be able to work in multiple places at once.
If you have enjoyed this article and feel as though it has helped or brought any value to you, please comment down below! Also visit Lee Mosler and company to gain insight on how he can help you with marketing within your business.
