9 Ways to Keep Leads and Prospects Engaged
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Sometimes the usual phone call or email is just the complete wrong way to follow-up with leads. While tempting, keep in mind that you may catch them at a bad time, lead them to feeling like they’re “being sold,” or have them ask you to stop attempting altogether. How can you spark action and interest into that lead without a hard sell? Simple! Here are 9 types of information you can send to your leads to keep their attention:
Recorded Webinars
Webinars are a convenient way of educating a large audience with minimal costs associated. What is also great about them is that they can be recorded! If you’re going to deliver a great presentation that highlights your expertise, make the most of it by saving the recording and using it as a sales tool for future leads and inquiries.
Recorded Sales Demonstrations
In sales, you may come across a situation where you have to deliver multiple demos for the same company before you can close the deal. While every point of contact is an opportunity to get closer to the lead, make sure they don’t forget you (and can show you off to colleagues) by sending them a recorded demo. That way, they can refer back to it at their convenience and never forget the greatest parts of your software. For example, check out our drag-and-drop demo for our mobile website builder, iFlyMobi!
Digital Company Brochures
If you have a fantastic printed brochure, turn the original PDF file of it into an electronic sales tool! It’s a great way to sum up all of your company’s benefits and services into one well-designed package, and your leads can then save it on their desktop. Be sure to share this via a software that handles electronic fulfullment so that you have a history record of sending it.
eBooks
Educate your audience with an enticing eBook that includes interesting facts about your audience’s pain points, and the solutions to those problems. You can subtly promote your services and products within them, but have this eBook act as a reminder to all that you’re the answer to their problems. Take a look at our eBook, “Guide to Selling Marketing Services” for inspiration.
Videos
Position yourself as the expert by giving tips, best practices, and a summary of services in 1-2 minute video clips. Send this along to your prospects as a conversation starter, and let them get to know you through creative videos.
Podcasts
If you have team members who are fantastic speakers, podcasts may be the best approach to take when trying to capture their knowledge. You can get away with longer podcast sessions as opposed to videos because the listener can listen in the car, at their desk over lunch, or on their morning run. Invite educational guests and keep folks coming back monthly for more knowledge!
Infographics
If you have a great graphic design team, and some captivating statistics, highlight both of these resources in an infographic (like this one). They’re interesting, fun to look at, and share-worthy. You can share information about the industries your target audiences are in, how you have increased success for clients, or how you’re keeping up with new technologies.
Service and Product Sell Sheets
Perhaps your leads don’t need the entire brochure, all they may want is a one-pager that goes over key benefits of one service or product they may be interested in. Think real estate; they’ve mastered the 1 page sell. What’s great about having electronic sales sheets of your various offerings is that you can send a mixture of them depending on what your lead needs, and not clutter up their mind with too many ancillary services that don’t suit them.
Surveys
This sales tool is beneficial for two big reasons. If you deliver a survey with weighted questions, you can customize the end results of what the survey would say based on the lead’s answers. It also helps you qualify the lead in finding out what type of offerings would best fit their needs.
The bottom line?
The sales process doesn’t always have to be direct. Take more of an inbound marketing approach and let them come to you. Sometimes the best way to keep the conversation going is to send educational and informative materials that will captivate your leads and get them excited about what you have to say so when they are ready, they come to the expert first (pssst…that’ll be you!)
Related Posts:
- 6 Ways to Get Your Sales Groove Back
- Literature Fulfillment- Electronic vs. Physical
- White Paper: Grow with Inbound Marketing
Need a reminder of these great tips? Print this handy cheat sheet:
Tags Love It Or Ditch It? Time To Renovate Your Fulfillment Process
Is it time to renovate your fulfillment process, or totally ditch it?
When you get frustrated, it’s easy to throw your hands up in the air and say you are done. You’re ready to walk. You’re ready for greener pastures. But you know that greener pastures aren’t all they seem to be. Sometimes.
If you’ve ever watched the HGTV show, Love It or List It, you’ve seen the couples who are up in arms debating whether their current home is salvageable or not. Usually, one half of the couple is adamant that the house will work…with just a few changes (or some major renovations, really). And the other half of the couple is 100% sure that there is no saving the house. It’s time to move. Period.
So how does your team feel? If you asked all the employees who handle the fulfillment process, what would they say? Would they say it would be perfect with just a few minor changes? That it needs some serious work? Or that it is completely broken, with no chance of ever perfecting the fulfillment process?
Renovations can be risky. You want to get what you want. You want to get the best bang for your buck. You want to make sure it’s a sound investment. And obviously, there’s serious risk involved if you totally ditch your current fulfillment process and start completely anew.
Your best bet is likely to start implementing some changes. They can be small, because even small changes can have some major impact. Or maybe you’re ready and willing to take some major renovation work on and really switch things up.
But you’re going to have to take your time. Because unlike homeowners who may have the option of living elsewhere while the renovations are going on, you don’t. You still need to have the fulfillment process working so orders can get filled accurately and on time.
Once you make those changes, you need to give it some time. On the HGTV show, it depicts the homeowners walking through the new and improved home and then put on the spot to decide if they are going to stay and love the home, or list it for sale.
The timeline in reality is likely different. But regardless, as a functioning business you can’t just make changes, give it a once-over and then within mere minutes decide to ditch your fulfillment process or stick with it. The proof is in the pudding, as an old saying goes. And you need time for your changes to show whether they were effective or not.
After time and proper metrics, you will see if your changes made a positive impact on your fulfillment process. If you don’t see the numbers where you want them, maybe it is truly time to tackle the idea of ditching your current process and move to something that will actually work for you.
Request A Demo Of Our Fulfillment Services Today > > >
Why You Need An Awesome System
Without a system in place you won’t operate efficiently. Your employees will not know what to do and decisions won’t be based on expertise and capability.
Instead, decisions will be more reactive (rather than proactive) to any given situation. And this can be a recipe for disaster. It can lead to budget overruns, poor management, lack of proper forecasting and more.
Here is what you need in order to ensure your business has an awesome system in place:
- You need to embrace technology. Unless you live in the dark ages, a lot of business takes place using technology. From email communication between your sales team and the customer, to mobile marketing, technology is something you can’t hide from, nor should you shy away from. And with a good team in place that knows technology and stays on top of what is going on, you can make sure you don’t fall behind.
- Another important business practice to instill in your overall business plan, as well as in all employees’ minds, is the importance of security. No matter what your business sells, you have data you work with. And that data should be treated like gold.
- Analyze what you have in place. How you do things. What your current process is – what works and what seems a little clunky. When you have a great system in place, you still need some analysis done from time to time to make sure all is going smoothly. In fact, the better the system, the easier it is to identify problems, because the problems will stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.
- With an awesome system, customer service excellence is made simpler because you have the ability to empower your customer service team to resolve issues and handle things on the fly. When you’re dealing with fast paced e-commerce, decisions need to be made quickly. And within an awesome system, your customer service team knows what to do to keep customers happy.
- An awesome system makes it a more seamless transition when you integrate the right software. Sure, you don’t want just “any” software for your business. You need software that has all the tools to help you run your business competently. But when your business is run on sound and smart business practices, introducing this software into the mix (and upgrading it as needed) is less of a hassle and more of a huge bonus. You’ve added greatness to your awesome system and it will reflect in your whole organization.
- An awesome system also benefits from happy employees. When things run smoothly and work is a “known” (versus some sort of haphazard, “What am I coming into work to find today?” situation), you will reap the benefits of a happy, energized and motivated team who work together to keep that awesome system working like clockwork. To do this, you need to invest in training for all your employees and you need to create an atmosphere where people want to work and do well.
There are a lot of moving parts involved in having an awesome system in place. You need the business philosophies, the policies and procedures…but the right tools (like an awesome software program) and a positive atmosphere work together to make the business run like clockwork.
Fulfillment: What It Is And Why It’s Important
Fulfillment is a process. Not one specific task. It involves everything from warehousing materials, to filling an order, to packaging and shipping it in a timely manner. The materials may go directly to the end user, or it may go to the business in larger quantities so it may be sent out to the end users, taken to conferences and trade shows or used in other ways by the marketing and sales departments. From the initial placement of the order, to the final shipping of the order, fulfillment requires the actions of employees across various departments.
It’s understandable that many businesses outsource fulfillment because it takes up valuable time and resources. As their business grows, the needs for materials grow. Let’s face it, while every business has to work on various tasks to get them to the point of profitable marketing and sales, if they spend too much time dealing with fulfillment, they might be diverting too many resources from their end goals.
They should be concentrating on what they do best. Outsourcing fulfillment also means that a business doesn’t have to deal with the possible highs and lows with the demands that go hand in hand with the need for electronic and physical literature. A good fulfillment center has the employees and the resources to deal with a sudden onslaught of orders.
Competition in the fast-paced business world has pushed fulfillment centers to a level of automation and precision that can (and should) work like clockwork. The right software can mean 24/7 access and real-time reporting. Inventory levels can be easily tracked and needs forecast. Metrics are in place to determine what is working and what’s not.
Learn more about our warehouse operations > > >
A couple of crucial aspects to fulfillment are accuracy and timeliness. It makes sense. Order fulfillment is important, but can you imagine filling an order without regard to getting the items correct? The end user should be getting items A and B, but somehow items C and D get picked instead. Or what if the shipping information is wrong? So the correct items get picked, but they get packaged up and sent out to Jill Schmill in Idaho rather than your intended recipient, Joe Schmoe in Maryland. Inaccurate orders can be a nightmare. And even an accurate order can go wrong if too much time lapses from order placement to order shipment. We live and work in a world where people want what they want – and they want it as soon as possible.
Order fulfillment – on-time and accurate order fulfillment – is crucial for today’s business. Both electronic and physical literature fulfillment is vital for e-commerce. The idea for the average business is that by using a fulfillment center, that business can reduce costs associated with fulfillment (ranging from employees to warehouse space) and spend their financial and time resources instead for the business’ core competency…meaning, doing what that business excels at doing.
Learn About interlinkONE’s Fulfillment Software
6 Ways To Get Your Sales Groove Back
Are your sales in a slump?
Or maybe your sales are just not where you want them to be. Without sales, you don’t have a business making money. So slumping sales aren’t just a downer, it can be downright scary for everyone in the company because the bottom line is that everyone feels the effects. Here are some ways you can get your sales groove back and get the numbers moving in the right direction:
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1. Look at the products and services you offer.
Are you missing anything? Is there something that you can offer that would complement your current offerings? A new product or service can really add some oomph to sales for a company.
Or perhaps it’s how it’s all packaged. Can you bundle certain products or services in a way that not only makes sense, but exudes “newness” as well? The “newness” is exciting and that excitement can shine through in your marketing materials and beyond. And that excitement is contagious to the point where your prospects and current customers want to hop on board and work with you.
2. Brainstorm on the true wants and needs of your audience.
Wants and needs can change. And your marketing materials and sales strategies may not have changed along with those various wants and needs. So have employees from all departments answer the wants and needs question so you can get a diverse sampling of responses.
You may want to contact some of your customers and ask them. They may surprise you with their answers. By adjusting some of your materials (hopefully you won’t need to make a major overhaul) and how you approach your audience, you will see the sales numbers improve.
3. Along with determining the current wants and needs, you should re-evaluate the benefits your products and services offer.
A benefit that would be a great talking point last year may be outdated and impractical now. So update your benefits and make sure that your sales department stresses the new, current benefits to your prospects and customers.
4. Celebrate the little victories.
Your business should be recognizing its hard workers. A happy work environment includes one in which its employees are given the high-five for their ideas, breakthroughs and hitting milestones. And happy employees work harder to hit those goals and keep those customers coming back.
5. Create new sales goals.
When was the last time your sales goals were updated? It’s not easy to get excited about goals if they haven’t been tweaked or brought up-to-date in a long time.
6. Take a walk down memory lane.
While “new” is great, sometimes you should look back to see what you did in the past that worked. Revisit the time that you landed a huge, exciting customer. Or the time that a particular marketing strategy resulted in a huge influx of sales. What was it about those times that seemed to resonate with your audience and create those great results? You don’t want to go back in time and just hit the repeat button, but you do want to look at what actions could translate to today’s market and replicate that.
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