Today’s sales process is different. Buyers are not relying on salespeople to become educated and move through a traditional pipeline process. The self-service nature of buying based on the internet affords buyers information to help them understand what they want and how to conveniently get it. They search, click, read, share and download. These are all digital behaviors. They happen independently of a salesperson, yet they are vital indicators of buying readiness.
If your sales team was equipped with real-time information of the movements of your leads, then your sales process could transition from reaction to relevant engagement. Here are some areas to consider for driving a modern day sales process:
- Lead scoring. You can assign numerical values to desirable behaviors such as site visits, white paper downloads and online video watching. As certain scoring thresholds are met, you can nurture leads with special offers or trigger a sales call from an account manager. This kind of offense can be engineered with continual feedback as your sales team identifies ready leads from unready ones.
- Social media contests. Using social media around periodic or regular contests can drive lead engagement. Your sales team can be engaged for driving online dialogue with fans of your brand or product. Driving the conversation is an important continuous activity. Creating next steps such as a webinar for educating your most interested customers on a social media site should be clearly set up and tested.
- Call to action follow-up. Use a call to action like trial offers or content in the form of an ebook or white paper to engage new leads. The content needs to be valuable for helping your prospects with their business problems. Use surveys and lead nurturing to follow up. Watch the level of engagement and allow your sales people to access a call list based on your lead behaviors.
- Complete CRM activity. Your sales people need to see every digital movement of your leads recorded in their respective lead records. This helps orient the conversation as well as give perspective on whether a lead is ready. Ensure your online systems feed your CRM system and that the information builds a complete picture of a lead’s interest.
Relying on information from phone calls or customer visits is only a small portion of what selling is about today. Sales teams need the complete picture which helps them prioritize and engage their leads.
Which enhancements have you applied in your sales process or would like to implement?
