From Leads to Clients

From Leads to Clients

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Have you ever followed up on a lead for 8 months without closing a deal then realized not only will your lead not give you business but also that they cannot? As a salesperson, you want to maximize the number of leads you convert to clients using minimum resources. Many salespeople approach this by increasing the number of leads they have. However, they can waste fewer resources by focusing on quality leads rather than just more leads. This makes it really important to qualify your leads.

Superficially, someone can say qualifying a lead is about who you reach in the organization, what their role is and where they stand in the hierarchy of the organization. But qualifying leads is more of an art than a science, and it requires high levels of both emotional and social intelligence as well as a deeper understanding of human relationships and dynamics.

First of all, let’s discuss why it’s important to qualify a lead:

  • According to entrepreneur Steven Tulman, 67% of your lost sales come from sales reps not qualifying leads properly before going ahead with the rest of the sales process.
  • Qualifying a lead helps evaluate sales projections by estimating the size of expected business from the prospect, thus aids in the allocation of appropriate time and resources to the lead.

Even though qualifying leads would vary from one type of lead to another, having a general process helps streamline operations and leads to a bigger impact on your sales growth. So what are the ingredients of a good process?

  1. Build an Ideal Buyer Persona Profile. This can be as detailed as possible with imaginary — or not — names, ages, occupation. In the profile, answer the following questions:
  2. How does he find you?
  3. What are his pain points?
  4. What is his budget?
  5. What role does he play within his organization?
  6. What does he need to know prior to purchase?
  7. Why would he buy from you and not someone else?

Building a profile shouldn’t be an imaginary exercise especially if you’re already in business. All you have to do is call your best customers and find out the similarities between them. If you’re not in business yet, that information would come out of your product-market fit research.

  1. Understand how long the sales cycle is for the type of deal you’re trying to make in that particular industry- If you’re a salesperson who works across industries, you’ll need to understand that sales cycles vary depending on many factors such as the size of the company, whether it’s a startup or a traditional organization, whether there are many technical aspects in the deal that might require customizations, etc. In other words, just because following up might take 12 months, that doesn’t necessarily mean the deal won’t close eventually, as it could just mean there are many fine details that need to be agreed on.
  2. Know the difference between interest and intent. People who are only interested in buying will ask general questions about the company, but those with intent will ask specific questions related to your demo and pricing, information about maintenance, etc.
  3. Know how much your lead usually spends on solutions similar to yours. Understanding that not only helps you price your solution better but also helps you drop those for whom your product or service is too expensive.
  4. Most importantly, understand the true decision makers in the companies. Just because a person has a role or a job title doesn’t necessarily translate to them being able to influence the project. This is where social intelligence comes in as you’ll need to connect with many people within the organizations to understand where the true power really lies, and who makes all the decisions concerning budgets.

Ride the wave before it forms

Another thing to consider in the pre-qualification process is whether the demand for your product or service is established or emerging. This helps pre-empt qualified leads and get to them before your competition.

Most salespeople are familiar with Established Demand. It’s when customers have figured out what they need and how much they’ll pay for it. General attributes for Established Demand are as follows (Link Here):

  • Senior decision-maker involvement
  • Buying authority
  • Customer consensus
  • Approved budget
  • A clearly articulated need

Emerging Demand is one that is driven by some form of internal or external change. Internal drivers of organizational change could be ongoing poor commercial performance, senior leadership turnover etc. External drivers of change such as changes in legislation, technology or macro-economic trends usually impact multiple organizations at once thus widening your leads. For instance, Kenya’s ban on plastics brought about a demand for alternatives.

Once you’ve qualified your leads, the number of leads you have might be less but their quality would definitely go up so you could focus your resources on each one, naturally increasing your conversion rate.

Co-written with Amina Islam

 

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Why You Should Use a Sales Script As a Compass Not a Map

Why You Should Use a Sales Script As a Compass Not a Map

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Why You Should Use a Sales Script As a Compass Not a Map

There once was a person who wanted to experience indoor skydiving in Dubai. Before going in, the gatekeeper asked them a question to ensure their safety, “Are you pregnant?”

Funny enough, the person going in was a man.

Now, this is an extreme case of following a script without considering who was standing right in front of them.

But, what does this have to do with selling?

In today’s post, I give my two cents on the debate around whether you should use a written script during cold calling or not [needless to say, a written script during an in-person interaction is a total no-no though the following discussion could apply to a memorizedscript].

My personal opinion is that using a sales script will depend on where you are in your sales career.

Experienced salespeople suggest that you use written scripts sparingly as they could make you sound either like a monotonous robot or an overcaffeinated, high-strung one depending on how fast you speak. This could totally ruin your chance to connect with your potential customer.

You might also become so focused on reading from the script that you spare no cognitive energy on actually listening to what your prospect is saying, again missing out on a real connection and introducing you to the phone’s dial tone more often than you would like to hear.

However, I still think sales scripts are a good training tool when an experienced salesperson wants to pass the baton of knowledge to new sales recruits. As a new recruit, you need to build your self-confidence, and scripts can do that by keeping your thoughts organized and coherent. That way, you’re more likely to succeed in your pursuits and less likely to turn into a bumbling mess during the call, which — depending on your level of self-esteem — could turn into self-bashing and consequently impact your self-confidence negatively.

A sales script also helps you stay ahead of the conversation by keeping key details close by in case a customer asks very specific questions about the product. Also, you can address common objections around your offering before the customer brings them up.

Essentially, the main benefit of having a script is preparation. As an inexperienced salesperson, role-playing the script with your team allows you to imagine different scenarios that could unfold and help you be prepared for each and every single one of them.

Scripts also give you a safety net on days when your performance is not stellar, which is something that everybody goes through.

Having listed out the merits of using a script, it must be seen as a compass, not a map. In other words, it only exists as a reference and a guide to the conversation, not as a detailed map.

When it comes to interactions between people, the secret behind building rapport is personalization. If that were not the case, selling would be one of the occupations at risk of complete automation.

As it stands right now, according to a study conducted by McKinsey to estimate the percentage of tasks that could be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technology in various occupations, 49 % of day-to-day of sales-related tasks could be automated.

The remaining 51 % is where you bring in the human factor to build trust and make a personal connection. Which is all good, because artificial intelligence and automation can handle tasks such as scheduling and keeping a sales pipeline organized, but can it really make someone laugh or feel like their lives will be turned around by the product or service you’re selling?

With that said, as you gain more experience as a salesperson, you’ll learn to take control of any conversation with a potential customer. We live in a cluttered world, and to rise above the noise, it is imperative you grab their attention and be memorable by eliciting positive feelings through personalization.

Also, because we live in a world where the buyers themselves have changed, sales people have to be more responsive to that change. In studies on experiences that are designed to be purely digital like e-commerce, results have shown that people still crave human interactions.

In conclusion, remember that selling is a human process and though cold calling might have its perks in terms of efficiency, the real foundation of selling is long-term relationship building, which means at some point you have to get off the phone and meet your potential customer in person.

“The big trend for 2018 is conversational selling…Trying to treat them more like a human, really engaging with the prospect on a one-to-one basis, and tailoring the message to who they are and their needs at the time.”

— Marko Savic, CEO and Founder, FunnelCake [ Source]

 

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Why You Shouldn’t Fall Off The Bandwagon of Lead Generation

Why You Shouldn’t Fall Off The Bandwagon of Lead Generation

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Being at the helm of your own company has many challenges. One of the main ones is balancing client acquisition with work execution. With only twenty four hours available to you every day, it’s always tempting to lean towards the task you find easier or more enjoyable.

For me, that’s usually work execution.

Which means that I struggle when it comes to staying religiously disciplined while generating leads and acquiring new clients.

What usually happens is this: at the beginning of every quarter, I start off with enthusiasm, but then I slow down the process of generating new leads, as I turn my focus towards work execution.

However, this would eventually catch up with me due to the turbulent nature of the market I work in.

What should drive your sales process is actively generating leads rather than relying solely on referrals and upselling to current clients. Also, keep in mind that industry statistics show that 63% of consumers requesting info on your company today will not purchase for at least 3 months, so you need to always stay ahead of the game.

Referrals are usually a good thing as they’re a sign of clients who were satisfied enough to pick up the phone and recommend you to their peers.

But you can’t always count on them.

Also, clients will primarily refer new clients who are at their level of the financial spectrum, which could make you plateau if your aim is to continuously acquire bigger projects.

Focusing on expanding business off of our current client base is another easy thing we tend to do as business owners but it can be very risky.

I learned this lesson the hard way when during the second quarter of 2016, a new marketing director joined one of my top clients. The new head was skilled at pitching for extra budget and within 3 months, the marketing activities we were executing lead to a spike of 40 % in revenues.

However, during the first quarter of 2017, a new regional management team took over, drastically cut the budget, sending our revenues into a nosedive. This sent us scampering and suddenly, we had to ramp up our lead generation machine.

It did not have to happen that way.

The mistake we made there was relying on that account to generate revenues when we could have diversified by acquiring more clients.

Define Lead Generation Goals Rather Than Revenue Related Goals

It is common for salespeople to define revenue-related goals. So when you close enough deals to hit that revenue (even if it’s just from a single client), lead generation takes a backseat.

However, what you need to do is set goals related to lead generation activities:

  • Number of leads reached out to (on Linkedin, through cold calling or referrals)
  • Number of referrals followed up on
  • Lead conversion

How I learnt to set those goals is to use my own team’s historical data to determine the number of leads we need to periodically generate to guarantee growth. For example, in one of our most productive quarters to date, we had 21 leads, followed up on 16 of them, and converting 25 % to business that lead to our surpassing our revenue targets by 49%.

Armed with this information, generating 20 leads every quarter has now been set as a goal so we can plan ahead.

What if you don’t have capacity?

Maybe you shy away from generating leads because you’re worried about converting so many of them into clients that you find it difficult to deliver due to stretched resources. The truth is, you don’t really know your capacity for execution until you’re operating at your limits. One of the quotes by Grant Cardone, the author of 10x rule, “Never lower your target; increase your actions.”

Unless you’re working on a reimbursement system, where you have to put your own resources to run projects before you get paid, new clients can also help you expand your capacity as they come equipped with resources that could help you free up some of your time — e.g. training a new sales team. You’ll never know until you have those conversations with your leads.

Overall, remember that if you’re focusing on growth, you’ll always need to keep your lead generation running in the background

 

 

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How to Maximize Your Landing Pages

How to Maximize Your Landing Pages

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In Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she should go. He tells her it depends on where she’s going.

“I don’t much care where,” Alice said.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Sometimes you find people set up websites for their products and services without any inkling of an idea about what their goal for it is. What happens is website visitors stumble onto it, and quickly stumble out of it.

Money and effort spent posting blog posts, optimizing content for SEO, and driving traffic to the site go wasted when you succeed in getting your target audience’s attention but fail toconvert them to paying customers — unless your goal is purely to educate and brand.

If the purpose of your website is to sell a product or service, however, then it’s important to steer your target audience in the right direction, and set up an effective landing page.

A landing page is a powerful sales tool as it is a dedicated webpage that drives visitors to complete a single goal or call to action. Its main mission is conversion — of prospective customers to paying ones.

So how do you maximize conversion on your landing page?

There are best practices to remember while designing landing pages, and those are:

  • Speak to your target audience. Empathize with them by highlighting how you’re removing their pain points. More importantly, in line with what Simon Sinek talks about in his famous TED talk, tell them why they are parting with their hard-earned money to buy your products/services. Most importantly, remember that a landing page is not yourblog where you rant or wax lyrical about your life. That’s what your blog is for.
  • Make sure your content is engaging. With so many landing pages copying each other’s style, be a little creative to engage your audience. Provide short videos rather than text. However, if your target audience is in rural areas of developing countries where the cost of data is high and connection speeds are low, you might want to stick to text.
  • Be concise. Besides the fact that it displays simple courtesy when you make it clear you don’t want to waste anyone’s time, an eye-tracking study shows that it takes users 2.6 seconds for their eyes to land on that area of a website that most influences their first impression. So the sooner you get to the point, the better.
  • Provide testimonials and case studies of people who are happy with your solution. Also, provide a money-back guarantee if it doesn’t work for them.
  • Give a clear, bright call-to-action that draws the reader’s attention.

How effective is an effective landing page?

To measure the effectiveness of a landing page, you’ll need to calculate its conversion, which is defined as the ratio of the number of people who buy the product and/or service to the number of people who visit the landing page.

But to understand how effective is effective, you can benchmark it against statistics provided by ImpactBound that states, “The average conversion rate falls around 2.35 %. The top 25 % are converting at 5.3 % while the top 10 % are looking at 11.45 % and above.”

However, it’s important to note that various factors such as your industry, product or service, target audience greatly influence the conversion rate.

“I’m here to help you.” — Adding Interactive Chats to Your Landing Page

Due to their prevalence, landing pages could sound both spammy and impersonal, so nowadays, companies are modifying them by adding an interactive chat window manned by actual people who ask, “Do you have any questions? I’m here to help you.”

This helps personalize the experience for the prospective customer. This tool comes with its own set of best practices, such as:

  • Give the visitor some time to peruse your website before letting the chat pop open. Otherwise, they’re more likely to close it as they wouldn’t have had any questions yet.
  • Mix up your default chat greeting and offline messages. When the greeting always starts the same way, it makes the chat sound like a bot, which defeats the purpose of personalization and interactivity that these tools are supposed to add.
  • Respond to chats quickly. Waiting for someone to reply to you is frustrating. It’s better to not have the chat if you’re not going to manage it well.
  • The people responding to visitors should have some sales experience. Rather than pick entry-level workers who are focused on customer service, man the chat with salespeople as those are more driven to close to the sale.

Keep Testing, Tracking, and Learning

The good thing about websites is the ease with which tracking can be done. Also, perform A/B tests to measure the effectiveness of different designs, and see how each impacts conversions.

Just like many things, designing an effective landing page is more of an art than a science, so keep on learning and visiting different landing pages to see what works and what does. There are also various blog posts that list out the best landing pages, and break down the reasons on why some elements work and other don’t, such as this one.

Last but not least, remember to use landing pages as any other sales tool. Make sure to quantify the goals attached to it, and work to hit those goals.

Written with Amina Islam

 

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Frame Your Product As a Painkiller Not a Vitamin

Frame Your Product As a Painkiller Not a Vitamin

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Pain is a powerful motivator.

It drives people to do anything in their power to stop it.

Now.

It’s very good to understand this while framing your product for sale because in some cases you need your potential customer to view it as a painkiller rather than a vitamin. It comes as no surprise that due to the complex and challenging nature of the market, customers’ expectations are rising. It’s getting harder to do business nowadays, and rise above the noise to convince customers to part with their hard-earned cash.

So when you frame your product like a vitamin that is nice to have and might get your customers benefits in the long term, you are more likely to face more rejections because they don’t find the delayed gratification enough reason for immediate purchase. However, when your product addresses short-term pains, then your probability of closing more sales increases.

For some products, the classification between painkillers and vitamins is easy. For example, productivity tools, and content aggregators tend to fall under the vitamin category, while products that help you satisfy a regulatory requirement or win sales.

However, if you’re unsure, how do you even know if the product you’re trying to sell is a painkiller or a vitamin?

  • Measure the length of your sales cycle — people and businesses with real pain push for short sales cycles
  • Take note of how your customer acquisition metrics. When you get more customers through referrals and inbound leads rather than outbound leads, chances are high you’re in the painkiller business.

But just because you see your product as a vitamin doesn’t mean that the customer shares that perspective. If you talk to enough customers and listen to them, you might realize there’s a pain your product is relieving you might not even be aware of. And listening to your customers doesn’t need to happen in person, but could be done by gathering stories around your product through customer service channels, and on social media.

Another thing to understand while selling is how context always matters when it comes to making a purchase. Sometimes how one product is perceived would depend solely on your customer, their needs and problems. Some might view your product as a vitamin while others might view it as a painkiller. To understand the context, you’ll need to do in-depth interviews with your current customers to understand a few basic things. For B2C customers, you would need clarity on what was happening for them to purchase your product? How does it tie in with any personal goals they might have? For B2B customers, how was the business performing, what was happening around them to make them reach out to your product?

This makes it necessary to have a clear understanding of who your user is, or defining your user profile, which is why there needs to be continuous alignment between sales and marketing departments. Some of the activities the two departments would need to align on are:

  • Persona Profile Development: Persona profile is a detailed description of your target customer, capturing everything from demographic information to hobbies, values, fears, goals, and challenges.
  • Brand Positioning and Messaging: Understanding how your brand is perceived internally and externally is crucial for your organization. Sales teams can help marketing teams identify gaps in brand consistency, and together they can address a plan to improve them.

But what if your product is a vitamin that can’t be framed into a painkiller in any way? There are some sales strategies you could use:

  • Talk money: At the end of the day, if you can make a case about how your product increases revenue or reduces cost, clients will be more willing to be sold on it.
  • Build Credibility: This is done through testimonials, case studies with real clients, focusing on the impact of your product. Because the timeline between the purchase and the value might be more extended for vitamins, the more real-life examples of the ‘ultimate’ value — even if delayed — would need to be communicated, for the clients to be able to make a decision now.

Last but not least, remember that sales is a numbers game. No sales call goes to waste. Even rejections can be seen as good market research as even if you do not close a deal with a lead, you still gain enough by listening to them to understand their perception of your product.

Co-written with Amina Islam

 

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Are You A Visionary Sales Leader

Are You A Visionary Sales Leader

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In a world where the majority of people have become salespeople, it takes more than a title to be a sales leader, especially a visionary one.

And no, multiple years of experience selling does not cut it. Neither does marshalling the operations of a sales team.

Visionary sales leaders stand out, not only by what they do but also how they do it and why. Visionary leadership combines the two skills of seeing the potential for change with the ability to lead others to cause that change. Visionary leaders share the following traits:

They operate on a pull strategy rather than a push one. For instance, rather than push their product down their potential client’s throat, they pull them to buy it by inspiring a vision of how it could improve their life.

They also pull the best out of their team members by communicating the why of what they’re selling rather than its what only. For example, a visionary leader would explain to their team why they should be hitting their sales targets, and would also ensure that outcomes are tied to intrinsic motivation. By contrast, a typical sales manager would most likely use extrinsic methods of motivation, enforcing and reinforcing the carrot-and-stick approach.

They neither bark down commands nor micromanage. Instead, they know how to properly delegate. As a leader, your job is to set expectations and empower your team with the skills and knowledge they need to do their job well. Then you must give them autonomy and get out of their way. More importantly, every employee needs to feel like they’re part of the bigger vision, regardless of their position.

The best way I’ve witnessed that was in a company that made its sales target visible at the front office, and even the receptionist could explain to a visitor what that target’s achievement meant to the company. This made sure that everyone understood the value the company provided, and could potentially go out, and bring in more clients.

They know that selling is about building valuable, meaningful and trusted long-term relationships rather than short-term transactional ones. Imagine coming to the realization that you don’t have the capacity to deliver to a client according to their specifications, and referring them to a competitor with the capacity. The client would appreciate that you made a decision that was good for them even if it jeopardizes your position in the short-term.

Building relationships with their sales team is also important, as they nurture the relationship over a long period of time through continuous training and mentoring, leading to team chemistry and loyalty. This is in contrast with continuously recruiting market champions who come with great experience and contacts, but ask for a very high salary scale and are in many cases, less loyal.

Their mantra is ‘Value, value, value.’ They build sales strategies based on the exchange of value with clients. They also live coherently with personal values such as integrity and honesty.

They listen, patiently, to everyone. They listen to their team to understand the challenges they’re facing, and rather than criticize, they opt to give constructive feedback on their work. They also listen to their clients to get feedback on what they’re selling. They listen to the market to see where it’s going and if they need to pivot their product or service, or reframe the message they use to sell it.

They drop their ego, and let others shineThey don’t try to take credit for everyone’s work. They also keep track of their team’s progress, and hold them accountable to their goals, by keeping the lines of communication open.

This also means giving their team enough freedom to make mistakes, without fearing repercussions. This is done by building a culture where failing forward is allowed, and mistakes are dissected and distilled openly to understand the lessons learnt.

Last but not all, they tolerate risks because visionary leadership is about change…changing lives, changing sales metrics, changing the business, and change is never risk-free.

So how many of your traits describe you?

Leave your comments below.

Co-written with Amina Islam

 

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Why Every SME Needs a Sales Process

Why Every SME Needs a Sales Process

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Last month, I reached out to 3 different IT hardware suppliers to make inquiries regarding laptops. I had a clear budget, basic technical requirements, brand preferences, and a timeline. If you were to assess my situation according to the BANT framework that looks into Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline, I was what you would call a qualified lead.

The responses were as follows:

  • One promised to send me details via WhatsApp but didn’t, even after sending them a reminder.
  • One sent me a quote with two options: a new machine or an ex-UK machine.
  • One sent me 2 options, both of which were ex-UK machines.

Sixteen days later, and none of them had reached out to follow up to close the sale.

This made me reflect on how easy it is to lose opportunities for closing a sale without a proper process in place, one that is preferably not managed by the business owner themselves as they tend to wear many hats.

Remember that you only grow when you maintain the business you already have while closing new sales. So build a sales process regardless of how small your business is.

Article also available on Linkedin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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