Many companies focus lead generation efforts solely on acquiring leads. That’s great, but why not also use some tricks to move them down the pipeline faster? Here are a few ideas:
- Engaged leads buy faster and the right offers increase engagement. It helps to draft a story arc of what a prospect is thinking as they first learn about your company and as they move towards purchase. Having this story arc (and buy in from stakeholders within your company) makes it easy to develop a content list and contact plan. Let me know if you need a sample – it’s really not hard to do.
- Once it’s developed, develop an appropriate content plan and stick to it religiously. Only send emails that have value to the audience at their particular level of engagement. This sometimes means eliminating leads from offers like webinars, user conferences, round tables and events. Keep your eye on the sales objective and what your prospect needs to hear next. If it’s not right, it’s not right.
- Accelerate offers if a prospect is responding. A favorite trick of mine is second or third touches when prospects respond to a first one. Example – someone responds to an email offering an ROI eBook. Once it’s downloaded, send a second email for an ROI Cheatsheet. If they respond to that, send them tips on how to sell the ROI to the C suite. If they respond to all three, give them a call. Each touch takes advantage of momentum to bring the prospect closer to a buy.
- Accelerate offers across channels. Use social media, responsive web pages and even outbound calls to promote that next most likely offer to engaged prospects. More choices mean your prospect is more likely to respond and move to the next stage in the buying process.
- Personalize your emails. And that doesn’t mean “Dear Joe”. If you can segment your messaging to relate more to the prospect’s pain points, you’re going to get them to respond more often. Can you segment into verticals? Size of business? Past purchases? Sometimes it is as easy as reworking your email copy to reposition the same offer you’re sending to everyone else.
- Make sure your emails are functioning. Leads get stuck when emails don’t fire properly or links don’t work. I’m shocked how often I review programs and find things that don’t work, particularly in “set and forget” programs like nurture.
- You can’t sell if your prospects don’t know how to buy from you. Have the “buy now” or “contact a rep” link in your email footer. Make sure fulfillment is swift. Consider a promotion as an accelerator – discounting the price, offering free services or even professional implementation. All of these can close the deal faster.
- Test frequently, track what you’re doing and read your reports. What offers are working? What else can you test to get a sale? Are you occasionally offering to set up a demo or connect them with a rep? (If they like your content and are responding – you should be.) Also look at timing, subject lines, segmentation and creative as well to see where you can refine. (See my blog on testing).
If you’d like me to take a peek at your program to see where it can be supercharged, let me know!