Content Marketer
You’ve done your in-depth persona research, you’ve identified hot leads you want to reach out to, and you click send on your sales outreach tool.
And then you wait, and wait, and wait…😴
Silence. I mean, outbound sales are generally hard, but is it really THAT hard?
Perhaps it’s time to calm down and conduct an in-depth review of your sales processes to identify the issue with your sales process. But fret not, you’re not alone in this. We’re here to help you 😉
So let’s take a look at some ways to improve your sales process and score more appointments.
In sales, understanding a customer’s pain points is the first step towards closing a sale.
Sales agents not only need to know a customer’s needs very well, but they also need to send out personalized messages.
If you are sending automated emails with the standard “Hey, %FIRSTNAME%” followed by a generic message, even I wouldn’t open it 😛
Building trust is one key component in the conversion process. Sales representatives have to show that they know their leads’ concerns well pitching your product or service. Too swift an action before building this relationship will be detrimental.
The same rule applies regardless of whether you are conducting your cold outreach via email, social media, or cold calling.
Lead response time is a huge factor that influences your leads’ choice in whether or not they want to reply to you.
35% – 50% of leads would most likely deal with companies that respond to them first.
Furthermore, if a business responds to a lead in under 1 min, the odds of conversion increase by nearly 400%. This means that you not only need to be fast in responding to your leads, you need to be very fast.
Being slow in responding to leads will result in them seeking out your competitors that provide similar solutions to the same problem.
As a result, you lose the opportunity to pitch your idea, even if it is a better fit for the lead.
Another possible reason for the low number of sales calls booked is the lack of attention paid to your content strategy.
Now, what does your content strategy have to do with booking sales appointments?
Well, for starters, your content strategy is part of your larger inbound marketing strategy designed to attract visitors to your website. A well thought out content strategy will take into account the likelihood your articles will rank on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).
If your blog articles are not written with the goal to rank high, it will not attract visitors to your website. Less organic traffic means lesser conversions via your web forms.
Also, many businesses do not realize the power of including gated content on their sites. These include in-depth guides, detailed infographics, and white papers. Gated content requires your site visitors to give you their contact details in exchange for the document. It is a great way to capture leads.
Poor web interface is another major red flag ❌ and can put off potential customers who access your website.
Having a user friendly website layout should be amongst your top priorities. Firstly, your website must be easy to navigate, even for the least tech-savvy.
On top of a seamless user experience, they should load quickly. With a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load, you’re looking at losing 53% of your audience!
Beyond technicalities, your website should also be aesthetically pleasing to visitors. An aesthetic website plays a key role in conversion rate optimization. Otherwise, you’re looking at losing 38% of your visitors.
Last but not least, having a mobile friendly interface is absolutely vital. Mobile devices have generated around 50% of global website traffic consistently since 2017.
So if you’re not paying attention to mobile friendliness… you could be losing half your potential sales. Did we mention how mobile friendly results appear higher in google search results? 😉
There are several ways you can personalize your message.
You start by segmenting your contact list based on different categories. These include industry, job title, or company size. In other words, your buyer personas.
You should also include something in your message that people in that category are interested in or should know about.
Say you wish to segment your list based on industry, you can include news about recent changes in the industry to show that you know them well. Alternatively, you can also highlight a particular need that those in that industry would have. Check out this example by Kently:
Here, the template showed that the sender is aware that content is super important to those operating in the industry the lead is in.
The inclusion of lines like this not only show that you’ve done in-depth research into your leads’ needs, but also helps you connect with them by showing that you understand them.
As highlighted earlier, reducing lead response time can convert more leads into sales. And there are multiple ways you can do this.
One way to do this is by using a click-to-call software. This allows your site visitors to schedule calls with your team from your site directly. This process provides an immediate response to the leads, informing them that a call has been scheduled.
Manually assigning leads to sales reps is very time-consuming This also means that it will take a bit of time before sales reps are assigned leads to speak to.
This process can be hastened through automated lead distribution software. They use predetermined lead routing rules to assign leads to sales reps.
And because the process is automated, sales reps will be made aware of the leads they’re assigned to quicker and reply much faster.
Adopting omnichannel communication platforms can also reduce customer wait times. Omnichannel messaging software Novochat allows you to do just that by organizing all your customer conversations into a centralized inbox.
This way, agents can easily locate conversations they’ve had with a lead or customer and reduce the time taken to constantly switch between applications.
The next thing you should do to improve sales appointment numbers is to allocate resources for better content creation.
Before you start to even conceptualize your strategy, there are 2 things you should bear in mind: Search intent is key. You should create content based on what people are searching for.
Don’t write articles for the sake of it – While it seems like a good idea to write more content about your product, if these articles are not optimized for search, no one’s gonna see them.
There are a lot more things that you need to pay attention to when coming up with a good content strategy. But if we were to list everything, this article would be too long. Check out our article on some of the most common SEO newbie mistakes to get started 👇👇👇
💡 Read more: What I learnt from f*cking up my SEO strategy for 5 months
Finally, we go back to the likely first point-of-contact potential leads have with your business – your website.
Investing in a website that ultimately scores you sales is absolutely necessary.
It is a MUST to optimize your website for mobile usage, you don’t want to lose 50% of global online traffic. While you do that, do also make sure it is compatible on all browser types!
Next, do not downplay the importance of website aesthetics, it compels visitors to stay longer. invest in a design team or equip your team with skills to enhance your website.
Aesthetic websites utilise appropriate color schemes, adequate white space, imagery and readable fonts. Always remember… website aesthetics and functionality go hand in hand.
Lastly, it always helps to have click-to-call options available on your website in a prominent position. Lead capturing forms allow potential leads to reach out immediately to get their queries answered, making them more likely to convert.
All in all, there is no reason why you would not see an increase in sales appointments by adopting the steps recommended.
Do not underestimate how far a user-friendly website, well-tailored content, trained sales team, and lead management software can go in improving your sales performance! 😉
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Ishwar is a content marketer at Novocall.
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