Inbound and outbound sales departments
When incoming requests become overwhelming, maintaining relationships with existing clients and increasing loyalty becomes less of a priority.
Moreover, even new prospects often become active only if regular communication is established with them. The average sales department is very poor at this. What can be done? Read below, and also watch the video on how to hire sales managers...
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Step 6. This is the most important step because it's a marketing one. Without it, the effectiveness of a huge amount of work you've done is lost. If you develop a clear understanding of the sequential process of attracting clients and begin to understand that attracting clients and closing deals is a multi-step process, not a one-time effort, even if it's high-quality, then the results you get from your efforts can increase exponentially.
Setting up contextual advertising using analytical methodsYou've probably noticed that after calling a company, successfully speaking with the decision-maker, successfully identifying their needs, and successfully completing all the other stages of the conversation, including obtaining contact information and sending information about the company, you received a less-than-satisfactory result: yes, it might be potentially interesting, but there's no way to buy right now, no time to discuss it, or that everything is already in place, and your offer to send a commercial proposal, estimate installation costs, etc. was met with the response that they weren't ready to make such a specific request yet. You wrote down the contact information and asked them to write or call as soon as they were ready. Then you sent an informational email about the company, interesting models and prices, and lo and behold, that same day you received an email request for an equipment cost estimate from a company that just hours earlier had said that absolutely nothing was possible right now, absolutely nothing. Why does this happen?
Because your follow-up email to the conversation finally established the client's need to calculate the cost of the equipment they needed. A simple conversation was clearly not enough. Furthermore, the email offers a powerful way to convey information that would be difficult for the client to understand verbally, or would be excessive for a short phone conversation. Furthermore, you've just identified the client's needs and can tailor your advertising information precisely to their needs.
So, you'll be surprised, but many sales managers miss out on a golden opportunity to turn their outbound call into a subsequent inbound inquiry simply because they either don't send such an email at all, believing that since the client has said there's no need to consider anything for now, it's better, for example, to ask them when something might change and then call them back later and offer to do a CP again. Or they compose the email in such a way that it doesn't convey sufficiently compelling information for the client and doesn't provide a call to action—to get a CP.
So, you'll be surprised, but many sales managers miss out on a golden opportunity to turn their outbound call into a subsequent inbound inquiry simply because they either don't send such an email at all, believing that since the client has said there's no need to consider anything for now, it's better, for example, to ask them when something might change and then call them back later and offer to do a CP again. Or they compose the email in a way that doesn't convey sufficiently compelling information for the client and doesn't provide a call to action—to get a CP.
In our terminology, it turns out that the sales manager is quite willingly trading progress for delay. Furthermore, you may have heard that, according to the theory of effective advertising, a client needs 3-5 exposures to information about your product and company before they remember it and are ready to take further action. So, by refusing to write to a client, you're foregoing one additional meaningful contact with them. In 1-3 months, you'll call them, and they may not even remember speaking with you. By sending a letter, you're further engaging the potential buyer's visual perception and visual memory, making it easier for them to comprehend numerical information when they need to see the benefits in numbers.
Therefore, a mandatory additional goal of any conversation with a potential client, at any stage of the customer's journey from the moment they first learn about your product to the actual purchase, is to obtain their permission to send them written information in addition to the conversation, regardless of how far they are from the purchase idea at that moment. This means that emails should ideally be sent to everyone you spoke with, regardless of the outcome of the conversation.
It's essential to create a subject line for your email that will entice the client to open it. For example, if you know the client would be interested in checking out and comparing prices, the subject line should include the word "price." If prices for a given product have just changed dramatically, write in the subject line that the email reflects a price hike, for example, an improvement. If you know this particular client is interested in a specific model, include its name in the subject line. If you identified a key need during the conversation, include this key need in the subject line, etc. As you know, your CRM system allows you to track which emails sent to clients have been read. This way, you'll know whether the client has read your email and can refer to it in your next conversation. If you called and the client has forgotten about you or hasn't read the information, you need to update your contact information again. Verify with the client the address to which you sent the previous email.
Even if the client hasn't requested a commercial proposal, it's crucial to include specific information in the email you send, information that's of interest to that particular client, or at least information that's genuinely interesting, useful, and concrete, including prices, figures, and examples, rather than just generalities. You can include price list fragments, discount examples, promotions, information about new models, information about the model range that suits the client's needs—it should be brief, simple, clear, accessible, and specific..
Many managers make the mistake of calling a company once or twice and deciding that the client doesn't want to talk to them or isn't planning to buy at this time or in the foreseeable future, the manager then moves the lead to inactive status, thus eliminating them from further follow-up. This is a completely flawed marketing ploy. Statistically, each contact has at least 250 personal contacts, so if you've already invested time in acquiring high-quality contacts with full names, email addresses, and mobile phone numbers, if they've already spoken to you and agreed to receive email from you, and if the company's industry truly aligns with your interests, there's no point in excluding these contacts from your database and your field of view.
You should continue to email these contacts periodically every 1-3 months and make occasional phone calls. This way, you'll receive additional incoming inquiries both from existing clients in your database and from referrals from people you interact with from completely new clients. Just as friendships develop gradually, so do contacts with companies strengthen gradually, and word of mouth is still a powerful tool. Please remember this every time you consider sending a fully-fledged contact from an active to a passive one. This will only add to your workload. This is especially true for warm prospects. For the same reason, you shouldn't ruin your relationships with clients, carelessly serve the least profitable ones, and so on. Any miscalculation you make toward one person could potentially expose another 250 people to the news.
End Return to the beginning of the tutorialBesides incentive systems, company managers are most often concerned with sales forecasting. I've noticed that sales volume forecasts are most often purely theoretical, as a result of subjective observation of previous periods' figures and the level of ambition. However, there is also a scientific approach to forecasting sales and website traffic, which I recommend adopting. There is the so-called Adaptive Trend-Seasonal Sales Forecasting Method. It takes into account the seasonal impact on sales results by observing the seasonal trend, giving the most recent year of observation more weight than the previous one, accounting for the degree of variation in values and the impact of unforeseen and variable factors on sales results: the presence or absence of discounts, promotions, special offers, various types of advertising, sales, etc. Scenario forecasting is also possible to achieve the desired result. We offer both commissioned data analysis for sales forecasting (usually three years of data are analyzed to track the impact of seasonal factors), and training for employees in relevant forecasting skills. All calculations and graphing can be performed in Excel.
Go to the sales forecasting sectionWe also offer training for sales managers on sales techniques: sales stages, spin selling, handling objections, closing deals, buyer psychology, and much more. By conducting regular training sessions to enhance your skills, you can significantly increase your sales. While this is common practice in Western companies, in our country, it's still a local phenomenon, despite all the advantages. We also offer numerous courses for professional development for marketing department employees. For those who use YouTube, I have a link to the "Key to Sales" channel, which you can freely use for non-commercial purposes to improve the skills of sales employees and managers, delegate tasks, develop motivation systems, hire sales managers, and more.
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