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In the words of HubSpot: "It's summertime, and the living is easy — but the selling is hard."
The first half of 2023 is over, now let's set our sights on the remainder of the year.
Last week we spoke about the marketing highlights of 2023 so far, now we want to tackle how to make the most of the time left. Don't worry, there is still time to reach your business goals.
Here are a few areas you should optimise to further boost your business performance:
"Prospecting is the first step of the sales process, which involves identifying and contacting potential customers. The goal of prospecting is to create a database of likely customers."
Chances are you might not be seeing any significant movements at the bottom of your pipeline. Don't worry, that is completely normal during this period. Your focus should be to find ways to prospect as much as you can and fill your pipeline or funnel as much as possible. Just make sure that your sales team is ready, we wouldn't want any qualitative leads slipping away.
If your pipeline is full for example, make sure to troubleshoot where things are going wrong. This is an exercise that is worth doing a few times per year just to make sure that everything is working as intended.
If your prospecting is taking some time to pick up to optimal levels a good idea would be to seek referrals from your existing customers.
We know that asking for referrals might seem like a difficult ask, but if you are good at what you do it is only normal for people to extend your services to help other people as well.
Referrals always work best because they help you kickstart your relationship with your referred prospect with a personal recommendation. Because there is no need to earn the trust of a prospect from scratch the deal is likely to close much faster.
Since you are picking up the phone and calling happy clients anyways, why not inquire about their usage of your product/service and see if they might need any additional help?
Or, if you are looking to introduce a new service/product you can let your customers know. You never know who may need such things. Don't wait for the conversation just to happen randomly, be proactive.
I am sure we all had deals that fell through for one reason or another. Maybe you have a prospect who a few months back wasn't sure if they wanted to collaborate that either to timing, budget or something else.
If enough time has passed, why not revisit the conversation? After all, if they came to the meeting table it means that they were interested in your services.
Consider sending an interesting email to spark the conversation again. Once you get your prospect talking again you can determine if the deal is worth pursuing or if it's time to remove it from your pipeline.
Are you having problems with people responding to your calls and emails? Maybe a change in the messaging is needed.
We always encourage people to not be too formal or robotic as it usually builds a wall between you and your prospect. Try to have a sense of humour and be engaging, after all, at the other end of the phone or screen there is another human like you.
"For example, you might kick off a voicemail with "You're probably on a beach somewhere now, but ... " or, "If you can pull yourself away from the barbecue ..." Of course, the more rapport you have with the prospect, the more effective these blips of humour will be." - HubSpot
Every business goes through sales slumps, for some, these are seasonal for others random.
If you are experiencing or anticipating such a period to come your way, maybe formulating a strategy to combat these times might be a good idea.
Think things like discounts, freebies, relaxed terms of contracts...whatever makes sense for you and your business model.
These serve to attract people who might be on the fence about working with your company or even trying out the service at all.
You might incur some extra costs in the beginning but if it means probably finding long-term clients it is totally worth it.
This is an important question to ask at any time as it is the only proactive way that brings you new prospects.
Review your marketing efforts and the results that they are yielding. Try to find areas for improvement and optimise them as best you could.
If you are having trouble finding the right spot for your business consider hiring a marketing agency to aid you with your needs. Everything from advertising to digital marketing to CRM. The initial investment might seem like a considerable leap but it is worth it once the prospects come rolling in.
At the end of the day, you can increase your efforts on every front but if the sales team is lacking or flooded with work there will be some losses along the way.
Our philosophy is "Smarketing", sales + marketing. We see both departments as integral parts in the pursuit of new customers.
Think of it this way, every time the sales team engages in discussions with prospects chances are that the prospects will have loads of questions.
Now, asking questions is completely normal and necessary when negotiating. But there is a way to eliminate some of them by changing the way you market your product or service.
Let the sales team compile a list of common questions that prospects usually have, and let the marketing team incorporate the answers into the marketing campaigns.
This is usually an easy example to illustrate how the open dialogue between the departments can help prospects move easier through the pipeline.
Implementing a CRM system like HubSpot makes this collaboration even more easy to handle as you can see every lead move through the pipeline. By continuously reviewing your efforts and optimising you can create a fully efficient journey for your business, turning prospects into clients.
