It's a fact. In the age of the connected and informed consumer who almost systematically obtains information online before buying, in B2B as in B2C, it seems obvious to review its commercial prospecting strategy to meet these new expectations.
In this article, I shares with you six modern (and
complementary) methods and tools that we use to improve the efficiency of our
business prospecting.
The website: the lead generation tool
Telephone prospecting “à la papa” still works, marketingmediaweb but a website is much more efficient . Why ?
B2C buyers make an average of 60% of the buying journey
alone on the web. In B2B, 80% of the buying journey is done online (Forrester
Research). Google even announced 89% in a recent study.
In this sense, bypassing a high-performance website means cutting yourself off from the majority of these prospects (and customers). "81% of French companies divinebeautytips that went bankrupt in 2013 simply failed to bet on the Internet" recalls this article from La Tribune .
To do :
• To improve sales prospecting , you therefore nanobiztech need an efficient site , equipped to generate prospects, quotes and appointments in an industrial and predictive manner.
• If it has
been designed correctly , i.e. to be your best business finder , it should
generate leads 24/7, (including during the holidays ).
• Provided
of course to have set up a real digital strategy based in particular on
attraction marketing ( Inbound marketing ).
CRM
If accountants have accounting software and payroll techcrunchblog managers have payroll software, then salespeople and marketers must have commerce software. The CRM (Customer Relationship Management) you used to structure, organize, manage your "customer file".
Well informed and used , it greatly facilitates commercial
prospecting. How? 'Or' What ?
You will be able to upsell (move upmarket) or cross sell ( cross-sell ) to your customers and prospects known in the file. Admit, you always have customers who buy certain products or services from you and not others. With a CRM, you know which ones and in the blink of an eye. And therefore, by better managing the RFM (Purchase Recency, Purchase Frequency globalmarketingbusiness and Purchase Amount), you increase your turnover .
You have never heard your sales representative sell to a
prospect after 12 months who has (re) activated on his own “Yes, but I know
him”. If the CRM had been correctly informed and your prospects “tracked”, you
could have had an automatic alert according to its behavior on your website or
via emails received by the sales or marketing department.
The CRM is commercial memory of your business and promotes
her business. It allows you to qualify and better segment your customers and
your audience, but also to better follow prospects throughout their purchasing
journey in order to offer them a unified customer experience .
As a manager, monitoring the activity of your salespeople
and their performance is essential. In
this sense, having real-time visibility of the “pipeline” and of all the
information of your customers and prospects necessarily improves the
effectiveness of commercial prospecting.
To do :
- Acquire a CRM tool (like Hubspot, the best CRM on the
market for 2 years and ... free)
Marketing automation
Complementary to CRM, marketing automation is a precise and
very powerful tool for improving the relationship with your prospects before
the sale and with your customers after the sale. Through predefined scenarios ,
you automate several types of emails and integrate buyer behavior into your
CRM.
Therefore, marketing automation can increase both the
productivity and efficiency of the marketing department in order to supply your
sales force with better qualified opportunities. It also improves commercial
monitoring . To find out more, it's here.
Social selling and social networks
To improve your commercial prospecting, it is fundamental to
build your online influence also on social networks.
The social
selling or social marketing is a process
of research, support and interaction with your potential prospects. It's
time-consuming (like traditional prospecting) but essential to find new
customers . It doesn't just happens on its own and you won't get dates
overnight. You have to sow before you harvest, and be interesting before you
are interested. If this prospecting tactic appeals to you, I share here my good
habits and good practices on Linkedin .
To do :
• Refine
your social media profiles
• Adopt a
real approach on Linkedin
• Train
your salespeople in the challenges of social selling
• Automate
what can be done by making sure to personalize your messages
The recommendations
Getting recommended
remains the most effective in pre-sales . Recommendation (or word of mouth)
remains the best way to generate B2B (but also B2C) meetings for your
salespeople.
In fact, the duration of your sales cycle will melt like ice
cream on the port of Saint Gilles, because your client, as an ambassador and
promoter, has already done a large part of the job.
To do :
• So ask
your customers if they can recommend you to those around them, to their online
and offline networks.
• Invite
them to leave you a comment on Facebook, Google My Business or Linkedin to
improve your visibility on the web and thus boost your e-reputation and your notoriety.
Conferences and interventions
Last point for prospecting effectively, the organization of
short business conferences, in "café-croissant" or afterwork format.
As with the social selling process,
it is about being more interesting than interested .
The objective is not to “pitch” your best sales pitch but to
provide concrete answers to your prospects' problems, by delivering pre-sales
value.
Trick :
• Invite
your prospects for a case study presentation such as Teralta or Atelier du
Store (results obtained from customers with the same problems), or for a
workshop-type work session.
• Use CRM
to invite the best “scored” leads (prospects in marketing jargon) , ie those
who have the greatest propensity to become customers.