The attitude of today’s sales lead is a far cry from the ones we worked with just a few years ago. They make it tough on the best sales teams with all the best technology like mobility computing, online CRM, email marketing and everything. Either they don’t want to talk to a salesperson because they have not yet done enough research…OR…they don’t want to talk to a sales person because they have spent hours on the internet and now think they know everything about your product or service.
It seems crazy to see how much they depend on the internet, with all of the junk information they get there. It is hard for a good company to figure out how to satisfy this seemingly fickle and permanently dissatisfied customer. Yet some companies are doing extremely well satisfying this internet-empowered buyer. What do these companies do to succeed???
Companies with Focused ESP
If you think of Extra-Sensory Perception when you hear that term, you aren’t really that far off from the point this article is making. According to Wikipedia, ESP “involves reception of information not recognized through the physical senses but sensed with the mind.”
While we aren’t talking about psychic or telepathic abilities, we are talking about the “mind” of your business – your online CRM (Customer Relationship Manager). Just like your mind can pick up more information than can be taken in by the senses, your CRM can be set up to track much more than any single person can detect about what your clients prefer.
The Business Kind of ESP
Today, your email service provider is a tool that can only be maximized when it is totally integrated with the online CRM functions. When you have the ESP and CRM combined, the process goes like this:
- The email service provider delivers a good email campaign to a list of sales leads
- Most ESP companies furnish reports about who opened the emails and even who clicked through to open a content piece you offered. This is nothing really remarkable in today’s digital world.
- When the ESP is integrated with your CRM, the information about opens and clicks is auto-populated into the client record. That is only the beginning of the WOW factor of this combination.
- The online CRM will be notified by the ESP about those opens and clicks.
- In some cases, that notification to the sales team prompts a phone call to the sales lead.
- In today’s environment, speed is critical to many sales organizations. When the online CRM is set up to notify a sales rep immediately of email marketing response, it is only natural that more sales will be closed.
- With the information in the client record, the sales professional can quickly retrieve what email was sent, the source of the sales lead and what content piece was clicked. The entire history of the sales lead is available during this phone call. They have the natural conversation starters in the palm of their hand.
- The online CRM can also be set up with questions for the sales person, based on each step of the buying process. For example, at the beginning of a relationship with your company, the sales rep probably needs to qualify the sales lead for an appointment. They can record the answers during the phone call by simply checking off the questions you prepared for them.
- Your company gets insight into what new sales leads find interesting and useful to them as a buyer. Your reports will tell you which marketing methods have the magic of closing sales.
- When you find what works, the sales process can be constantly refined and adjusted with the ESP data guiding the way.
There is nothing that can beat ESP (the extra-sensory kind) in a highly-skilled, professional salesperson. Your company’s ESP (the email kind) is sheer magic when it is totally integrated with your online CRM.