In 25 years of helping sales teams implement CRM solutions, I’ve learned there are two main reasons that CRM projects get stalled. And believe it or not, that is happening to a LOT of businesses!
As a CRM vendor, we’ve studied the reasons that deals don’t close and by an overwhelming majority, the primary reason is that the customer just never makes a decision. In other words, a business starts looking for sales automation and CRM solutions, talks to vendors, gets demos, have internal meetings about important requirements, etc. and then just never decides on a solution.
Why is that? From my experience, the two most common reasons are:
Unable to Reach Consensus on CRM Requirements and Capabilities
Often, CRM projects start off as a tool the VP of Sales needs but, the requirements very quickly expand to include marketing and customer service functions and information exchanges. So, now there are multiple decision makers at the table each with their own list of priorities. Even within a typical sales organization, it’s difficult to find a CRM solution that has all the bells and whistles possibly needed for Lead Generation, Inside Sales, Outside Sales, Pipeline Management, Contract Management and all the other things that your sales team may want to do. If you take that list and add to it all the tools your marketing team might like to have and the same for customer service, the list becomes extremely long and you’ll find there are no “out of the box” CRM systems with all of these capabilities. So, either your project just got much more involved, with the need to integrate and customize several technologies, or everyone’s going to have to choose what they can live without.
This is where things stall. There may not be budget or patience for building an all encompassing system for the entire organization. And there may not be enough agreement among departments to reach agreement on compromises.
Lack of Executive Support/Leadership
Of course, when you’re marketing, sales and customer service departments can’t agree on priorities, that’s when executive leadership is supposed to make the decisions for you. But, technologies like sales and marketing automation are often a bottom up decision internally. Management closer to the sales and marketing departments recognize the need but, executive management can’t see how it directly impacts the bottom line.
So, the Sales VP and the Marketing Director pitch executive management on a project that is massive in scope, in order to accommodate all the constituencies. And that’s not likely to fly anywhere.
Or perhaps leadership is completely out of the loop, which as described above, leaves no referee to prioritize requirements and so, no vendor can be agreed on and everyone just loses patience and goes back to work with the tools they have at hand.
Believe it or not, a large portion of successful businesses in the US do not have a CRM solution implemented. And the reasons are above.
So, if you’re CRM dreams have stalled, the answer is to sell the concept to the C level first. Get them on board and get boundaries from the C suite and focus all requirements discussions and vendor demos within those boundaries.
If your CRM project has stalled for budgetary reasons, let a SalesNexus consultant tell you about our CRM Implementation packages that help document requirements and workflows and set things up quickly and affordably.
Are you searching for a simple lead generation process that fits your budget? Lead Generation starts with building your list. When it comes to purchasing a lead list, there are two general options:
Purchase lead generation lists from specific industry groups that are very focused on markets you target. These tend to be the best, most up to date and accurate lists but, these groups are also often not willing to provide email addresses and lack other information that may be critical to your marketing and sales process.
Purchase lead generation lists from general data vendors like InfoUSA, Zoominfo or others. These tend to be less targeted, more broad and the cost of including email addresses can be extreme.
As a result, often companies leave it up to sales people to identify companies and then research the proper contact info themselves, one company at a time. Of course, this is slow and not the best use of your sales team’s time.
Here’s an alternative approach to building Lead Generation lists affordably and “at scale”!
Find a List of Target Companies
Industry trade associations often publish lists of members on their website, without the contact info. Another source is partner pages on related vendor sites. Trade shows often publish lists of attendees, speakers and exhibitors. Any list that’s very targeted to your products and services that includes the company name and location is sufficient.
Search for Names
Typically, each business will know the title of the person they would like to speak to within a targeted company. A free account on LeadFerret.com allows searching by company to see a list of employees with titles and more. Or, search LinkedIn for the company and click the “See All Employees” link. This will list all employees at this company, even if you’re not connected to them. And of course, you can visit the company’s website and look at their About Us page for executive names.
Find their Email Addresses
Add the contact names to your SalesNexus CRM with company and website URL. Then click the GetEmail button in SalesNexus and their email address instantly appears!
See how here:
Add them to a Lead Generation Campaign
Now add your targeted leads to an on-going email and calling campaign in SalesNexus.
To see how to create effective Lead Generation email campaigns, watch our Starter Kit video here:
But, there much more to it than that. First, the study showed that reducing costs and improving IT infrastructure are also popular priorities amongst SMBs.
What’s more, lead generation can be anything from cost neutral to extremely expensive. And of course the methods and mediums are varied. The Great Online predicts that video, mobile and messaging will be top trends in 2017 within the digital advertising space.
For those new to it, producing videos may seem like a steep cliff to jump off. And after the last several years, what business has room to squeeze out more cost savings?
What if there were a way to attract and retain more customers, reduce costs and improve IT infrastructure all at once?
Let’s face it… The greatest challenge most sales teams wrestle with is prospecting. Lead Generation. If you’re sales team focuses 10 or 20 percent more time on finding new leads and getting referrals, how could that impact new customer acquisition? And the fastest way to keep salespeople focused on lead generation is setting goals and expectations and holding them accountable. Here’s an article on setting metrics for sales teams and how to measure performance.
One of the greatest challenges to implementing a CRM solution that generates leads, retains customers and improves infrastructure is that it crosses many traditional departmental boundaries and requires the expertise in several functional areas of the business.
So, most businesses will have more of a shot gun approach to achieving their goals in 2017. They’ll create a handful of distinct customer acquisition and lead generation campaigns and they’ll have a separate group that works on reducing costs and the IT team will focus on updating their infrastructure. All separate and distinct and more likely to conflict with each other than to enable or “synergize”.
The prescription for achieving everything you’re hoping for in 2017 might just be to invest the time to look at the overall customer experience and the workflows that support customers’ experiences, especially as they move from one department to another. In the course of as little as a few hours, the low hanging fruit will appear.
And the past of least resistance and greatest, most assured return will most likely be to do less, not more. To simplify workflows with automation and integration of systems and information and to help salespeople focus on the right customers at the right time.
We’re talking about sending emails to people that are not already engaged with your company or salespeople. Maybe you met them at a trade show several months ago and haven’t talked to them since or maybe you just purchased a list of target customers.
Pain = the problem your customers have that your company addresses. There may be more than one. That’s good. Each Pain should be the basis of its own email or entire campaign.
OK, so here’s what you’re doing wrong…
Mistake #1 – Too Much!
Once you get started talking about how awesome your company is, it’s hard to stop, right? Yeah, we know. We get your emails….
“Show up and throw up” doesn’t work in sales presentations. Why do you think it would work in an email?
Just think about how you read your own emails. You scan the inbox for emails from people you know and you tackle those first. Then you look at the subject lines and if they don’t get your attention or sound like a sales pitch, you delete before you even read the email. Then, if you actually open it up, if it’s 2 pages of text, are you going to read it? Not very likely.
Get to the point quickly. If you can’t express how the reader will benefit from taking the desired action in a couple of very short paragraphs, then you should not be using email.
Mistake #2 – Me, Me, Me!
We all get too many emails. The ones we least like are the ones that are trying to sell us something. The fastest way to pick those emails out in the inbox is to look for descriptions of features and benefits.
Don’t talk about yourself in a lead generating email! Talk about the customer and their world. You wouldn’t walk into a party where you don’t know anyone and immediately start telling everyone how awesome you are. You would first ask questions about the people you meet. Maybe compliment their home or clothes, etc. Get them engaged and interested in talking to you about themselves.
In B2B marketing, talk about the Pain the customer is suffering from that your product or service fixes. Do you have this pain? If so, here are some suggestions…
Mistake #3 – No Call to Action
What is the action you want the customer to take? Make it easy for them to do that! Give them a big fat button in a bright color they can click on. Don’t make them read 5 paragraphs and then write you an email in order to get your attention.
A good approach is to dramatize the Pain you fix in the opening line or two and then summarize the call to action. “Are you fed up with ever growing costs and poor service from your Internet provider? If so, we’d like to show you 3 things you can do to increase Internet performance and reduce costs.” Then another paragraph with more specifics about how a poor Internet provider can be a big drag on business and then a big button – “Download 3 Ways to Cut Costs and Surf Faster”.
Even if your desired call to action is to for the prospect to set an appointment with you, give them a link to a calendar app like Calendly.
Again, here’s a video series that will walk you through creating your first campaign.
Is <the “pain” your customers have that you fix> driving you crazy?
Are you wasting time and losing money as a result?
If so, you might enjoy this <insert link to pdf, blog post, video, etc. with tips to fix the pain>.
To schedule a brief phone call to discuss how <my_company> may be able to help, click here to schedule an appointment at a time that’s convenient for you.
Email marketing is not one thing. There’s a lot that goes into it. The most effective emails are those that are created with a very specific purpose and a very targeted audience in mind. Small and medium sized businesses often miss the mark with email marketing. Of course, so do the big guys. The causes are common, easy to identify and fix!
That’s good news because the return from very simple email marketing campaigns can be tremendous! Most sales organizations have accumulated a sizable list over the years and a well-designed campaign can often generate 15% to 25% increase in sales quickly!
A well-designed email marketing campaign can often generate 15% to 25% increase in sales quickly!
Running the numbers
Average email marketing campaigns get a 1-2% click rate. “Clicks” are people that both open and read the email AND click on a link or call to action in the email. Imagine a salesperson talks to 100 leads a month. In one year, that’s 1200 leads. If you have 10 salespeople, that’s 12,000 leads in a year. If your email to that list gets a 2% click rate, that’s 240 (12,000 x .02) “new” or newly engaged leads.
So, if you send only 1 email a month, then that’s a 24% increase in leads for each salesperson!
Average campaign click rate
1-2%
Salesperson 100 calls a month
1,200 lost leads in one year
10 Salespeople 100 calls a month
12,000 lost leads in one year
2% Click rate on 12,000 leads
240 engaged leads
1 Email sent per month
24% Increase in leads per salesperson
Seems like a no-brainer right?
Common pitfalls that undermine success are poor targeting, vague or absent call to action and talking about yourself, rather than the customer.
Often the lack of clarity about responsibilities and expected results is the fundamental flaw. In a smaller business, there may be a one person “marketing department” with limited email marketing experience and limited time to focus on it due to other responsibilities. So, the effort may fall to the sales team. And believe, salespeople are the last ones you want writing your emails! More on that later.
In a larger organization, the same flaws surface for different reasons. The salespeople may see opportunities they’d like to exploit with email marketing but, getting support out of the often bureaucratic marketing department can result in delays and distortions of the intent of the campaign.
Often the lack of clarity about responsibilities and expected results is the fundamental flaw.
Best Practices
In general, if the intent of email marketing is to drive sales or sales leads for the sales team, then the sales team needs to be involved in defining the objectives.
However, salespeople are most commonly guilty of writing “salesy” or “pitchy” emails. We need a marketing hat involved for the creation of the content.
We’re also going to need someone to get the list we send to straightened out. The list should be segmented and different messages sent to each segment. Again, this is not something the sales team is typically good at.
We’re also going to need someone to get the list we send to straightened out. The list should be segmented and different messages sent to each segment. Again, this is not something the sales team is typically good at.
Salespeople are commonly guilty of writing “salesy” or “pitchy” emails.
1st: Your List: Targeting Your Audience
The general concept is to offer recipients something that will be of value to them, without expecting them to do anything for you. That’s how you earn their trust and over time, the right to ask them for something. Email marketing is best done with this approach because if you just “sell” your products or services, you’ll quickly turn off most recipients and no one will be reading any of your emails anymore.
So, getting your list as finely segmented as possible is worth the effort. The more targeted your message to a specific audience, the more effective it will be.
Pull together all the lists you can.
Current leads that are actively in the purchase process
Existing Clients
Past Clients
You may need to pull together lists from your accounting system, operations, your website, trade shows, etc. and your salespeople’s contacts in Outlook, etc. If you’re doing this in a spreadsheet, be sure and add a couple of columns to identify where each contact came from or how you met them and what their current status is with your company.
If you’re using a CRM or other software for this, hopefully some of this is a bit easier. Either way, when you load the list into your email marketing system, you’ll be able to create separate lists based on all of these criteria and send different messages to each “segment”.
The tricky part is that you’ll need to maintain this list as an on-going effort
Obviously, when one of your leads turns into a client, you want them to go on a different list or into a different “segment”. That means you’ll need to have a regular process of updating the lists with new leads and changes to those already on the lists. This probably sounds like more work than it’s worth but, it’s not. Once you get a process in place, it should only take a couple of hours a month. If you’re lucky, you’re using a CRM and Marketing Automation solution where all that is automated!
One key to keeping the maintenance of your list manageable is to remember that no list is perfect. After all, you’re just sending them emails. With email marketing, there’s little cost to it and as we touched on earlier, you’re only hoping for 20% or so to even open them. So, there’s a point of diminishing returns in cleaning up your list. Just be sure you don’t have the same email address listed more than once and your actual clients are identified so you’re not treating them like you don’t even know them.
The general concept is to offer recipients something that will be of value to them, without expecting them to do anything for you.
2nd: Creating the Campaign
In email marketing, the idea to keep in mind is “Give to Get”. Give recipients something of value to them and earn the right first to keep sending them emails and secondly, the right to eventually ask for something yourself.
For the “dyed in the wool salespeople” out there, the fringe benefit of this approach is that this type of email marketing campaign is a great way to “diagnose” the customer’s needs. Those who click to read a specific article or watch a video are telling you what they’re interested in. That can be a great way to target prospects with specific offers, in additional emails or with sales calls. More on that later!
A simple approach to creating your emails is this:
List the Pains
Identify the “Pain” of each audience or “segment” in your list. Write down 3 or 4 pains (problems or challenges they suffer from) that this audience will have if they are going to be interested in your product or service. If you’re not sure how to do this, stop reading now and go here .
Finding Content
Find content that would be helpful to someone suffering from each pain. The content can be an article, a video, a blog post, a report or white-paper, etc. It should be free. Don’t ask them to complete a form on your site (you already have their email) or put any other barriers to benefiting from the content in the process. Remember, this is a gift!
Don’t get worried that you’re going to have to spend the next 3 weekends writing or spend thousands on a writer. In fact, avoid investing lots of time or money in creating content at all costs at this stage. If this is your first attempt, you have to look at it as an experiment. There are a lot of variables and many of them will need some adjustment. The idea initially is to get something out there so you can measure what works and what doesn’t and then make changes.
If this is your first attempt, you have to look at it as an experiment.
In fact, you don’t actually need your own content at all. If you have helpful articles or reports now that’s great! Things like “5 Ways to Reduce Your Costs for XXXX” or “3 Ways to Know if You Have YYYY” or even “How to Fix ZZZ” are all perfect. But, if you don’t already have good content, then use someone else’s!
A note on video: Email recipients will click on a video twice as often as other types of links (articles, downloads, etc.). So, use video if you can!
Go to Youtube and type into the search bar “How to fix <insert one of your pains>”. See if you can find a video that you can link to. Often you’ll find news reports or trade association videos that are perfect! Remember, the idea here is not get to them to your site. It’s just to give them something helpful and learn that they have an interest in that subject. Of course, you can perform similar searches on various sites and find government and educational institution reports, etc. Just be sure you don’t link to something that promotes your competitor!
For the “dyed in the wool” salespeople out there, the fringe benefit of this approach is that this type of email marketing campaign is a great way to “diagnose” the customer’s needs.
3rd: Writing the Email
In email marketing, the first thing to remember in creating the actual emails is that less is more. Think about how you navigate through your inbox. If you don’t recognize who sent you the email (the from field) then you look at the subject line. Likewise, if the subject line doesn’t sound interesting, you delete it without even reading the email. Moreover, if you do open it up and find 2 pages of text, DELETE!
What’s the point here? Keep it short! Also, don’t feel like you have to design a bunch of beautiful graphics.
So, the subject line is key. If it doesn’t get attention, nothing else matters.
Focus on the pain
Is <insert your pain> costing you money/hurting your business/frustrating you?
Fed up with <insert pain> solutions that don’t work?
“Are you suffering from <insert pain>?
3 Ways to Fix <insert pain>
Follow the same formula to create the body of the email
Firstname, Is <insert pain> costing you money/hurting your business/frustrating you? If so, you’ll want to out this short video “Simple Ways to Fix <insert pain>”.
Then link to the content. That’s it!
Expectations
Remember, you’re going to get 10-20% of your list to open the email and 1-2% to click. Working on making that list bigger is worth the effort.
The emails above are great for “cold leads”, or leads that aren’t already engaged in a buying process. If you’re emailing leads that are already talking to your sales team or have reached out to you for information, then they’ve essentially told you to sell them your solution. The emails should still err on the side of “give to get” but, you can offer things like a comparison of your solution with brand name competitors or an ROI analysis or just a description of your different packages with a subject like “4 Great Ways to Fix <insert pain>”.
If you’re nurturing leads that have come in through your website, be aggressive. When people request info on your website, they’re most often doing the same exact thing on your competitor’s site so you’ve got to beat them to the punch.
NOTE: These types of emails also work well for lead generation campaigns.
Remember, you’re going to get 10-20% of your list to open the email and 1-2% to click
How to Respond – Making the Sale
If you’re selling business insurance and you send an email with the subject “3 Ways You’re Business is at Risk” that links to a video on CNBC about essential kinds of business insurance. A recipient opens the email and clicks on the video to watch it, which is a strong indicator that they’re raising their hand and saying “I am concerned that my business is at risk.” That probably makes that person someone your sales team wants to talk to.
If you can organize things so that a salesperson can call recipients that click on your emails within a couple of hours, then it is FAR better to call them instead of sending another email.
It turns cold calling into very warm calling! The script goes something like this:
“Hi Bob! This is Mike with Insurance International. I noticed you watched that video on essential business insurance. What did you think of that? What type of insurance does your business have?”
You can start the call with a level of familiarity and get right to what you already know matters to the customer. Salespeople know, the hardest thing about a cold call is getting the customers interest initially. This takes that out of the equation!
If you can’t call them within 3 or 4 hours, don’t bother
However, if you can’t call them within 3 or 4 hours, don’t bother. They won’t remember it. Think about how many emails you get every day. Do you remember on Wednesday, the links you clicked on Tuesday?
Again, an integrated CRM and Email Marketing solution can make this kind of quick calling easy. If it’s not realistic for you, then try switching those that click 1 or 2 of your initial content emails to a different campaign that treats them more like a new lead, providing some info about your company and how you solve the problems they’ve shown interest in and possibly requesting an appointment.
Have a follow up email ready for your sales team to send if they talk to the prospect or leave a voicemail. Normally, in the conversation or message they’re going to talk about things they’d like the prospect to see so, the email can link to those items and just get the conversation started.
It’s also worthwhile to call the people on your list that “bounce”. If they’ve left the company, you can find out who their replacement is and put them on your list.
However, if you can’t call them within 3 or 4 hours, don’t bother. They won’t remember it. Think about how many emails you get every day. Do you remember on Wednesday, the links you clicked on Tuesday?
4th: Email Marketing Campaign Management
Once you’ve got your first email marketing campaign going, compare the open rates for each subject line. Which ones are getting people’s attention? Focus your efforts on more content and emails in the same area. Don’t get stuck trying to make a subject or piece of content work that just isn’t. A lot of this is going to be counter-intuitive. Let the measurements tell you what to do next.
For the emails that get good opens, now look at the click rate. If you’re getting 10% or more opens and you’re not getting at least 1% click rate, then try moving the “call to action” (the link or video) higher up in the email so they see it more easily or try rewording the call to action itself. If that doesn’t work, then find new content.
Keep tweaking and adjusting. It may take you 2 or 3 iterations before you start to feel like you’re getting things dialed in.
Once you start seeing over 1% click rates consistently, then it’s time to start thinking about devoting some time to creating your own content and investing in a bigger list.
The only thing that really matters to be successful in selling is your ability to sell it and just shut up.
You’ve heard the phrase “show up and throw up”, right?
If not, then you’re part of the problem!
You need to shut up and just sell it!
I’ve experienced yesterday, I was treated to one of the most egregious examples of nervous salesperson babble. Uhg. It was painful.
Too bad too… The service this guy was selling is something I need.
Unfortunately, for him while I was listening to him go on and on, answering unasked questions, I was searching the web for competitors to talk to that wouldn’t waste my time.
I did have some fun with it though. Eventually, it got so ridiculous. I had asked a simple yes or no question about 10 minutes before and the guy hadn’t stopped talking yet – that I finally just interrupted him and told him I wanted to show him something.
I suggested that I confirm that I was understanding the benefits of his service by trying to sell them to him. That got a laugh and knocked him off balance a bit so, I asked him 3 simple questions. Finally, I can’t elaborate on what the questions were because that would give away the company he works for and I don’t want to cause embarrassment.
Your goal is to sell it and to continue to ask the prospect questions about their world. Understand what’s working for them, what challenges they face, where they think they’re heading, and most importantly, what are the greatest risks they see in the current world or in the future. What are they afraid of.
Why? Because people buy for emotional reasons. Especially so in business, people buy things because it’s a piece of a vision in their head or they buy because they’re afraid of something. Either way, if you know what that is, then it’s easy to show them how your product or service can be a crucial part of the vision or protect them from failure, cost overruns, etc. To sell it, you have to learn these concepts.
If you have the bad habit of prattling on with customers a bit too much.
Record your next sales call. Listen to it afterward and try to write down the questions that all of your statements were in answer to. Even if the question was never asked, what was the question you imagined when you started your statement.
Be direct. Imagine that you’re extremely busy working on the biggest deal of your life. A new prospect pops up in your face. You don’t really have time to spend with him/her. What questions would you ask them to determine if it’s worth your time? Now, start asking those questions first in every new sales situation.
After each sales call, ask yourself if you learned enough about your prospect to know what’s really eating at him. What keeps him up at night? If not, you need to ask more questions.
Your prospect should do 80% of the talking. You’ve got to get good at asking leading questions to get there.
Sometimes you don’t get the answer you want. Sometimes you’re not sure what to ask next. That’s OK. The solution is NOT to start filling the air with statements about your products and services. A better solution is to ask something simple like “I know you’re busy, as am I. At this point, does it make sense for us to continue to explore possibly doing business together?” The reason a question like this works is that you don’t have time to waste on people who don’t want what you’re selling. Even if they are interested. Your goal is to figure out if they’re likely to buy early by asking questions. If not, don’t try to change their mind unless you ask permission and they agree.
Sometimes when you’re not sure what to sell, you can try to havesales leads.
Here are some resources to help you with the art of asking questions:
OK, enough already. Just remember what my Dad always told me about dating, “A big talker gets attention in a crowd but, one on one, girls love a good listener”.
Finally, there are some tools you might wanna consider to improve your sales.
contact info. Another source is partner pages on related vendor sites. Trade shows often publish lists of attendees, speakers and exhibitors. Any list that’s very targeted to your products and services that includes the company name and location is sufficient.
