Coffee for Closers | Leads360 Sales & Marketing Blog 

When a process breaks down, there are many different approaches to finding the cause and repairing it. But if diagnostic efforts could be distilled into three words, they might be: Identify, Isolate, and Eliminate. This approach is a good guide regardless of if you are fixing a pinball machine, treating a patient, or trying to patch holes in a sales process. Identify the problem, isolate its root cause, and eliminate it. It’s a sound strategy but it is easier said than done.

In the example of a sales process that is failing to perform as needed, it is necessary to have a system that benchmarks and keeps track of work performed by sales reps. Lead Management Software is the best fit for this case. The reason for this is that Lead Management Software, more than CRM, more than Marketing Automation solutions directly addresses the question of “How effectively are my sales leads being worked?”

Benchmarking and tracking the work of sales reps is handled easily by a lead management system that has a robust reporting engine. Small business owners and sales managers who use a lead management solution see ROI data served up in an actionable, easy to read format. Having access to performance data on every stage of your sales process enables you to make real time decisions that help you course correct when lead sources or sales reps are underperforming.

In recent years, an increasing number of regulations have been put in place prevent businesses from operating in bad faith. Whether or not you agree with the efficacy of these regulations, they have become part of what it means to do business. This is especially true if you do business in an industry where a pattern of abuse has been discerned by regulators. Two examples of this would be mortgage lending and for profit education.

There are many reputable businesses trying to stay afloat in both mortgage lending and for-profit education. Remaining in compliance with current regulations is part of the equation for these businesses. It’s not enough to be competitive; there is the added work of not just remaining compliant, but remaining demonstrably compliant.

In the event of a compliance audit, two of the main ways that organizations can demonstrate their compliance with regulations are by being able to provide scripts that their reps used when speaking to prospects and by recording phone calls. When using a lead management system with an integrated lead dialer it is easy to create and maintain sales scripts and keep audio recordings of all phone calls.

Being sensitive to the needs of your prospects is the way to turn them into customers. It’s always important when talking about prospects or leads to remember that they are not the same thing as customers. Everyone knows that providing quality customer service is a critical component to the success of every business. Customer service should be thought of as a set of best practices for satisfying customers to maximize the chances that they become or remain repeat customers. Similarly, prospect service should be thought of as a set of best practices the goal of which is to maximize the chance that a prospect becomes a customer.

From a sales reps perspective, being sensitive to the needs of prospects involves contacting the prospect quickly and following up with them consistently. Establishing the kind of relationship with a prospect that leads to the prospect becoming a customer depends on nothing more heavily than prompt professional communication.

From the perspective of the sales manager or small business owner, being sensitive to the needs of prospects means quickly assigning the right lead to the right sales rep. When one sales rep has expertise that equips him to provide better service to a certain segment of prospects, that rep should be given the opportunity to provide service to those leads.

Sales managers must also be able to spot trends in performance metrics that indicate which campaigns, agents, and lead routing strategies are performing. Matching prospect to rep quickly and intelligently is work that must be done continuously and automatically in order to make sure that sales reps can provide the best possible service to prospects.

Using a lead management system, all of the pieces of prospect service fall into place and more prospects become customers.

Email Marketing is important. It’s a good way to keep your name in front of prospects, letting them know that they are still on your mind. It enables you to affordably target different segments of your prospect base with relevant messaging. Providing you are careful to avoid spamming; receiving regular, relevant content from your company builds trust and strengthens your brand.

But as prospects are becoming more tech savvy, and their email inboxes are becoming increasingly populated with marketing emails, the tendency to skip over emails that contain marketing messages is gradually becoming more entrenched.

When prospects receive emails at regular intervals, they will either conclude, “I am on Your Company’s mailing list.” Or, “Mike Jones at Your Company is trying to reach me.” There is a big difference between these two conclusions in terms of customer experience.  And whichever conclusion they draw says a lot about how they regard your company and what kind of service they will expect to receive.

So how can Email Marketing be executed most effectively? Without being perceived as spam? Without giving prospects the sense that they are just a name on a mailing list? Assuming first that your Email Marketing practices are sound, (e.g., not too many emails, always containing relevant communication) the next best thing you can do to make sure that your emails penetrate the spam barrier is to follow up on emails with phone calls.

So using a Lead Management system that can automatically send out targeted relevant emails is only half the battle. To leverage this technology while effectively providing a human touch, the Lead Management system must also have Lead Prioritization and User Scripting capabilities. Using Lead Prioritization it is possible to put a lead at the top of a sales reps lead queue the same day that an automated email has been sent. And with User Scripting, the sales rep will have easy access to verbiage that references the automated marketing email. As in, “Hi Ms. Wilson, This is Mike Jones, I sent you an email today about some opportunities that have come up as a result of current market conditions. I wanted to check in and see if you had a chance to look it over, and if you have a couple minutes to talk through some scenarios.”

Lead Management software automates the following:

• 1. Sending of Marketing Emails
• 2. Prioritization of Leads
• 3. Putting Scripts in front of sales reps that are relevant to that leads unique history

Taken alone any one of these features is powerful. Used in a coordinated way, in an integrated Lead Management system, they are able to successfully leverage the benefits of technology (speed, automation, etc.) without losing the human touch.

Consistency of sales messaging is important. In today’s regulatory climate, it is often critical. Helping make sure that employees are saying things that represent your brand well and remaining compliant with current regulations isn’t always easy, but there are tools out there that can help. From a compliance perspective, ensuring that employees are using approved language can have legal ramifications but that is only one good reason to use sales scripts. Your bottom line benefits from sales scripting in many ways.

First of all, consistency of sales messaging strengthens your brand and builds trust. When prospects reach different members of your sales team and get varying levels of service it contributes to an idea that the company is not managed well. And in the age of customer empowerment, one bad apple can tarnish your reputation when the dissatisfied customer posts reviews about their poor experience.

Secondly, scripts can help establish best practices and spread through your team and take hold. When certain questions and statements have been identified as being helpful at distinct phases in the sales cycle, that language can be put in front of employees at just the right moment. This is particularly useful in a ‘new hire’ scenario where you want to provide extra guidance for new employees as they are gaining experience.

Knowing what to say to whom and when is one of the fundamentals of successful salespeople. Creating scripts that put successful language in front of sales people makes it easy to create and enforce standards around your sales efforts.

An earlier entry on this blog delved into the Principles of Prospect Service. The thrust of this article was that Customers and Prospects are two fundamentally different entities, and that trying to provide customer service using customer service tools to prospects is a misstep. What a prospect needs is Prospect Service. First among the principles of Prospect Service is that a sales person looking to provide the best service to a prospect needs to be the first on the phone with the prospect; if for no other reason than there may be no opportunity to provide service of any kind if a competitor reaches the prospect first.

So it is important to be available when a prospect decides they want to get information about your product. This is accomplished through many different means. A lead management system can capture leads from any source and make them available for immediate assignment to available sales reps. Using a kind of intelligent lead distribution program called Shotgun Connect (named after the game of calling the passenger seat in a car by saying “shotgun”) the phones of all available agents ring and whoever is available to take the call and quickest on the draw will win the lead and be immediately connected to them.

It is also important to equip sales reps with tools to be able to stay in touch with their leads when they are away from their desk. For that reason, the Leads360 iPhone app enables sales reps to see all of their leads and connect with them while they are away from their desk. Easy to use, this app can be used to add leads, sort existing leads, place calls, send emails and SMS messages and more. Establishing contact and keeping in touch has never been easier.

What kind of service do you want to get? When you’re the customer, what do you want? Do you want a quick response? We’ve all been in a situation where we are waiting for help. Ready to do business with someone and they cannot find the time to engage with us. It’s a frustrating experience as a consumer, but even more than the frustration is something closer to befuddlement. Why, we wonder, why and what in the world do you have to do that is more important than engaging with your customers. If that is not your job, then what is? This experience is all too common in actual physical stores, but it seems to be even more prevalent with online inquiries. Secret shopper studies in the insurance and banking industries have shown that major players both industries are providing substandard service in terms of lead follow up.

It is entirely possible to respond to online inquiries within a minute. Meaning that if a prospect fills out a form on your website or the website of a lead provider, it is possible to have that lead distributed to whichever sales rep is ready to make the call. It’s an up-for-grabs type of situation where only the quickest sales rep claims the lead; and as soon as he does, the call is placed automatically. Leveraging the competitive nature of a sales team means a quicker response for prospects making inquiries.

If contact times of under a minute are more aggressive than what you are used to, consider this: Leads are 391% more likely to close when they are contacted in under a minute. If you’re tempted to think that internet response times should be longer than response times for customers who are waiting in a store, think again. With a lead management system that intelligently distributes leads and leverages an integrated lead dialer, response times can, should and will be shorter than those in a store.  It’s up to you if you want to be an early adopter of this technology, and scoop up market share from those who don’t or if you want to be the one who gets scooped.

Everyone in marketing and sales knows that customers are a lot savvier than they were 10 years ago. 5 years ago. Last year. Customers are always connected to the internet and have countless resources to help them make informed decisions about where they are going to take our business. And it hasn’t plateaued. There is more content all the time and quicker, cleverer ways to leverage it. There are increasingly more ways for customers to shop without reverting to the bad old days, where a customers only choice was to walk into a showroom and fend off a pushy salesman.

So how do you serve a customer whose ability to serve themselves is constantly improving? It is all about technology. It is technology that is empowering consumers, and technology that will empower sales people to better serve their customers. Take for example when a prospect submits an online inquiry. Whether it is on your website or on the website of a lead provider, it is critical to reach that prospect immediately. Smartphones have made a consumers need for instant gratification even more pronounced. They can get information whenever they want in almost every case.  But what about when they want information from you via a phone call? Are they getting that instantly? They should be, and it is entirely possible if you are using lead management software with an integrated lead dialer.

Using lead management with an intelligent lead dialer equips the conscientious sales agent with the tools to immediately reach out to an interested prospect. But it even goes a step further. An intelligent lead distribution engine funnels each prospect to the sales agent who is best suited to help him; base on licensure, expertise or other soft skills. Doing right by your prospects means being at their disposal. When someone decides they’re interested in what you sell, you can be on the phone with them in seconds, regardless of where they are.

CRM is huge. It casts a big shadow. Its scope is enormous; the problems it sets out to solve are legion. So expansive is the real estate occupied by CRM that its precise boundaries have become difficult to survey. For many businesses, incorporating technology into their business practices is a process that involves working with a lot of unknowns. That usually means some combination of research and guesswork.

There is an endless amount of information on the internet about CRM and other business software solutions. The glut of information available on the subject of CRM has an effect on consumers that isn’t always easy to see coming. Because at a certain point it becomes necessary to decide that you know enough and you are ready to make your decision. The point of ‘enough information’ too often ends with the conclusion that “CRM does so much, that I’m sure it will do what I need it to.”

In fact, CRM may not be the best fit for many types of businesses. CRM is great if you have existing customers who require ongoing service. CRM is a great tool for customer retention. But if you are focused on growth, and bringing in new customers, CRM is not the best fit. When choosing  a solution, it is important to make a distinction between customers and prospects and decide who you are willing to reach. CRM is a solution that is designed to maintain and nurture existing customer relationships that has been adapted to work also with prospects.

Lead management software is designed to manage relationships with prospects. Lead management helps turn prospects into customers. Lead management helps you be the first on the phone with a prospect. Lead management prioritizes your leads and automates follow up so every prospect gets the attention it deserves. Lead Management has easy to use reports that help you identify lead sources and which team members perform best, and which are under performing.