Sales Messaging and Cross-Channel Communication
December 8, 2020 — How do sales organizations get their message out to prospects? There are a lot of ways to get the message out these days. Clearly, the best way to reach a prospect is on the phone. That’s where the real work of understanding a prospects needs begins. The first phone call is where the real conversation starts and all of the other ways we communicate with prospects are really just ways to add value and build trust so the prospect will want to get on the phone. These other ways of communicating include Twitter, Facebook, email, SMS, direct mail, and more.
Sending emails has the benefit of keeping your name in front of prospects. But increasingly, emails that seek to do nothing more than maintain brand visibility are having the opposite effect in the prospects inbox. Indiscriminant email blasts that offer no valuable information are rightly viewed by prospects as spam. Marketing emails must be sent at strategic intervals and contain useful information.
The same is true of SMS messages. Since marketing SMS messages are less common than marketing emails they are more likely to be read. But they are also more likely to be seen as an intrusion, so it is even more critical that they contain something useful. And at 160 characters, that can be a challenge.
But the real challenge is to coordinate all of your attempts to reach a prospect into a single strategy that is based on proven best practices. Emails and text messages need to be sent at strategic intervals. Phone contact attempts and voicemails need to be executed at a schedule in accordance with proven best practices. Using a lead management solution it is possible to weave all of your communication attempts into a single contact program. And the best part is that all emails and SMS messages are sent automatically. Prioritization of calls is also done automatically and can be configured to work in conjunction with the emails and SMS messages.
Leads are automatically prioritized to the top of the call list when they are due for a call. Lead logs give the sales reps a heads up that an email or SMS has been recently sent and user scripts can reference specific content in the emails. This cross-channel communication approach enables sales reps to convey to prospects that they are being contacted by someone who is paying attention to their individual case. Not being spammed and randomly receiving phone calls.
