Know your customer well. It’s the golden rule. We have all heard about it. We all know it and yet so many will still take a chance picking up the phone and dialing a random with a number from a list or their CRM hoping to charm their prospect and coax them into buying. It’s not just phone based, emails and direct mails are often send with a hit or miss strategy without really doing some background research on where they are headed. Even if they are not interested in buying what you have to offer right away, prospects always respect the fact that you know something about them or their companies. If you’ve done some homework on them the chances are they will at least have a first impression good enough to hear you through or read what you have to say.
That homework or brief background need not be a detailed dossier or deep intelligence. Sometimes a simple 50 word description on the company is all that is needed to seperate someone who knows ’something’ and someone who knows ‘nothing’ about your company and first impressions are made quickly. Most marketing lists and CRM databases will have a link to the account/company website and this is usually enough to quickly go through before connecting with a prospect. However i’ll admit even I would prefer having some kind of excerpt or company description which tells me about the company, products and background on the same screen or list to avoid that additional effort of having to open and research a site myself.
Good data is not just about volumes. Just like selling and marketing has evolved and become smarter, more information driven, CRM data and lists have evolved into more than just a set of names, phone numbers and addresses. Data enrichment and data append solutions can help add valuable data points to ensure you’re better informed and updated on prospects a quick glance. While for the complex sale, investing in more comprehensive pre sales research is worth the extra effort, for most, it’s important to identify what additional data can help you make a difference and invest in enriching your database. After all, those first impressions are important.
As marketers we all get caught up in generating leads, building traffic, creating click throughs, optimizing content and generating more views and leads. In doing all this we often forget that the final objective is not just generating the highest volumes of leads but to generate business opportunities which are well qualified and can potentially convert to sales. So what is being done to make sure all those inquiries, downloads and web leads are qualified and the ones that are clear business opportunities are identified and passed on appropriately?
We have covered the need for inbound lead qualification in previous posts and while talking to companies we often hear that they have it all covered and their inbound leads are uploaded straight to their CRM so that in time they can be conatcted by the sales reps. But have they really got things covered? Time is of the essence when it comes to having inbound leads qualified and ideally they should be qualified as soon as they are generated. With every hour that passes by after that, the chances of conversion to a clear business opportunitiy or a sale diminish. Spending on having your inbound lead qualified as soon as possible is more than worth the extra cost. If you can identify clear business opportunities and differentiate them from unqualified leads in the process you will not only have a better conversaion rate but you will benefit from having only good qualified business opportunities from going into your CRM and have your sales team spend their time better on well qualified opportunities rather than just leads. This simple addition to the loop will make your sales machine more efficient and have it working in the right direction.
Remember the aim should not stop at simply generating leads. Thats just step one. The aim is to generate qualified business opportunities. Identifiying business opportunities within the leads sooner rather than later will give you that extra edge.
