Your marketing department has organised a successful PPC campaign. You gain contacts in social networks. Your placing in search engines is constantly improving, with a growing number of visits to our website and contacts via phone. People are asking for details of your products and arranging meetings. Meanwhile, sales are stagnating. Why?
1. The marketing message bears no relation to reality, i.e. potential customers find out that the product or service differs from their expectations.
What can be done? Change the marketing message. Be more specific when communicating with customers.
2. You forget the telephone. Did you know that there is a much greater chance of closing a sale when a potential client phones than when they only fill out an online form?
What can be done? Put your telephone number everywhere: in Facebook messages, on your website – basically on any form of online and offline advertising.
3. Absence of a systematic solution. Or, while you have enough potential customers, they slip through your fingers due to an absence of clearly defined responsibilities for clients at the various phases of the decision-making process.
What can be done? Create a system where someone is always responsible for contact with the customer. Introduce CRM.
4. Salespeople are scared. In the real world, many salespeople are scared of contacting new people, and end up not contacting anyone who has not shown serious interest. Potential clients can be e.g. interested in a free e-book or news service.
What can be done? Motivate them to use the phone more.
5. Insufficient competency of salespeople. The majority of people have already listened to dozens of offers via telephone, so salespeople must be really good at their craft in order to succeed.
What can be done? Give salespeople sufficient training then introduce a system for monitoring their performance.
6. Slow salespeople. How quickly do your employees contact potential customers from the moment their name is added to the list? If someone shows interest in your product, how quickly does someone phone them back? The later this happens, the lower the probability that a sale will be realised.
What can be done? As soon as you gain a new contact, phone them.
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