Transcript
Intro:
Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast, where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate, and keep together highly effective sales teams…teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits.
Along the journey, we also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious Sales Leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, Stronger Sales Teams is right where you need to be.
Ben Wright:
Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams. Another solo episode today. This is off the back of some of the huge numbers of requests I had over the last few weeks for lead generation, which we covered in our podcast episode last week. However, as I was finishing off that episode, it really reminded me the importance of making sure that we’re not just focusing on how our teams are generating leads or prospects, but we’re also spending some time around how they are nurturing those prospects to get them to a point where they are genuinely interested to receive pricing, contracts, quotations, whatever works within your industry.
And for me, this is often where the hard work really starts. And please don’t think of that as lead generation being labelled as easy. But it is certainly acknowledging the importance of not just generating a lead, but also nurturing and building engagement with a potential customer the whole way through your journey together.
Today we’re going to have a look at in a very similar format to last week. We’re going to have a look at my top 15 recommendations when it comes to nurturing leads and prospects, from that first or early introduction through to having a genuine conversation around how you could work together moving forward. So today is all about keeping people’s attention. But before we start, if you’re looking to sharpen your skills around lead generation and nurturing, I’d recommend you go back to episodes one to six. They were very early in the podcast series, however, they covered off the sales process all the way from lead generation through to close sale and key account management. So episodes one to six are really worth listening to. The second piece I’ll say here is that we need to make sure for any nurturing strategy, our CRM systems are really up to speed and the reason it’s so important is that CRMs can play a vital role in systemizing our nurturing process, particularly when they’re going to provide the mainstay for a drip campaign out to a potential customer. Last but not least, here is for nurturing as it was for lead generation. It’s not a one size fits all strategy. So some of the below is going to be more relevant for large organisations, and some of the below is going to be relevant for smaller organisations and everything in between. So buckle in. We’re going to talk 15 nice short and sharp ways that we can nurture leads. We won’t go into details as to how we do it. However, I want to make sure that everyone who’s listening has these written down, and you can then work out what is most beneficial for you. And then I’m always around if you need to get in touch for a little bit of extra help.
Okay? So similar vein to last week. I love the saying, 84% of sales are made after the fifth attempt. The reason I’m bringing this up again this week is that for me, nurturing also requires a significant degree of persistence, of grit, of just hanging in there, as does lead generation, as do most parts of engaging customers along the journey. And for me, that’s important to make sure that our teams are aware that just because we meet a prospect, they may not magically be ready now to talk to us. So sometimes patients and a really structured program of engaging with them will pay dividends for your team as long as they can hang in there.
Okay, so let’s start… 15 nurturing activities that I’ve seen work really, really well, both at a personal level with my teams and through the customers that I now work with.
So, number one, we’ll start very small and nice and easy is a really personalised thank you after you meet with someone, it goes a long way to just building that emotional bank a little bit further. And when I talk about emotional bank, this is where we can picture ourselves going into a bank where we’re making deposits. The more deposits we make, the higher our balance and occasionally making withdrawals. Okay, yes, most transactions are done online, but humour me back to ten or 15 years ago when we did go into banks a little bit more regularly. The more deposits we’re making in an emotional bank, the stronger our relationships are becoming. So that when we do make withdrawals, that balance doesn’t go down to zero or even worse, into a negative territory. So it’s all about making sure that we can make as much positive contribution to relationships with people as quickly as we can. The personalised thank you for me is just a nice way of showing that you care. And for me, what’s really common is that people don’t really care how much you know until they can see that you genuinely do care. So number one, personalised thank you’s.
Number two, personalised videos. This is a huge favourite of mine. Whenever we’re communicating with new customers to give them a written version and a video version of communicating with us. Everyone’s different. People like to read, people like to listen, people like to watch. Lots and lots of different ways of communicating styles that drive people across the world. What I really like about videos is that people are getting to hear your voice, see your face and learn a bit more about you. I personally, if someone sends me a video, will always listen to it because I can appreciate the time that’s gone into it. So terrific nurturing strategy for me. And number two is around personalised videos.
Number three, something you won’t hear me talk a lot about because I don’t believe that it works for a lot of businesses and that is using social media to generate leads. In this instance, however, I think social media for nurturing potential prospects and customers is fantastic. Connecting with our customers on their preferred social media channels, commenting on posts that they’re putting out there, putting great information out to them, sending them messages, whatever it may be, you’re finding another way to connect with that customer. But my advice here is to make sure you really think about what modality or what social media platform they recognise as being most important to them. And sometimes that just means asking. Okay, number three down.
Number four is all about content generation, so very similar to social media, but it’s making sure you are putting out enough content so that your prospective customers are getting to know you. So in my instance, I use a lot of podcasts, have two podcasts now running. I use social media and I will use resources that I have available to a lot of my customers. This is how prospects will often get to know me, over and above meeting with me or talking with me or hearing through emails from me. And the reason I like this is that it takes a long time to really trust someone, in my opinion, when you’re looking to do big deals or big transactions. So it’s important that we give our customers every opportunity to get to know us and trust us along the journey. I will say here, it’s very, very important that the content you’re generating is genuine. If you don’t believe it or if you’re not, you think proficient enough to be able to putting the advice or the recommendations or the content out there, then find something else. Because what we don’t want to do is present ourselves as anything other than who we truly are. Okay, first four done.
Number five is all about providing recommendations to our customers. And these may be for different types of content that they could look at themselves. It might be for ways that they can study up on the areas that you provide a product or service on. May not be your own product, but certainly giving them the opportunity to broaden their skills and their knowledge is a really powerful way to nurture through potential prospects and customers.
So third of the way there, the first five being a personalised thank you. A personalised video. Number three, social media, connecting and commenting or engaging with a customer. Number four is putting content out there. And number five is providing recommendations as to how people or businesses can learn more about your type of industry or service.
Okay, so number six, we’re moving now into what I call structured follow up. So that is around asking your customers how they like to be engaged with. It goes a long way for me when I will meet someone and they will say to me, great, how would you like me to engage with you from here? What’s the best way that I can communicate? How often would you like to hear from me? What’s the type of stuff that you’d like to hear from? I’ll then go. Okay, well, thank you. I really appreciate you coming to talk to me about procurement within my business. I’m happy to hear from you anytime you’ve got something valuable to say that’s going to help me make better procurement decisions. I’d prefer it if you sent me things that were minor across by email or if I needed to understand some context, then by all means get on the phone and talk to me. Those people will then have a really terrific result in connecting with me, and I’ve seen it work really, really well across many, many industries over the years.
Next one, we are talking about solving related opportunities. So, not dissimilar to how do you like to be contacted or finding or confirming with customers what type of content they want to receive, but where you can find problems for customers to solve that are easy for you but potentially harder for them, that can have a huge impact. A classic example I have here was when a previous business in the renewable industry that I worked in, which I do talk about a little bit, we had a customer who was actually facing a significant energy cost increase issue. What they didn’t realise at the time was that they were not alone. Many others in their industry were experiencing the same thing. We actually provided some industry statistics around the increases that were being felt across the country, and this customer actually ended up being slightly south of those statistics, and they were able to use them internally to acknowledge that they had sourced a reasonably strong deal. It was a market problem that they were working with. This helped them solve a different problem, and it certainly built some significant loyalty with us across the rest of our journey together.
Okay, seven in, eight to go. Number eight is one that we will see actually under the top 15 lead generation tips as well, and that’s sponsorships. I really like sponsorships because they allow us to get in front of our ideal customers. So when we can make connections through sponsorships, I really encourage our team to leverage anything else that’s available through that sponsorship. Other events that the team may be having or the organisation may be having different ways where you can catch up with that person again, but really find ways that you can get yourself in front of those potential prospects so that you can start to build that relationship. That’s number eight.
Number nine, webinars. Webinars are great when you’re in an industry where you have people wanting to learn or know more about a product. I think once you’re meeting, or once you’ve met a potential prospect, inviting them to a webinar that you’re giving, or certainly asking them what type of content will get them to engage is a terrific way to be building that relationship. And I’ve seen webinars used really effectively to engage customer interest. In fact, I’d also say that extends from webinars through to podcasts, where you have a podcast within your business or your industry that you’re regularly on, that will allow customers to get to know you a little bit more, too.
Okay, so we’re nine in six to go. Next one for me is around case studies or site visits, and now they’re quite different. But I lump them into one basket because this is all about getting to know your product. Site visits are fantastic and definitely my preferred option. However, we can’t always get potential prospects out to sites, and in that instance, this is where I like to send video case studies or a compelling piece of evidence that shows how your product or service can improve their lives. Now, most businesses will work around case studies, but where I think they’re really powerful is that we’re getting the format of these case studies really spot on. And by that I mean into a manner that the customer or the potential customer is going to engage with them. So there’s a little bit more than just pumping out a case study, but certainly from a nurturing strategy…very, very powerful.
Next one here we’re moving into the last five. Number eleven is all around getting physical products into their hands. It is one of the most powerful ways I see of taking customers from a lead generation or a prospect stage through to someone that’s genuinely interested. Car dealerships are amazing at it. They get you sitting in the car, they get you out for a test drive, and they get you to feel how good the car you want to buy can be. Other showrooms where you go to, whether it be building supplies or lots of different types of industries, really pride themselves on making sure they’ve got their product there so you can touch, feel and see it. So where you’re in an industry where that’s not easiest to do, I really encourage you to get products into customers' hands to help continue them along their buying cycle.
All right, next one. Product demonstrations or training sessions. This extends on having physical products into people’s hands. And this is, for me, is all about getting people to a session where they can learn really heavily about your product. And often that will be a face to face session where they can come in and see and touch and feel and learn more specifications around what your product can do. It also works if you do it virtually and you have some really dedicated videos or 3d, you know, certainly 3d or virtual reality types of models are coming in more and more and more where you can get your customers immersed in learning about your product that can certainly supplement where you can’t get a physical product in their hand.
Three to go. Next one for me is physical mail. One that you might instantly wonder why. How does that nurture customers? But we don’t actually receive anywhere near the volume of mail in most cases that we used to. So when we can be sending something across, whether it’s a thank you, like the personalised thank you, I said for number one, whether it’s a product sample or whether it’s a catalogue, getting something into people through physical mail is really powerful and can keep them engaged. And one that I really do enjoy using myself, even in the industry I’m in now.
Second last are drip campaigns. Drip campaigns are super, super powerful. We work with our marketing or comms teams or our management teams, depending on the size of business we’re in, to build out a formal program as to how we’re going to regularly contact our customers. They can be emails, they can be recommendations of content, they can be podcasts, they can be webinars, they can be attending trade shows where you’re speaking, they can be awards, they can be all different types of things. But where we have a structured program through our CRM, where we can regularly get in touch with our customers, this is a super, super powerful way of nurturing. Now, I recognise this isn’t available to everyone, but where you can have a form of structured follow up or structured drip campaigns, super impactful when it comes to nurturing.
And last but not least, one of my favourites is cross-threading. So we may meet one person in procurement from an organisation, or facilities management, or warehousing, or someone that is impactful to us. However, the more people we can meet that would be involved in this type of process, the quicker we can have these things move along. So my encouragement here is that when you meet one person within an organisation, don’t stop there. Really drive hard to keep things moving forward, because the more connections you can build within an organisation, the more likely you are to be able to get them to a really meaningful conversation with you.
Okay, so that is 15. So let’s go through those top 15 again. Nice, short and sharp, and make sure you’ve got them written down, because there are some really powerful ways of nurturing our potential prospects that we need to make sure our teams are all aware of.
Number one and two are all about personalization. Number one, being a thank you card, gift, email, phone call, whatever it may be. And number two, being a personalised video, making sure people are really getting to know you when you’re building that emotional bank. Number three, four and five are around content. So number three being social media, it’s about connecting and commenting and engaging. Number four is around generating content so that a customer can get to know you, that is a podcast or regular social media content, or emails, whatever it may be, webinars. And number five is providing content recommendations for that potential prospect so they can get to upskill themselves in whatever is important to them. Number six is all around structured follow up. So that’s asking them what they like. So you’re nurturing or communicating in a way that works for them. Then we’re moving into finding some problems for them that you can solve that helps build that trust you have with a customer. Sponsorships, so that’s getting in front of customers through sponsorships, particularly when we meet them in that area, really doubling down on how we can be in touch with them. Then we move into webinars. So really this is a form of customers getting to know you and case studies or site visits. So for me, it’s if we can’t get a customer to site, let’s try and get them to see a case study or even more impactfully, which moves into number into our last five, number eleven, which is all about getting physical product in their hands. So out to site case studies or physical product in their hands and we move along to product demonstrations or training sessions. So when we can’t get them to site or we can’t get product in their hands, we can certainly do product demonstrations and virtual events that can be really impactful around building engagement. We then move on to physical mail something in the post that they can touch and feel. Drip campaigns. So that’s having really clear and structured drip campaigns that we can roll out on mass. And then last but not least is all around cross threading. So building relationships across more than just the one person you meet across an organisation. Right?
So that’s 15 ways of nurturing our prospects. That’s on top of the 15 ways of lead generation activities from last week. All of these I have used personally over the last 20 years, and they are by no means the most exhaustive list, but they are the ones that I know work. And I’ve seen teams and myself have serious success with using these. So if you’d really like to sharpen up around nurturing and lead generation, jump back again to episode 70 I mentioned last week, but also episodes one to six. They really go through the sales process in great detail.
But before we go, I’d like to keep running that theme of health and fitness from last week around my biological age test. Yes, it came back as 44. When I’m shortly turning 42. Even though I’m doing a hell of a lot. Well, I think I’m doing a hell of a lot right. So I said I was going to investigate that and I am doing so. And my first cab off the rank is some glucose testing. So I’ve bought a little monitor that’s going to stick into my arm and I want to see how my blood sugar levels spike when I eat. I’m going to test what time of day I eat, I’m going to test what I eat, I’m going to test how much I eat. And, and we’ll get some really cool results out of those, which I will share with you along the way. But please get in touch if you want to know more because it will be a little bit of time before I can get them up and about again.
So that’s it for today. That rounds out nurturing strategies. My top 15. Until we come together again next week. Please keep living in a world of possibility and you’ll be amazed by what you can achieve.
E87 My Top 15 Nurturing Activities To Keep Your Prospects Engaged
