We can't always sit back and wait for customers to seek us out, although it is great when they do. You need to get out there and find them and work for the leads.
Thankfully, there are all kinds of things that you can do to find new customers and fill your pipeline. And many of the most effective tactics are often overlooked by business owners and their sales teams.Here are 22 smart ways to get your pipeline moving.
Finding new contacts- 5 ways how to:
1.Use LinkedIn to find lookalike prospects
By visiting your existing customers profile you are able to look for the ‘people also viewed’ bar along the right-hand side of their profile. You can also scroll through their connections. This is one of the best ways to find new customers.
Get your sales team to do this for all of your customers and you’ll find hundreds of new prospects in no time at all.
2.Call up old contacts
Reach out to customers who haven’t interacted with you in a while and get in touch. For added oomph, consider 1-to-1 video outreach using tools like Loom and Vidyard.
If your sales team already has its hands full, hire a telemarketing agency to do this for you.
3.Encourage some healthy competition
Offer an incentive for your sales team by running a competition in your sales team to see who can generate the most leads in a given amount of time through cold calls, outreach, LinkedIn requests or whatever channel works best for your business.
For added drama you could form teams or create league tables. Just make sure you have a good prize up for grabs so people really go for it.
4.Start every day with 20 minutes on LinkedIn
Every morning, have your sales team spend 20 minutes sending 20 new connection requests and giving useful information to the people that accept.
New conversations following from 20 connection requests a day from each member of your sales team will have a big impact on your pipeline.
5.Buy lists from a data vendor
Build a customer avatar from your existing customers: industry, location, company size, etc. Take this profile to a data vendor and buy contacts that match your customer avatar.
Thousands of new prospects overnight for your sales team to work on.
However, be conscious of the fact that just because a company matches your target customer avatar, doesn’t necessarily mean they have an immediate need for your services. Make sure you look to offer them value in your outreach first, rather than diving straight into ‘sales-mode’ which could be off-putting.
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3 Helpful Sales Tools
1.Turn your team into Sales Navigator pros
LinkedIn Sales Navigator delivers 75% better ROI than traditional sales methods (according to LinkedIn).
Use it to build laser-targeted lists of new contacts and send out relevant, valuable content that will help build relationships.
Add a “Book a Meeting” link at the bottom of your outgoing sales emails
Many prospects will rifle through old emails when they finally need your service.
Make it easy for them to reach you by having a “Book a Meeting” link at the bottom of your outgoing emails.
Test a new advertising platform
Facebook, Google Adwords, YouTube, LinkedIn - there are no end of platforms out there to try. Set a budget and the objectives you would like to achieve, then run a test to see if the platform works for your business.
If it does, scale it up and make it part of your marketing mix. If it doesn’t, move onto something else.
6 ways how to work your existing channels harder
1.Pick a winner and double down
Look at how all your marketing channels are performing.
If you see a clear winner, invest more. If channels are underperforming, reduce the spend and put it into your winners.
2.Contact your trade association
Many trade associations have “Meet The Buyer” events which let members… you guessed it, meet the buyer.
Like Christmas, these events usually happen once a year. So make sure you book your space!
3.Have regular meetings with your distribution partners
Get together every few months to review how things are going, resolve any issues and hear about new opportunities.
You can find a lot of opportunities through informal conversations with your distributors.
4.Review your distribution channels
Not all distribution channels are equal. Some will deliver more than others.
For example, online sales might be growing and there may be more opportunities for international business - therefore, consider selling on Amazon or eBay.
Pick out the high-performers and make their lives easier by giving them all the sales materials and support they need.
5.Incentivise your distributors
Consider offering discounts for bulk orders to motivate distributors to hold more stock.
You can also create a rewards program for distributors who hit certain sales numbers to motivate them to push more of your products.
6.Purge underperforming distributors to make space for new ones
Once or twice a year, cut off the distributors who aren’t delivering to make room for new ones. New distributors will usually come with new prospects.
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8 ways to help existing customers to buy more
1.Don’t save your special offers for Black Friday
You can run special offers to customers any day of the year. And your offers will get more cut through when everyone else isn’t running them as well.
2.Target a specific sector
Creating sector-specific campaigns is a surefire way to improve the performance of your marketing and get more leads from your key markets.
3.Review your case studies
Case studies are powerful sales tools that often gather dust or don’t get the creative attention they deserve.
Review and update your case studies, then send them to prospects in similar companies or industries. Also, video case studies are often easier to produce (in the days of Zoom) and tend to create more of an impact.
4.Ask your top customers for referrals / case studies
Customers will rarely offer to refer you to someone or be a case study. But people who really value your service will usually be happy to help out when asked.
5.Give your customers a referral
What goes around comes around. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. You get the picture...
6.Do more cross-selling and up-selling
Find opportunities to bundle your products or services together. Then analyse your sales data to find customers who have bought part of a bundle and might be interested in complementary products.
7.Check in on your customers
Marketers love to over complicate things. Sometimes the best route is to just give someone a call and see how they’re doing.
They might have been meaning to call you for months...
8.Just ask for the order
You miss 100% of the orders you don’t ask for. When in doubt, just ask. The worst they can do is say no.
Got a ‘quick win’ for new leads that we haven’t covered?
If you’ve got a top tip to add to this list, Contact us here we would love to hear your ideas.
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