Whether it’s Google, Westpac, or an independent financial planning outfit, the aim of any marketing activity is to drive up sales, which is also known as “lead generation.”
Not exactly, rocket science. However, the trick is that once your marketing activity is in motion, how do you manage customer leads, and keep them rolling in? In my book, lead conversion involves understanding the customer journey, utilising some automation tool for recruitment and retention, and by investing in a suitable customer relationship management (CRM) tool.
1. Understanding your sales funnel
To appreciate the lead conversion process, you must first identify where a prospect or client sits in relation to the buying cycle or “sales funnel”. To this end, many marketers agree there are five broad stages customers can reach as they travel along your sales funnel, including:
1. Awareness: the “awareness” your business exists may come through a referral or by your own marketing activities
2. Education: teaching the prospective clients about your services, and how it can solve a pain point for them
3. Preference: the prospective client evaluates you, and whether you’re the right fit for them and their finances
4. Purchase: They have the information about your advice and products, now it’s decision time. This is where many businesses come unstuck – how do you close out a client?
5. Retention: The on-boarding process for a new client is very important. This the first step in the process of re-signing customers. How will you maintain the relationship?
Understanding where each of your prospects and clients sits within the funnel is a topic for a future blogs. For now, we will look at how you can automate the customer journey through the funnel, from awareness to retention.
2. Automating the process
Online assets such as eDMs, websites, and social platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are increasingly critical to the marketing strategies of many small and medium businesses (SMBs). Moreover, the plethora of digital assets makes it simpler to automate sales campaigns. Using a tool such as Mailchimp, for example, to automate the sales process is an enormous time saver. In fact, a recent study showed that sales people only spend 22 per cent of their time selling, compared with 23 per cent of their time doing administration. That’s crazy.
For your business, let’s assume you’ve got a target database of potential clients and you set up an email EDM campaign focused on presenting some useful EOFY strategies – and then someone responds. Then it’s a case of what happens next? It’s the “what happens next”, which is crucial and where many businesses fall down. You need to map out the customer journey along the sales funnel, and give them the right call to action (CTA) to engage them and keep them in the funnel. At the same time, automating the frequency and delivery of an EDM can ensure you stay in regular contact right through the sales funnel. If in doubt, it can always pay to talk to an expert
3. Invest in CRMs
Most SMEs (small to medium enterprises) try to manage their sales process on a spreadsheet, which is never a great idea. There are ample cloud-based CRMs available today, targeting SMEs such as Insightly and Hubspot. An appropriate CRM will add more rigour to your sales process, as it can be integrated with other systems such as your accounting package, marketing platforms like Mailchimp and online tools such as your website. Think of a CRM as the glue sticking your sales and marketing efforts together. The benefits can be enormous, with a recent report suggesting that for every $1 spent on a suitable CRM, a business can produce a whopping $8.71 return.
I bet that caught your attention! At the end of the day, understanding your sales funnel is crucial to customer retention and business success. That said, there’s no single tried and true method, but if you follow some simple steps, you can really strengthen your sales efforts.
