To make effective use of lead generation, smart selling is important. After all, there is hardly any personal connection at that stage. Nothing is as effective as personal, face-to-face contact, but online communication via mail and social platforms is taking up an ever-increasing share of communication with prospects. Especially since the outbreak of the covid pandemic. If you want to make an impact, you had better make sure that this communication is as effective as possible.
In practice, errors in online communication lead to a sharp drop in response rates. What a waste! Because the less time you spend on finding prospects, the more attention you can give to your sales cycles.
Take your communication to a higher level
Of course, it can be better! So here are six tips to take your communication with prospects to the next level, and generate more successful leads:
Write from the perspective of your prospect
Don’t make yourself, your product or your company the main focus; that way, the customer recognises themselves in your message more quickly and you avoid resistance. This then looks as follows:
- Your post on LinkedIn made me think…
- Your remark in the LinkedIn Group about accessibility made a lot of sense to me…
- Sales managers regularly tell me that poor accessibility leads to missed sales opportunities…
Keep it short and simple.
When communicating with prospects, it is important to make a good first impression. That won’t happen if your message is complex or woolly. Therefore, express what you want to say in a simple, clear and powerful way. Just look at the examples below:
Complex: Our platform provides an innovative basis for excellent accessibility. With operating functions, user functions and user options, we offer the best fit for every situation.
Simple: Your employees always accessible via fixed and mobile numbers. If your internet connection is down due to a fault, your connection will switch directly to 4G and you will remain accessible. With a simple management portal, you have control over your accessibility.
Ask questions that lead to a concrete response
To get valuable prospects out of lead generation, you aim to enter into a dialogue with the potential customer. Your chance of success increases enormously if you ask questions that elicit a concrete response from your prospect:
Not
- I would like to hear what time suits you best.
- I am curious to know your reaction to the case studies.
- Do you think our platform can help you?
But rather
- What is a better time to talk to you, 9:00 or 13:30?
- Do you think the results described in the case studies will change your accessibility strategy?
- Are you currently working on improving the interaction with your customers?
Use bullet points in your communication with prospects
In communication with prospects, bullet points are very useful. After all, you want to entice your prospect to respond quickly. Bullet points help to provide a quick insight and overview. Be careful with the use of bullet points in quotes and proposals. Lists are not advisable, as they often consist of a list of challenges or benefits, in which respect the customer has to decide for himself which ones apply to him.
An example of how bullet points make a difference in readability:
Without bullet points
With bullet points
In daily practice, we see SMEs struggling with three major challenges:
- Low accessibility of field staff.
- Fast and correct routing of telephone calls.
- Lack of insight into calling behaviour and costs.
Limit a list to three points
People remember information better if it is limited to the smallest amount of data from which a pattern can be formed. A good example of this is a melody or a certain rhythm of music. From three or more notes, recognition and emotion are created. This is what you want to achieve with your prospect. Therefore, the rule of thumb for lists is to use no more than three bullet points.
Conclude with a clear call-to-action
Ineffective call-to-action
I would like to hear what you think of the case studies and to schedule a meeting to discuss them. I can also schedule time for a demo of our communication platform and introduce you to my technical colleague at the same time.
Effective call-to-action
I would like to schedule an appointment to show you how to achieve results similar to those in the case studies. How does 10:00 on 4 July work for you?
Small changes lead to successful lead generation
As you can see: small adjustments make a big difference to the effectiveness of your communication with prospects. Give your communication a makeover with these six tips and experience the change in response from your prospect.
Do you have any other tips for communication that helps sales to make an impact when generating leads? We would like to talk to you!