In the Beginning... There was Email

It’s almost impossible to get through an entire day without accessing some sort of social media site (usually within the first 30 minutes of waking if you’re like most). LinkedIn is one of the first things I pull up in the morning when I get to the office, and I bet a lot of you are the same way. Out of every few articles I read on sales and sales strategies, at least one of them has to do with how to utilize social selling through LinkedIn, Facebook, or other social media. There are 1,000 different ways to get the most out of social media when selling; as Gary V says, social media and the internet is all about attention and that’s what we as salespeople want: ATTENTION. Through social media channels we’ve been able to become much more targeted in our advertising and can see a much higher return on investment than we would through traditional marketing channels. Not only do we see higher ROI, but it’s much easier to track where leads are coming from. Instead of the traditional way of marketing, which basically consists of screaming your message through a megaphone at people who may not even be qualified to buy (television, print, radio, etc.), social media allows us to be extremely targeted in who we go after in our sales solicitation.

With the popularity of social media, it makes 100% sense that we, as businesses, should be on these platforms; generating content, writing blogs, responding to prospects’ questions, and providing value to our readers. But by no means should this be our only lead generating activity. I would argue that there are a couple other avenues we need to exhaust before pouring advertising dollars into social media ads, influencer marketing, and marketing videos. By becoming proficient in other sales areas and building a scalable model for sales solicitation, you will be able to focus more on your social media strategy in the future. Reason being is you’ll be generating leads through other avenues while you learn how best to utilize social media for your business. If you’re not bringing money in through other sales channels, there’s no money to put into social media, right?

One area I’ve seen tremendous success in is email (not to mention it’s the least costly method of lead generation). Did you know that salespeople spend up to 21% of their working day sending and responding to emails? This keeps them from doing the things that are most valuable for your company; getting out in front of customers and actually selling. By utilizing email templates and building targeted campaigns you can drastically cut down on the time your sales people spend writing and responding to emails. I’ve seen the most success by using HubSpot sequences. When using the HubSpot sequences tool, you’re able to enroll contacts in your business development campaigns with ease. Currently, you can send up to 5 targeted emails to a prospect through HubSpot sequences while only having to enroll them once. One of my favorite things to do is build a series of emails that goes to the prospect at predetermined intervals. For example; the first email they get will be along the lines of:

“From my information, you appear to be the correct person to speak with regarding ‘x,y,z’ service. If not, would you mind pointing me in the right direction?”

One crucial piece of utilizing any sort of email template is collecting useful information on your prospect before reaching out. You can do this a lot of different ways such as lead databases, call centers, and obviously by searching their website and social media. As soon as you have information on them, be sure to enter it into your CRM; your email campaigns are only as good as the information you have on your prospect. A few of the contact “tokens” I like to use in my emails are name, company name, industry, renewal dates, and obviously email addresses.

To be even more targeted in your messaging, I’ve found it extremely helpful to build out different email campaigns based on the industry the prospect operates in. For example: if I know a prospect is in the manufacturing industry, they get the “manufacturing industry campaign.” This will allow you to talk in much greater detail about the issues and opportunities facing that specific industry. One of the first things I’ll hit on for our manufacturing is job costing because this seems to be a common thread through most manufacturing clients I work with. It will likely be different for wording you, but by aligning your campaign with your prospect’s needs, you’ll see much better response rates. Bonus thought: don’t be too wordy in your emails; the more concise, the better.

After they receive the first email, 3-5 days later they’ll get the second email that dives a little bit deeper into how we’ve been able to help others in the manufacturing industry by tracking employee hours and time spent on specific tasks within production. By utilizing an up to date time tracking system, you’re able to see where any bottlenecks might be in your production process. It also allows the manager to see how many resources are dedicated to a certain action. Instead of sending generic emails, take a little more time to build out industry specific material; it’ll pay off in the long run. Prospects will be much more likely to read your emails if it speaks to certain issues they’re facing in their industry. Touch on their pain points, and you’re much more likely to get a response.

Instead of just sending the same type of email with the same, repackaged information as the first, in the second email I really like to build on the first email with some sort of story. One of my favorite campaigns we’ve run so far is what I call our “client testimonial campaign.” Through this series of 5 emails, we crafted a story that unfolds with each subsequent email. People want to hear stories more than statistics, and stories are much easier for them to remember. In our client testimonial campaign, we tell the story of a client that left us after 6 years of doing business together. In this second email, I talked about how this client left us for perceived “greener pastures” but within 3 months came running back to us because of our outstanding customer service and support in comparison to our larger, national competitors. By being honest and transparent in your messaging, you build incredible trust with your prospects. In a marketing world where all you hear are the positives, it’s a breath of fresh air when a salesperson is honest and transparent.

The second sales activity that is crucial to implement into your sales strategy is phone calls. Calls are equally as important as emails and should absolutely be a part of your outreach efforts. If you hear someone out there say “cold calling is dead,” stop reading their material because they’re absolutely delusional.

Quick shout out to the best inside sales rep I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, Craig Cox! This guy is a beast on the phone and hands down has one of the best speaking voices I’ve ever heard!

By coupling our email campaigns with targeted phone calls, we’ve seen a huge increase in the amount of leads coming in. To generate even more pipeline activity, we’ve begun to put a little more time in between our emails and let Craig call those prospects to have a second, different touch point. If you can reference back to other times you’ve reached out to them (such as via email) the phone call becomes a little warmer and the likelihood of getting someone on the phone goes up if they’ve seen your name before. It also caters to that prospect’s communication style; some people like emails and others like calls. Why not utilize both in combination to generate more leads?

Once you’ve set up a solid, repeatable, and scalable sales process for your team, then you can start diving into social media and reap the rewards of social campaigns. By generating leads through these two avenues, you’re able to have a consistent funnel of leads coming in while you’re testing out your social media marketing and fine-tuning your messaging to prospects. Here’s to a successful 2018 to all my sales hustlers out there!

If you found this post helpful, please let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear any ideas you have around lead generation.

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