When to Use SMS & Whatsapp in Sales

Using text messages in sales is controversial topic. Many believe SMS is some kind of sacred method of communication that should only be used with friends and family.

But I think that is BS. The average open rate for an SMS is 95% compared to 20% for an email. Think about yourself? You receive hundreds of emails a day from colleagues and vendors, most of which you do not open, let alone reply to. When you receive an SMS? though, most of the time you read it.

You’ll notice I mention both SMS and Whatsapp. If you are selling internationally, something to consider is that most people in North America do not use Whatsapp, unless they have friends, family or colleagues abroad. Outside of the US and Canada however, Whatsapp is widely used and is another great channel to use.

You have to be careful about what situations you use SMS or Whatsapp in, so here I will outline situations in which it works well.

1 - Inbound Leads (contact us or demo requests)

When you receive an inbound lead and they have given you permission to contact their mobile, the first thing you should do is call them.

However, if they don’t pick up the phone, most people rely on email, instead of leveraging SMS, which has higher reply and open rates. Here is a template you can use:

“Jeff, this is Michael from Growth Genie. Noticed you are facing X challenge. How is 2-4pm today looking to discuss how (your company) can help you with that?”

For the challenge part here, check the notes on your CRM about why they got in contact.

2 - Content leads (webinars, ebooks etc.)

If someone gives you their mobile phone number when engaging with your marketing content, this is another instance in which you can use SMS or Whatsapp.

However, downloading an eBook doesn’t give you permission to pitch them. This is awareness content and most won’t be ready to buy. If you follow Chris Walker, you’ll know that the whole process of using eBooks to generate “marketing qualified leads”, and then pitching them your service is totally broken.

The reality is that most people register for a webinar but don’t even watch it, or download an ebook but only read a couple pages of it. I am certainly guilty of this myself.

So instead of “pitching” them, give them an interesting takeaway from the webinar or eBook. Imagine your marketing content is a film, then your takeaway is the trailer, which they can learn from. Here is an example:

“Jim, noticed you registered for the SDR onboarding webinar. A stat that stood out is that the average SDR ramp time has increased from 3 to 4 months. Interested in a playbook template to help onboard SDRs twice as quick?”

3 - Deals in your pipeline

The amount of salespeople that rely on email and scheduled calls to close deals, absolutely shocks me. We did an audit of our closed won deals recently, and 70% of them involved some type of SMS or whatsapp interactions.

Like with inbound leads, the first thing you should do is pick up the phone. But if they don’t answer, then send them a text.

You can establish that you will text them on the first call you have by stating, “a lot of C level people like yourself tell me that they get hundreds of emails a day, so prefer to be contacted by text or phone. How does that sit with you for our communication going forward?”

4 - Meeting Reminders

Texts are a great to reduce your no show rate on calls. One of our clients saw a 15% reduction in no show rates by sending a text 2 hours before their call along the lines of:

“John, look forward to discussing X challenge with you at 2pm EST today.”

5 - Customer Success & Account Management

It’s incredible that many companies don’t have the cellphone numbers of their customers. These are the people you should have the warmest relationships with. We use 10 types of software at Growth Genie, and not once has a customer success manager ever phoned or text me.

I receive emails from all of them but they are at the bottom of my priority list, behind our staff and our customers but if they were to call me, there are plenty of instances in which they could upsell me.

6 - Nurture Message?

Don’t have purely transactional relationships with your buyers. If you only ever talk about business with them, they will know you are only interested in their money. Some of you may like to have those types of buyer relationships but we prefer to create shared experiences at Growth Genie.

Instead send them useful content to show they you are a helpful sales person rather than someone who is solely interested in their money. Here is an example:

“Jeff, you mentioned your goal is to hire 5 new salespeople by the end of the quarter. I just sent you an email with 5 traits to look out for in interviews. Hope you enjoy”

Even though we are not a recruitment agency, I still send this to show we want to help them reach their goals with or without Growth Genie.

Interested in more SMS templates for sales? Feel free to DM me