Could I be making more money communicating with my clients in another way? If there’s one thing I learned during the more than five years I’ve worked in the sales department of a multinational company, it’s that this question matters a lot if you want to make your business grow.
Not all clients respond in the same way. Their reaction depends a lot on the stage of purchase they are in, but also on the channel we use to communicate and the level of trust we give them.
Knowing when to make a first direct contact, whether by phone call, email, or WhatsApp message, can make all the difference between closing a sale or “burning” a contact. When we approach without having created a proper context and without information about their needs, we are likely to miss the opportunity.
At Workana we want your business to evolve. That’s why today we’ll explain how an assertive client communication strategy can make you business and your sales grow. Plus, how you can use the experience of thousands of freelancers to set it up and running.
Awareness and personalization: the two keys to success for the first contact
To determine which is the best channel and the best time to make first direct contact, it is necessary to take the context into account and consider two relevant factors: the level of awareness and the degree of personalization.
By the way, when we talk about “first direct contact” we mean the first step you, as a company, take to get closer to a particular prospect.
Awareness at first contact
It refers to a potential client’s awareness of your brand. If your name sounds familiar because you’ve seen it in the media, any of your attempts of contact are more likely to be successful simply because it creates more confidence.
Surely you’ve also sent an email directly to the SPAM folder, without opening it, or you’ve hung up a call because the name of the company that wants to contact you doesn’t ring a bell at all.
You did a simple calculation in your head: the chances that such information would be useful to you vs. the chances that it was a fraud, or simply that reading or listening to it would take valuable time. Since you had no information about the company, your automatic reaction was to avoid the risk and get rid of it. The same goes for your potential clients.
When there is no brand awareness in your potential client, you have a small additional % chance of being heard when you opt for a first phone contact. But, on the other hand, it would take you much longer to reach a considerable number of prospects than if you did it by e-mail marketing.
In conclusion, no contact strategy will be really effective if you have not been concerned about building awareness in your niche market before. To achieve this you need to amalgamate your direct sales actions with integral actions of traditional, but above all digital, advertising.
At Workana, we have hundreds of digital MKT experts who will help you develop an online strategy to ensure you reach your sales goals.
Personalization at first contact
The personalization can be summarized in four words: “know your client”. Your chances of generating interest, trust and conversions on the first try increase in direct proportion to the information you have about your contact.
In the past, companies used to buy databases and browse them “blindly”, relying on the intuitive and verbal agility of their sales agents. Nowadays this is unthinkable because we have inbound marketing tools that allow us to gather a lot of information, as well as explicit permission, before venturing into the first contact.
It all starts with content marketing, which allows you to attract prospects to your site or social networks and motivate them to leave you their data. This simple action allows you to generate leads and databases that are much more efficient because they are sectored. You can also apply big data techniques to collect strategic data.
Many of our professional freelancers specialize in persuasive content marketing, and can work hand in hand with your digital MKT manager. If you want to climb to a more ambitious level, we recommend that you also look for a big data specialist to evaluate the behaviour and needs of your audience.
Why is it important to build a lead base?
The search for clients, regardless of the channel, can be done on cold leads, which is the “traditional” method of sales, or on leads: much more segmented contacts that are obtained mainly with digital marketing strategies. The differences between them are very significant:
As you can see, it is no surprise that the cold prospecting technique is being forgotten.
Maybe you’re still using it and you’re likely to get some sales, but maybe it’s a good idea to project what results you’d be getting if you put all those resources and effort into creating a lead base and working on it.
By changing the way you get your prospects, you greatly increase the chances of closure in each of your contact efforts, regardless of whether it’s by phone or e-mail. This means you can grow your business exponentially using the same investment as always, or even less.
Remember that at Workana you can also find remote sales agents to land and capitalize on the work you’ve done with your digital marketing.
Some useful tips:
-The best time to contact your clients by phone is in the afternoon, when most of them have already taken out their urgent earrings for the day, as well as the last days of the week.
-The best time to contact your customer by email is during the first and last hours of the working day, even at night. If you send an email at noon, your prospect is more likely to discard it.
– Avoid contacting your customers on days with a heavy administrative burden, or hours before the weekend or a bank holiday.
Remember that the channel preferences and contact times of the individual buyers of each company are different, so, although there are some general tips, the best thing for you will be to do several tests with different methods. Then, make a statistical analysis of which worked best and apply modifications to a continuous improvement scheme.
Don’t forget that if you ask, you will get there. What if you ask your clients how they prefer to be contacted? Give them several options. It’ll make it harder for them to say no.
Conclusion
As you can see, communicating assertively with your clients is more complex than simply determining what time you contact them, or if you call or email them. There are many factors involved and the sales process ideally starts long before the first contacts. To unify your efforts towards the same goal, a comprehensive MKT and sales strategy is needed.
It’s an important, absorbing and demanding job, but it’s essential if you want your business to continue to scale and stay competitive. There are many things you can do yourself, but it is not a good idea to try to cover them all, so it is best to form a remote working team.
