Each minute you wait to contact your prospects, the likelihood of turning them into a buying customer greatly decreases. So how do you successfully engage with them? By closely focusing on your specific buyer demographics, you can quickly build your list of prospects with the highest convertibility.
Here are 7 ways you can engage your prospects and improve your overall business strategy:
1. Creating buyer personas for key prospects
Before attempting contact, research and collect information about your prospects, like their challenges, pain points, influences, goals, etc. With this information, you can start creating buyer personas (your ideal customer based on real data from your current customers). Once you’ve created your ‘ideal customer’, you can gain valuable insight into how your prospects interact with your company, website, and/or brand. By tracking their journey, you’ll know exactly what led them to your business and the best methods for appealing to their customer needs.
2. Keep track of different communication channels
It’s critical to establish a great user experience when trying to convince your prospects to invest in your product or services. Pay attention to how they interact with your website and monitor various communication channels like LinkedIn, Intercom, Gmail, etc. To track prospect interactions, utilize a CRM system to access relevant insights on them. This allows you to engage your prospects with personalized messages, showing them you took the time to understand their needs, rather than sending out a generic, automated message.
3. Find your prospect’s pain point
A pain point addresses a specific problem that potential customers of your business are experiencing. Plain and simple, pain points are problems. The goal is to provide your prospects with solutions, based on their personal pain points. Start by creating a list of factors that may affect their business and read through their customer reviews. Another way of identifying pain points is by exploring different social media sites to gain a better understanding of their target market and the particular problems they are experiencing.
4. Persistence is critical for engagement
When a prospect is identified, make your sales call within the first minute. If you fail to achieve contact, wait 30-60 minutes before making a second attempt. As the contact attempts grow, the likelihood of converting a lead decreases. However, there are ways around this. Alternate between your various communication channels. Some people will not answer an unknown number and feel more comfortable communicating through email messages or live chats. The more communication channels you have available, the likelihood to engage your prospects greatly increases.
5. Appeal to them personally
With so many companies trying to get your prospect’s attention, how do you stand out? A useful strategy is to message your prospect in a similar way you would contact a family member or close friend. Simply put, make it personal. Try adding their name into the subject line and use valuable information that you know would appeal to them. Here are some examples:
“Jane, here is your A to Z business management guide (free PDF)”
“John, create analytical reports that keep clients paying (3 simple steps!)”
Appeal to them personally by using their name and address their customer need with the information you previously gathered. With tools like Boomerang for Gmail, you can automatically receive notifications every time your emails are opened and when links within the email are clicked.
6. Engaging prospects with questions
A great strategy to engage your prospects is by asking them questions to gauge their level of interest in your product or service. At the start of a sales call, your prospect will have the upper hand; you want their investment and they may not want your services. Your goal, as a sales rep, is to convince them that your product/service is the solution. To discover their customer pain point, ask them questions about their needs, company, challenges, and soon you will have the advantage. Your thoughtful inquiries will show your prospects that you are trying to precisely identify their problem so you can provide the best solution to suit their needs.
Want some suggestions for open-ended questions to ask your prospects? Check out
The Sales Engagement Guide for some great examples!
7. The power of new information
Your prospects are more willing to respond to your emails and/or follow-up calls if they believe you have new or valuable information. Start the conversation by sharing important insights, not available on your website. If they can easily access everything about your business online, why repeat something they may know? By creating multiple publications of the same information (surveys, guides, white papers) you can provide ‘new’ information to your prospects. Keep in mind, people are diverse and will want to get your information from different sources.
Conclusion
Communication channels present potential customers with more information each day. So it’s important to make a memorable impression and stand out amongst competitors. User interface designs can affect our ability to focus, so a simple phone call is just as effective to engage your prospects. The sooner you make contact, appeal to them personally, and provide them with valuable information, you’ll have a greater chance of converting prospects into buying customers.
