After carrying out an effective marketing campaign, you now have new leads that you hope will result in sales. For you to keep expanding and succeeding, you need to create an outreach strategy to keep in touch with your leads and keep your sales pipeline full.
Your capacity to strategically and successfully follow up on those leads depends on whether you follow up consistently without being too aggressive or you don’t bother checking up on them.
Before reaching out to your prospective leads, you need to know the communication channel they prefer and note the kind of business they are involved in.
Best Practices to Follow When Contacting a Lead
- Segment your leads
As stated earlier, some of your leads might not like a particular communication channel. This is where putting your leads in different groups comes in.
Also, there should be a communication strategy that depends on how ready a lead is to make a sale.
For example, a lead that follows your Facebook account and signs up for a newsletter and the one who uses your website’s “contact me” form are at different levels and their communication strategy should be different.
- Communication methods should be personalized
When contacting a lead, it is always advisable to personalize the messages you send them. You can do this by adding their names when sending a general message or replying to them personally when they ask a question in a general channel.
- Make use of different communication channels
You might have no idea about the communication channel a lead prefers but there are several options like social media, email, and phone calls you can use to connect with potential clients.
This doesn’t mean that you reach out to them using all those channels rather test run a communication channel and see how they respond.
Some communication channels you can try out include;
- Emails
This channel serves as an excellent way for introducing your value proposition to potential leads. You need to convey your message effectively and in a manner that makes them interested. Emails are a great way to get your prospects acquainted with your value proposition.
- Phone
Phone calls are an essential part of the sales process because it is one of the major ways of building trust. However, you might not get the level of responsiveness you got from using an email channel because what your lead sees is a foreign number disturbing them.
Make sure you prepare ahead of the call to save time. Following up after each call is also important.
- Social Media
It’s the increasing popularity of social media, another way to contact a lead is via social media. Although this is not formally advisable, It demonstrates your business and social savvy. After contacting a lead via any social media platform, you can ask them about the kind of communication channel they prefer.
- Track your communication
Tracking your communication with prospective leads is as important as contacting them. You need to know how well you are doing and whether your communication strategy is working well. For example, if you use a CRM (contact/customer relation management) system, it allows you to keep a record of all customer outreach and the results of those communications.
However, if you don’t use one, you can make use of Excel to track your communication by taking note of your lead’s name, contact, and any relevant information.
- Always follow up
Remember, for you to successfully turn a lead into a sale, you need to be consistent about how you reach out to them. You can do this by creating a schedule to know when to reach out to them. Your aim should be to make sure your leads keep you at the top of their minds. However, this does not mean you should be aggressive about it so you won’t be identified as a nuisance.
Staying in touch with your leads is all about sticking with them without getting on their bad side. Your goal should be to build trust and not convince them to buy, but rather to be there when they’re ready to buy.