Imagine all the revenue you could bring in with an everlasting sales pipeline?
Well, to make that happen you’ve got to have a plan. Sales are well known for coming up with cunning plans and to get your sales pipeline consistently delivering, you need to focus on three main areas – fresh data, keeping prospects interested (..or as Marketing call it, lead nurturing) and holding onto existing customers ( …or as Marketing call it, customer retention). Let’s take a quick look at each of these:
Fresh Data
In sales, we all know the kind of data that works. Some people call it cherry-picking but savvy salespeople call it using your ‘nouse’. The fact is, the more data that you can identify which you know has a good chance of converting into a sale, the more your pipeline will be productive. So, whether it’s a prospect that’s filled in a landing page, asked for more information through social media or responded positively to a piece of email marketing; if it works, then you want more of the same. Let Marketing know what marketing activity is working best (they’ll thank you for it) and encourage them that you’d like more of it. It may be specific industries that Marketing is targeting or particular company profiles they are looking at. Whatever the criteria, analyse the leads you convert the most, see if there’s a pattern and let Marketing benefit from your feedback so that they can find more for you. It’s not rocket science!
Nurturing Leads
Just because a prospect says not now, it doesn’t mean never. As salespeople, we know when we speak to a customer if they’re genuinely interested or not. We’ve also got an instinct for when they may be wavering and with a bit of looking after and more information, they may come around. So, with that in mind, you need to think through how you’re going to keep them interested and what type of information they’re going to need that might sway their decision. Once again, speak to Marketing about the best way of doing this. You don’t want to be bombarding them with phone calls and emails, so you need to develop a process with Marketing that helps to maintain the relationship with the potential customer without stalking them. If you do the latter, they’ll more than likely opt-out of communications and then it’s really hard to get them back. Sometimes less is more in this type of scenario so think through your strategy.
Customer Retention
We all know that holding on to your existing customers is a lot less hassle than getting new ones, and more cost-effective too. However, it’s amazing how many organisations fail to fully appreciate this fundamental fact and constantly find themselves in this cycle of in one door and out through the other. Any good sales operation will know that once you’ve got a customer onboard you need to keep them happy and find good reasons to maintain a meaningful dialogue with them. It’s all about taking an interest in them and providing decent customer service. Work alongside your Marketing and Operations teams to make sure that this happens. Customers will stay onboard if there’s good after-sales service and if Marketing can provide them with personalised and relevant marketing messages from time to time (not bombarding them) you may also be able to up-sell them.
Get the balance right
At the end of the day, if you keep your customers happy they become your best ambassadors. They will tell all their clients, suppliers and contacts about how good you are and the whole thing becomes a virtuous circle.
So, to finish up, if you get the balance right on the above three areas, an everlasting pipeline can become a reality, rather than a pipedream!
