Are You Leaving Potential Customers On The Table? How To Implement Sales & Marketing Automation
When I analyze the current situation of my clients, I often notice the same patterns when it comes to the sales and marketing processes.
In some cases, they’re aware that they could do better and together we draw the map to achieve their goals.
In other cases, they’re completely unaware of the waste of opportunities and I support them in understanding how they can improve.
To understand if you’re making the most out of your Sales & Marketing Automation, you need to ask yourself the following questions:
- Is your website engineered to capture leads? It has to be a lead generation machine and not only an online brochure!
- Do you have an automated follow-up that is customized to the lead’s pain points, goals and desires?
- Do you have a system that qualifies and prioritizes those leads?
- Do you have a systemized sales process that your team follows to convert leads into customers?
If you don’t answer “Yes” to all of these questions, you’re leaving potential customers on the table!
1. Your website needs to be engineered to generate leads
When I say “engineered” I mean that leads visiting your website are hooked by your compelling content and effective CTAs and decide to give their contact details in exchange for content that is valuable for them.
How do you do that?
You need to map out the fears, problems, desires and goals of your target, only by doing that you can know what content you should create and what CTAs you need to put.
It may sound obvious, but A LOT of businesses don’t have all of that.
They just have an online brochure that showcases the services and that’s it.
2. You need to implement automated follow-up sequences that are customized
After a lead signs up for a webinar or downloads a PDF guide, for example, you need to send automated sequences of emails in order to nurture the lead.
When I say “customized” I mean that it must be coherent with what the lead signed up for or downloaded. If you have different lead magnets on your website, you need to create different follow-up sequences.
You need to create that content to nurture the lead and address the typical questions and doubts that the lead has.
To simplify the concept, we can say that the follow-up sequence is basically a sales page divided into many emails and the goal of them is to increase the level of awareness, resolve objections and answer the FAQs.
3. You need to have a system that qualifies and prioritizes the leads
Now you have more leads and opportunities to manage on a monthly basis.
How can you prioritize and qualify those opportunities so your sales team can have an efficient use of its time?
You can do so by implementing the following things:
- Lead scoring: it’s a points system with which you can assign a certain amount of points when a contact takes a specific action. The more points a lead has, the more likely it is that he/she will buy from you. Examples of actions are visiting your pricing page, opening specific emails, clicking on the links etc…
- Automations: define a threshold and set up automations that add the lead to the pipeline when the conditions are met. You can also decide how those leads are assigned to reps and prioritize them based on lead scoring and other criteria.
This is something that you need to decide internally: talk to your sales team and understand what are the most important actions your leads take and define what is the amount of points where the lead can be considered qualified.
After that, you can add the lead to the pipeline and assign it to the right rep.
4. You need to have a systemized sales process that your team can follow to convert leads into customers
Now we are talking about sales automation: after you generate leads and assign them to your team, reps have to efficiently manage those opportunities.
To do so, you need to have a systemized process that your team can follow to convert those leads into customers.
You need to focus on the following things:
- Clearly define the stages of the pipeline (phases your leads have to go through).
- Clearly define the tasks that your sales team has to perform.
- Every salesman needs to know exactly what to do and there must be clarity across your team members.
If you don’t have all of this, you are leaving potential customers on the table!
You are basically pouring gasoline into a tank that has holes: you are wasting money and missing opportunities.
Outsourcing the implementation could be a good idea for your business.
In the last few years, I helped several SMEs to make the most out of Business Automation through digital project management services.
If you want to learn more, download the Business Automation guide with the 5 phases I follow:
Or fill out the application form to work with me:
