Olivia Atkinson
As people are returning to work and a sense of normality returns, you might need to re-access the way you sell whilst bouncing back. Your business might have triumphed during this crisis or been at it’s lowest depending on the sector you provide to.
Below are a few tips on how you can change the way you sell for the better, creating a structured approach that has direction rather than second guessing what’s working and who’s engaging.
Helping Is Selling
This is something we advocate regardless of the situation but can be a big plus now when people might have more time than usual to research products and services.
Producing educational content about your products lets people come to you rather than reaching out to people that aren’t interested.
When there’s a lot of players in the game, which there are in the building products sector, people don’t want to be sold to. They want to do their own research on the internet in their own time, considering which business best aligns with their needs.
Having content that is free for people to download and datasheets to hand can really help people move along the buyer’s journey at their own pace. If they’re doing their research at half 8 night and the information, they need isn’t readily available on your website, they’ll simply go elsewhere.
It’s as simple as that, if you’re not first, you’re last.
Download Our Essential Guide To Content Marketing
Segment Your Audience
It’s easy to think that a lot of people are your ‘audience’ and continuing to send the same one email to 2000 contacts. However, you’re really missing a trick and likely becoming irrelevant to a large proportion of those people.
By segmenting your contacts in any way that makes the most sense to your business, sectors, job roles, project timeline etc. you can then send a really specific message to that audience that’s more likely to resonate, rather than hitting unsubscribe.
There is no cost to this, it just takes your own time of filtering of your contacts to create groups and lists. HubSpot is a free CRM that you can use that lets you create lists for free, as well as email marketing and a bunch of other things.
See How To Use A Free CRM System To Bounce Back Smarter
It’s essential to have your contacts cleaned and filed correctly with the correct job role title, buyer persons and so on. This makes your segmentation process effortless.
Go Digital
It’s interesting to see that when companies have no other choice, they realise just how important their website is and how it represents them. For example, companies that relied on word of mouth and trade shows before this pandemic would have really felt the pressures of lead generation during this time and even now.
Your website is your 24 hours a day salesperson, they can’t be furloughed, call in sick and never clock off. So, it should be set up to convert your users into customers and be creating leads for you weekly if not daily. It should be a lead generation machine.
Your website is the face of your company, it’s the first thing many people will look at when wanting to find out more. If it’s outdated with its look, navigation, content, and pictures, then you’re not giving your potential prospects a very good impression.
Not only that, but you’re most likely missing out on a whole new audience that are looking for a company like yours to solve their problem, but your website’s on page 6 so they don’t know you exist.
Think about your own internet searching experience, if you can’t find what you want on page one, maybe page 2 if your feeling patient, what do you do?
You change your search term to be more specific, you don’t keep clicking next till you get to page 6. This is exactly what your potential customers are doing, so unless you’re on page one, your chance of getting net new customers from the internet is extremely slim.
Use Data To Define Your Plan
When there’s no direction or clear plan, then look at the facts. Numbers don’t lie, so investigate them in detail to get a clear understanding of where you stand now, what’s working, what’s not. Then you can change the way you approach the things that aren’t working and do more of what is working.
Every single business will have different data and different tactics that are working for them right now, so you need to get as much data as possible, not only from your website, but your sales pipeline, how many meetings and calls your sales team are having and how they’re converting to business.
Conclusion
It’s clear that companies are focused on sales now, businesses and jobs are vulnerable, and nobody knows how quick it’s going to turn around. Although, this shouldn’t overrule that the best way to sell is to help people learn more about your solution and educate people.
When people can educate themselves on your product, they feel more in control of the buying decision and are more inclined to buy.
Targeting your audience in groups is a no brainer, even the slightest of changes on an email for example, can increase open rates and click throughs because the main header on the email says ‘THIS IS REALLY RELEVANT TO YOU’ not literally… but you get the idea. Email marketing is free so there is no additional cost on sending 3 different emails rather than one.
Only now, once businesses have been forced to embrace digital are companies realising how important their websites are. Now is the time to redo your website, get the technical SEO right, get relevant content on the website and up to date case studies. Your website should be updated regularly and continuously not every 3 years.
Use your stats, it’s concerning how many people aren’t measuring the calls, meetings, site visits/assessment, sample tests and more in relation to their sales pipeline. If you have not data on what’s working, how can you do more of it to grow?
If you need support or guidance on your website, your strategy, how to get a healthy contact database, creating content and more, then don’t hesitate to get in touch. We help companies within the building products sector with a little or a lot, depending on what you want support with. Check out our case studies page to see how we work.
If you enjoyed reading this blog, then check out the rest of the blogs in our Bouncing Back series:
- Bouncing Back With Content Marketing
- Bouncing Back: How To Build your Tech Stack
- Bouncing Back: How To Reach Your Audience
- How To Use Free CRM Software To Bounce Back Smarter
- How To Bounce Back Using Social Media
- Bouncing Back: Reviewing Which Tactics Work Best Now
About Insynth
Insynth Marketing is a leading UK construction marketing agency based in Shifnal in the West Midlands.
They use the latest inbound marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to support building product companies to grow their business by proactively driving sales lead generation activity.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major on construction marketing, we bring together construction marketing strategy, digital strategy, website design, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, sales automation, marketing automation and HubSpot CRM implementation to produce successful campaigns and great results for our clients.