With the shift in the digital buyers journey, marketing and sales have become more intertwined than ever before. Because of that shift, digital aptitude has become vital for modern sales reps.
Let’s set some ground rules first: Sales and Marketing need to agree on a common ground when it comes to customer data. This common ground should be your CRM platform, an integrated system for Sales to manage their customer relationships and for Marketing to automate campaigns and customer journeys. This means you can collect data from both sales and marketing, getting a complete picture of a prospect.
Once the common ground is agreed upon, Sales can take advantage of these three digital marketing tactics that can be extremely beneficial in maintaining relationships with customers to close more sales.
LEARN FROM THE CUSTOMERS DIGITAL BODY LANGUAGE
Have you ever gone on an interview without having researched the company or position beforehand? If you did, I bet you didn’t get very far. Landing a sale is very similar in that sense. A good sales rep does their research beforehand, effectively placing the product or service into the customer’s pain points. Modern selling has changed the expectations of today’s customers from what their sales relationships needs are.
Today’s buyers have access to a vast amount of information at their fingertips, which empowers them to be the drivers of the sale. They are able to compare features and prices from various companies without ever talking to a sales rep. When someone does decide to talk to a rep, they most likely have already engaged with your company’s content.
No one likes cold calls and the expectations for the sales rep have changed. A sales rep is expected to call with knowledge about the company and what the desired needs are. Any type of engagement such as attending a webinar, downloading a case study or seeing the rep at an event should be content the sales rep knows. This allows the sales rep to get straight to the point instead of “following up” or “checking in”.
Customers expect that you are “listening for signals” to make their experience flawless. So, take the few seconds to do your research and wow your customers with a personalized sales message showing them you understand their interest.
This digital body language, available in your CRM and is collected from your marketing automation software, is that valuable research that better prepares a sales rep for a call with a potential buyer or current customer. The exciting part about this, is that you don’t have to do anything but take a second to look at your customer’s data.
Knowing what the customer has been interacting with will:
- Allow you to have a more meaningful conversation
- Give you the ability to prioritize your leads and call schedule
- Eliminate those painful cold calls
- Save time otherwise wasted in educating someone on something they already know
- Help your bottom line
- Close more sales!
COLLECTING FEEDBACK CAN BE YOUR BEST SELLING POINT
Sending surveys is super simple and yields a tremendous amount of benefits. Collecting data on your performance can be extremely useful in understanding what you did well or what you can do to improve. Either way you win because you now understand how to close the next sale.
Taking this a step further, you can run a Net Promoter Score against yourself. A Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a framework with the intent to predict business growth and customer satisfaction. Satmetrix found a correlation between promoters with a higher score and spend. They also found that customers who are satisfied tend to spend more money because they believe they are getting a good value. These customers are also more likely to become repeat customers. On the other hand, if customers are in the middle, they can be swayed either to you or your competitor. This powerful information helps you prioritize.
Having an excellent NPS, is a selling point to new buyers. Informing them your score is a 9.8 means they will get the best possible service. It shows confidence and sets the scene from the beginning that you care about providing the best in class service.
Overall, there is a lot of useful information to gain from surveys which are easy to implement. It may the selling point as to why someone choose to go with you.
Questions to ask on your survey should be simple and straight forward. Stick to 2-3 question such as:
- Was I able to solve your problem?
- Were you satisfied with the service I provided?
- Was I able to answer all your questions?
- What could I have done better?
KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING
Staying in touch with your customers is easier than ever. LinkedIn is a great place to continue the conversation. A simple like or comment on their posts, keeps you at the top of their mind. Likewise, you can continue talking about your products and service using LinkedIn while reaching a much wider audience.
Before you start sharing content on LinkedIn, make sure your profile is optimized. It’s also important to make sure you aren’t just sending sales pitches via LinkedIn. Take the time to understand what would add value for your customers before making a post. Most people on LinkedIn are looking to grow their knowledge and network. If you post a link to look at your case study but fail to tell followers what makes that case study special, they will probably not click on it.
At the end of the day, the single most important part of social media posting is to ensure your content is valuable and informative!
Take a look at this step by step example of how to compose a good social media message:
- Start with telling the reader what this post is about and how it’s going to improve their life.
- Insert a killer image to capture the reader’s attention.
- Introduce your service or product and how it accomplished the above.
- Quick and simple pitch. Keep it short!
- Tell them what to do next.
- Bonus: if possible, add a personalized message to contact you.
Win and Grow Customer Relationships
The best news is that the above tips are easy to implement. Salesforce CRM and Pardot sync between in each other every two minutes, which means you can get your customer engagement data in real time. Most survey tools can also be configured to sync with your CRM, this will allow you to have all your data in one place.
The only new window you need to open is LinkedIn, and Pardot makes it easy to connect you’re your customers via social media because it helps map your customer to a LinkedIn or Twitter account. This feature enables you to connect to you customers from your CRM, saving you time. Once connected on LinkedIn, you’re ready to continue the conversation via your regular social media posting. Learn how you can get started with Salesforce Pardot today!