Traditional businesses need to change the way on how they do SALES
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If you are a millennial, this topic might seem obvious to you. But if you have gone through sales in organisations, then you know how it works.
There are sales teams who cold call and cold email a bunch of clients, they get in touch with a few of the responders and they try to make a sale.
When you thought of a business and the way they sold, you thought of something like this. Currently these strategies are still being used with different levels of success that depends on the the target market and various other factors. But will this continue to be the way in the foreseeable future?
Definitely not.
THE WAY BUSINESS SHOULD WORK…
Sales is going through a Transformation
Data is the new gold. And customers have access to all the information they need. If somebody wants to know more about a restaurant that they’ve never visited or heard of, they go to Yelp and within five minutes know what the top selling dishes to have and what to avoid.
They are well informed BEFORE they enter the premises, before the restaurant even has an opportunity to take care of them and treat them right. This is the current scenario of other businesses as well.
Before a customer even visits your company’s website, they’ve gone through
- 4 blog posts on best tools for the category they are looking for
- Reviews on Capterra, G2Crowd
- Latest conversations with customers on Twitter
- Reviews on Facebook
- Tutorials on Youtube
Before you even have a chance, they’ve judged you. If the reviews are positive, then you will get a visitor. If not, you’ve already lost a potential customer without you knowing it.
Controlling the Source
Understanding that users will come to you is key. Once you understand this, you’ll be prepared for the next stage of marketing efforts.
Inbound isn’t doing just one thing. It’s doing a host of things. Here are a few examples that we’ll get into
Creating strong powerful content and engaging in various channels
- Quora
- Your own Blog
- Email Newsletters
- Youtube Videos
Quora
Quora is a top class lead generation platform because of the demographics of people who use the site.
As it was started in Silicon Valley, the first customers were Silicon Valley elites and they brought in their friends who were CEOs and top executives of organizations. Seeing these influencers, a lot of smaller businesses joined in as well.
How do people use Quora
Understanding the way consume Quora is key. It’s become a sort of a social network where people browse during their free time or their breaks. They don’t have the time to read long answers.
Type of Questions
Quora has a few type of questions that require short nuggets of wisdom. Here is an example “What are the best B2B lead generation strategies?”
A question like this doesn’t ask for something specific, but something generic. A perfect example to pitch a business.
So to succeed, you need to write
- Short answers with bullets
- Add images to attract attention
- Provide immediate value, without any long-drawn explanation
- Add a step by step process on executing a strategy that includes your product, that doesn’t come across as spammy
Here is an example.
This is just one type of question. But quora offers many opportunities with different type of Questions. The best part?
You can answer 1000’s of questions and drive high quality traffic to your site.
On the face of it, you might ask. Facebook, really?
Facebook has designed it’s platform in such a way that it’s product can be used by all types of people. For business and personal.
Most people use Facebook to post images or look at their friends pictures and engage in conversations. But a fringe group of business people are starting to use Facebook purely for business. How?
Facebook groups.
Facebook groups dedicated to different facets of business are gaining in popularity. Business people have figured out, that a highly engaged Facebook group is gold for future business.
So let me give you an example…
SAAS Growth Hacks is a popular Facebook group for Saas
Say I run a SAAS B2B company that focuses on finding email leads for businesses. I’ll start a facebook group dedicated to Cold Email marketing.
I’ll share best practises, show examples of successful campaigns. Do’s and Don’ts. While I add value to the group, I’ll also promote my product. This does two things
- Brings in new people who want to succeed with cold emailing
- Retains existing people and continue to help them succeed with cold emailing
Facebook also has become a habit. People log-in by default to this platform and this is what makes it a great Inbound channel for your business.
Own Blog
Having content on your site is the number one way to get Inbound leads. You post relevant high quality content that adheres to google’s rules and best practices and make the content piece rank high. People search on google for relevant solutions to their problem, find your content and engage with your site.
In a nutshell, this is how it’s done. But there are many ranking factors like
- Wordcount
- Time Spent on the page
- Number of backlinks to the post
- Number of social shares
After getting all these factors right and when you drive traffic to your site, you need to optimize your site to collect relevant leads. This is done through a process called Conversion Optimization. You set up tools like the ones mentioned below to get users to convert.
Leads generated from these tools create a pipeline for your team.
Youtube
Video is the hottest mode of content consumption. Shy bloggers all over the world are scampering towards making videos because of its potential and reach.
It’s faster to consume as more can be expressed with lesser time. It also works exceedingly well in a world where attention spans are plummeting.
Posting relevant videos on Youtube can bring a different set of audience who rely ONLY on video content. Believe it or not, a lot of people don’t enjoy reading and like to consume their content through the video form.
This brings in awareness and traffic to your brand.
Recent graphical video by Novatise.
Linkedin in it’s earlier forms was a networking site with a few HR folk spamming candidates. But with recent changes in their feed, it’s become a platform to build personal brands and form authority in a niche.
Linkedin is a very unique channel because of it’s direct access to professional clients. A lot more non-tech savvy but important decision makers use Linkedin extensively compared to other channels like Facebook.
With the ‘Follow’ feature, you can gather an audience and become a subject matter expert in a niche that attracts customers to your business.
To Conclude
Businesses need to change the way they play the game. Old Sales Techniques are not going to cut it anymore. If you are only focused on Outbound, sooner or later you will be called a spammer.
Check out our inbound lead gen services by applying SEO.
Read also: Lead Generated using Social Media
