There comes a time in every successful enterprise’s lifespan when it overcomes the initial hurdle of a tough start in the market and sets out to conquer a larger share of the pie, challenging some of the biggest names in its particular niche.
If your business fits the description above, then you’re probably looking for tips and ideas on how to redesign your sales process and strategy to accommodate this new level your company is now operating at. Your sales team and marketing department will need to reconsider their methods of approaching leads and create new ways to approach customers. Most e-commerce giants, such as Amazon or Alibaba, have been in the same position you’re in right now. The mid-market stage is a key time for any enterprise — it may determine whether a business will make it big or not.
All of your departments will need to increase their capacities, especially customer service, as you should be expecting a doubling or even tripling of the number of orders. If you don’t quite know how to increase responsiveness on such a scale, you might want to learn more about live answering services and other means of simplifying the process of responding to customers.
Another key step on the way to revive your sales strategy is reaching out to old leads who might be interested in working with you now that your company isn’t just a measly start-up anymore. This article will help you find ways to re-engage with leads from the past and continue growing your enterprise as a result.
Show Them What Could Have Been
Your old leads most likely had good reasons to refuse to work with you in the past or take their business elsewhere. Whatever these may have been, your job now is to show them why they were wrong and how exactly your company made a name for itself. You can do so in two ways: either with a direct approach through your sales team or via a clever email marketing campaign, as part of a newsletter you would send out to all of your leads anyway.
There are pros and cons to both approaches. The direct way may be appreciated by some of your old leads, as it shows that you remember about them, care for their business, and have come with a new, improved offer. On the other hand, you may come off as desperate, if you don’t implement the right sales marketing strategy. The “newsletter” approach can be easily ignored and discarded by the leads as irrelevant. It can be a good method of making sure that the lead is actually interested in what you have to offer — they have acted upon information included in your email, which means that they have read it and liked what they saw.
Whichever way you choose to handle it, you better make sure that your copywriter is up for the task. This tip is all about content, and if you reach out to leads with subpar copy, your relationship isn’t likely to flourish.
Social Media to the Rescue
If you have engaged with a lead before, it’s likely that they’ve researched your presence on most popular social networks, checked out your blog, and maybe even gave you a follow on some platforms. Use that to your advantage. Pop up on their radar once again by liking or commenting on their posts. Design and publish content that caters to their particular niches as a means of catching their attention. Engaging leads via social media, Linkedin in particular is one of the best lead nurturing methods, as it allows you to easily create personalized messages for specific clients without seeming too pushy or desperate. Don’t slide into their DMs unannounced, though. Nobody likes that!
Ask for Their Opinion
Whether you’re launching a new product and want customers’ opinions on it, or you’re sending out surveys as quick follow-ups to recent purchases or other ways of engagement, you could use that as a subtle opportunity to get into your old leads’ heads and see what exactly they’re after when it comes to business cooperation. Sure, they might not even fill it out, but a lot of people actually like filling out questionnaires, and if it can turn an old, cold lead into a new, hot prospect, then what do you have to lose? No one likes irrelevant content in their mailbox, and these surveys are a way of making sure you don’t make that mistake ever again.
The Bottom Line
Restarting the conversation with leads from the past can lead to many opportunities for further growth. It has to be done with the right subtlety and an intelligent approach. This is definitely not a task to be delegated to your team of unpaid interns. It requires professional content and a lot of time and effort put into rekindling the leads’ interest in your enterprise.
Finally, you should also keep in mind your current market position in comparison to where your business was at the time of your first engagement with any particular lead. Chances are that they remember the company as a fledgling start-up not really worth their time. If you engage them once again, this time as a growing, mid-market enterprise, they may look at you as a good prospect for the future and gladly take up your offer. Remember this whenever you engage leads of old, as a sizable company with a “mom-and-pop shop” mentality might not be received too well by a prospective client who’s turned you down in the past.
