4 Tricks to Find Quality Leads in Technical Sales
If you’re a technical sales engineer, then you know how important it is to keep your sales pipeline full. Looking for new leads and prospects is an essential part of your daily routine. Whether you’re reaching out via phone, email, or an in-person meeting, you should always be working to locate new leads.
However, more than just looking to increase your number of leads, you need to be looking for high-quality and qualified leads. Not all leads are created equal, and you might just be wasting your time and resources on dead-end technical sales leads.
Why It’s Easy To Go Wrong in Technical Sales
The cost of going after dead-end leads might be steeper than you realize. Think of the time, energy, and money that your company wastes when leads don’t work out. All of these resources could have been spent pursuing much more qualified leads.
One way to reduce this cost is with more effective technical sales marketing tools that target only the best-suited potential customers. But in order to do this, you need a clear idea of who your technical sales target market is, who your ideal customer persona is, and then a plan to make sure these things are kept in mind as you execute marketing strategies and initiatives. When you know who your target technical sales customer is, you can then focus your efforts exclusively on reaching the right leads.
Here are the 4 tricks to ensure you get quality technical sales leads:
1) The Power of Informative, Well-Written Content
Customers nowadays do not sit around and wait to be contacted by technical sales professionals. Even in the B2B space, your potential clients are likely to be proactive, well-informed, and abreast of the latest news in their industries. Monopolize on that. By becoming a trusted source of information in your industry, you can put your company and your product or service on the radar.
Especially when you have informative and well-written content, you can clearly demonstrate what your business is, who you are, and the value of your product or service. This content could be shared on your company website, a white paper on LinkedIn, or even your own LinkedIn page.
Just remember that all content needs to be engaging and informative. These are often what potential technical sales leads will read and see first, even before you make that first phone call. Content is king, and this can be the first introduction a potential technical sales lead has to what you are offering.
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2) Target the Right Kind of Traffic
A company website is often the first place a potential lead will go in order to learn about you and the product you are selling. But sometimes companies and technical sales teams are too focused on simply increasing website traffic, as opposed to ensuring that the people visiting the website are quality technical sales leads.
If this is your situation, it’s time to re-visit your marketing strategy. If a million people visit your website but none of them purchase your product, all that traffic won’t lead to your long-term goal – boosting technical sales. It’s better to have less traffic at a higher rate of conversion than high traffic with low conversion rates. You can also take a look at the website itself. Does it get your message across clearly? Does the look and tone of the website content truly speak to your target market? Your marketing strategy should give you real results, not just seemingly-impressive numbers.
3) Pay Attention to Your Current Clients
Look at your client list and take note of how they found you. Was it LinkedIn? A visit to the company website? Did you get in touch with them first via email? It’s always a good starting point to evaluate how most of your customers first discover you and your products. From there, you can decide which marketing channels are working best and which might need more attention.
Past success can also be a good indicator of what works for you and your product. By doing this, you might realize that LinkedIn has led you to many quality leads while cold calling has not. Keeping track of these numbers gives you the technical sales data to make better decisions moving forward.
Another good reason to pay attention to current customers is to think of a customer’s lifetime value, or CLV. According to Forbes Magazine, it is no longer necessarily true that acquiring new customers is more expensive than keeping current customers. However, you should look at each customer’s potential future value. On the same note, the customer also has to recognize the value of your product or service. Make sure that you keep all of your new and returning customers happy to ensure a mutually-beneficial relationship and continued technical sales success.
4) Be Adaptive and Tailor Your Approach
Technology is constantly changing. In the past, technical sales engineers would get in touch with leads primarily via cold calls. Now, there’s LinkedIn, company websites, email, and even sponsored webinars that can all help you make contact with the right client. There is always a new way to find a qualified lead, and you need to make sure that you are trying out different methods and honing your craft.
Your industry is also always evolving. Whether you sell machinery or systems, products and services are always changing. To get quality technical sales leads, make sure you are marketing your product as the answer to the most current needs. No matter how good of a technical sales engineer you are, if the product you are offering comes across as outdated or missing the mark in any way, you’ll have a hard time finding quality technical sales leads.
These 4 tricks can help you reach quality leads, but it’s important to remember that pursuing leads requires an input of resources. For that reason, it’s always best to prioritize quality over quantity. Make sure to cast a wide enough net, but also make sure that you’re catching the right leads. Work smarter, not harder.
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