How to Scale Up Your Organic Leads Quickly
Your team has done a great job of creating content that gets your company at the top of the page when organic leads search for your Industrial product or service online.
The leads have submitted an RFQ, emailed a question, or made a request for more information.
What do you do next?
In technical sales, it’s not uncommon for a sales cycle to take months to even a year from when a customer enters your pipeline to when a deal closes.
Without systems and processes in place, organic leads can go cold, fall through the cracks, or lengthen the sales cycles.
Despite the long sales cycle, you can make the most out of your leads and turn them into prospects by focusing on a few key areas.
Nurturing Organic Leads for Industrial and Manufacturing Sales
With high ticket purchases, engineers and buyers invest a significant amount of time in researching solutions for what is best for their business.
While your website visitors are interested in what product or service you have to offer, they are not ready to purchase yet. Research shows that 73% of all B2B leads are not sales-ready.
You want to capitalize on this interest by providing high-quality content and easily accessible information that offers solutions to their problems. Continue to build out your content library that engages leads at different stages of their journey.
Get ahead of your competition even further with actionable strategies and the best tactics you can implement immediately.
When is the Right Time to Reach Out to an Organic Lead?
Immediately. If you don’t, a competitor may beat you to it, and it is what companies expect.
Many companies miss out on opportunities by merely not replying quickly enough to an organic lead.
Before you reach out, though, you need to qualify your lead.
When qualifying a lead, keep qualification consistent yet unique. Tailor to each company and its needs. Ask the right questions and be diligent in your research.
Common Lead Fit Metrics:
- Title
- Company Size
- Location
- Annual Revenue
- Does this person have buying authority? (Research stakeholders)
- How did they find you?
- What is their timeframe to kick off the project?
A lead management system can speed up this process and keep your marketing and sales goals in line with each other.
If possible, you want to know as much as possible about this before you reply. Have they repeatedly visited your website? Do you know which pages they visited before requesting a quote or submitting a form? Use heat mapping tools to track activity and know what people are clicking on or search through your Google Analytics data.
Having some background information will keep your follow-up relevant and lead to a more productive conversation.
For some potential clients, an email is enough. Others may expect a phone call. It is not a one size fits all approach. The goal will always be to have a live conversation so you can truly understand their problems and develop your solution to it.
Use a Script When Making Contact
Technical sales are complex. You need to know your product or service inside out.
When calling a lead, don’t be afraid to use a script. I don’t mean a cheesy telemarketer sales script, something customized for your industry.
Pro Tip: Track the most common objections to your product or service and have a valid response to them.
Even if you’re experienced enough to ask everything on the fly, it’s good to have a couple of bullet points to keep the conversation on track. You don’t want to get off the phone and have regrets about forgetting to ask something.
Know what you are going to say ahead of time. Prepare for objection and be ready to respond.
To avoid sounding like a robot, practice what you are going to say until it becomes natural. Over 95% of Technical Sales Engineers don’t do this, because it seems weird initially. But, I can assure you that once you get in the hang of doing this you will see better results.
Learn from Your Leads
Once your lead has become a qualified prospect, document the process. What did the person say? How did they react? Use this information to track and measure your success. Make time to evaluate what you are doing. Keep what is working, change what isn’t.
Continue to work your lead. Remember that it does take patience. Typically, the larger the purchase, the longer it is going to take. By incorporating a few of these strategies, you can shorten your sales cycle. Even if it is only in small increments, it will add up in the end.
Leveraging your leads is just one of the many ways to keep your technical sales pipeline consistent, but you need all of the skills to keep you ahead of the competition.
With over 15 years of experience, we don’t just teach “theory”, we provide actionable lessons so you can see results tomorrow by providing you with all of the tools you need to not only significantly increase your personal income but become a top performer at any company. If you are ready to take your technical sales career to the next level or are eager to make a career change, then click here to take the next step towards success with Technical Sales University.