Lead Generation and Sales Growth in Lockdown
So how do you go about lead generation and grow your business when your sales team are unable to meet face to face with their prospects? Or do you think is growth impossible right now?
Actually, we have been working with a number of clients who have grown this year seemingly against all odds. With our shared experiences, I also share a really interesting piece from McKinsey that will surprise some of you.
From the evidence it would seem that, in the same way that Covid has accelerated the move from bricks and mortar retailing to the online model, a similar step change is happening in the B2B sector.
Live Chat for Lead Generation, Video for Conversion
The top line is that buyers, even when purchasing large ticket items, seem to prefer dealing remotely and, while there is still a willingness for some face to face interactions at the supplier selection phase of the buying process. However once into closing and ordering digital/online face to face meeting are very important and take over. This is clearly evidenced in McKinsey’s research
Among those interviewed, the effectiveness of ‘digital’ sales has increased in most markets – UK, US and China and ‘remote’ engagement is on the up and driving lead gen success.
Remote Prospecting Does Work
The take away point for all of us? The key tools for effecting this are live video and live chat. While I am sure we are all utilising live video for example Zoom and Teams calls as a sales tool in the field, we are probably not considering live chat.
From experience with other clients, it can be very successful even for a complex technical sale. A client we worked with this year, who build and fit out laboratories amongst other things, identified from their KPIs dashboard that 80% of their leads came from Live Chat. They did not have a dedicated team for it, just the sales and marketing people (about 3 off the top of my head). Another long-term client who offered building and warehouse maintenance services also used it successfully to generate sales enquiries.
Fast Response is Crucial to Success
For every success that we have experienced with our clients, there have been prospects who have told us it didn’t work for them. Digging deeper, we identified why.
With customers using live chat, there is the expectation that a response needs to be almost immediate – they want to feel that there is a real person at the other end, just waiting for their enquiry!
So in our experience where it has been a success is when sales are totally bought into it and respond immediately. If they are not at a desktop, they were using the app on their phone. Conversion rates drop dramatically when the enquiry is not responded to within 10 seconds!