A question. What should you do with prospects who have leaked from your sales funnel? That is, those folks who have expressed and interest in your products or services and yet, for one reason or another, have chosen not to proceed.
It's an uncomfortable conversation for many organisations and especially for the sales team. We are conditioned to not want to discuss areas where we have not succeeded. Why not focus on why we have won, not why we have lost? Right?
Wrong. It's simple arithmetic. In the journey from first contact as an unqualified lead to customer, typically 90%+ of leads will "leak" from our sales funnel.
Typically initial mail outs may see a 2-5% response rate, of those respondents you would be fortunate to have 50% proceed to a sales meeting and 50% to proposal stage and possibly you might win one third of all deals on which you propose.
So what should you do with all of those prospects who didn't complete the buying journey with you? Simply forget about them? Ignore them? Sure some of them will never be customers, but by the same token many of them may well have a business problem that you are in the business of solving, but for some reason the current timing was not right. Perhaps it was out of budget cycle, perhaps other projects took priority, perhaps they were undergoing a reorganisation. Why waste all that investment you have already made in that lead? Imagine if you were able to re engage with just 20% of them. Your sales would increase substantially, and best of all, you are leveraging existing campaigns and existing resources.
But how? The answer is to create systematic, rhythmic, RECYCLING TACTICS. Marketing campaigns frequently ignore specific recycling tactics to stay in touch with leaked buyers.
Having structured recycling tactics also unclogs your sales funnel and gets sales people focusing on current prospects with business problems that need solving now.
So what might a recycling tactic look like and how do I know when to re-engage with my prospect.
The secret is to send regular communications to your leaked buyers that they value, refrain from product pitches and solution flogs, it's deeply boring and irrelevant to buyers without a defined need!
Relevant content is king. Write to them about problems that their type of businesses face. Write short white papers and articles, express your opinions about these problems. Short case studies of examples where their business problem has been solved is an excellent way to communicate in a relevant way.
As recycling tactics will be executed over and over again keeping in touch with prospects until they are ready to engage they need to be affordable and easy to execute.
Employ the "rule of 5" for every core piece of content think of 5 ways to repurpose that content, ensure you squeeze the maximum from your investment of time and effort.
Webinars and breakfast briefings with some thought leadership is a more advanced (and expensive) recycling tactic, so should be reserved for those prospects who look like they are ready to re engage.
"But how do I know when they are ready to re-engage?" Well ask them! Use a smart marketing automation system to profile respondents before they download content.
"But I haven't got time to write all these white papers and case studies!" Consider outsourcing the production of them to a smart marketing services firm who understand your business.
If you are interested in creating compelling marketing for your contacts, increase your "stickiness" and nurture leads through their buying journey with you check out this free eBook.
