Having tons of leads in your pipeline does not mean that your business is successful. Only when these leads become customers can you truly say that your customer acquisition strategy is effective. If you want to see more of your leads converting, you need to reexamine your business perspective as well as your strategy and training. That is not easy, of course, because you have to overcome several pitfalls in order to do that.

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why your leads are not converting to sales and how you can turn them around to your advantage.

Disconnect between your marketing and sales teams

One of the most common reasons why a lead does not convert is that the marketing team does not properly qualify the leads before handing them over to the sales team. If this happens, chances are your sales and marketing team have different definitions of what a sales-qualified lead is. There’s no defined standard on how they should score their leads. 

In order to fix this, you need to create a lead scoring model where your sales team can recognize and articulately inform marketing which leads are ready for them. After that, you should create a system with checks and balances which helps both teams understand the qualities they use to identify qualified leads. If the leads do not convert, there is an error with your lead scoring model or you are not following the check and balance system for qualifying the leads. Then, you need to adjust these definitions or you need to train your sales team further on proper forecasting and overcoming objections.

Not enough value

The business landscape is becoming more and more competitive; thus, you need to consistently refine the value you offer so it remains relevant to the perspective of your customers and prospects. 

Arketi Group vice president Micky Long said that one of the biggest mistakes businesses commit is spending a lot of time on the words they will use in their content marketing materials (i.e emails, web pages, blogs, etc.) but forgetting their value proposition. 

If your target market does not see the value of your product or service immediately, they will not convert no matter how amazing your email sounds or your website looks.

There are several ways how you can add more value to your product or service:

Personalize

Customers tend to gravitate towards a product if they feel a certain connection with the business or the key people of that company. However, executives need to remember that being personal does not mean that you will talk to them like your family or friend. Rather, it is about positioning  yourself as a thought leader in your niche or industry.

Simplify

It refers to how your customers and prospects interact with your company — from the moment they become aware of your brand to the time they buy your product or service.

People want something that will make their life easier. If your process is complicated at the beginning, they will shy away from it. On the other hand, you present more value when you simplify it even more.

Customer Service

Whether you like it or not, your product or service is not that unique. Your competitors might offer better features or lower prices. So how do you win prospects to buy your product instead of the competition? 

The answer — an exceptional customer service experience! It becomes even more valuable if the product or service you are offering is on the technical side.

Not enough training

No matter how you sync your offers and messages across different channels and platforms but your sales staff does not have sufficient training about your product/service, they are nothing. 

Imagine entering a physical store and inquiring about an item you saw on their website. When you asked a sales clerk, however, he has no idea what you’re talking about. 

That’s frustrating, right?

So what will you do? You walk away with your excitement all but gone. Thus, if you want to have a better chance of converting prospects, all the members of your team should be properly trained and informed, so that they can always provide a seamless experience to customers and prospects. 

The same product knowledge should also be found in your customer service reps and other team members who will interact with your customers. There is nothing worse for customers than to encounter someone who doesn’t know how to answer their questions regarding your product or service.

The Bottom Line

Even though most marketing and advertising efforts are happening online, you still need all sides of your business covered. Also add the suggestions we gave in this article and notice significant changes in your lead generation efforts.

Author Bio:

Katrina works as the Marketing Manager at Callbox Singapore. She helps companies in Asia Pacific countries increase their business revenue through lead generation and appointment setting services. Follow Katrina on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

3 Reasons Why You're Not Converting Your Leads to Sales

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5 Reasons You Need to Team Up with a Lead Generation Agency

https://www.callbox.com.sg/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Reasons-You-Need-to-Team-Up-with-a-Lead-Generation-Agency.jpg 450 800 Katrina Chua https://www.callbox.com.sg/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/callbox-logo.png Katrina Chua2020-07-01 12:08:342020-07-01 12:10:275 Reasons You Need to Team Up with a Lead Generation Agency

Selling Your Enterprise Software Products and Services in Asia

https://www.callbox.com.sg/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Selling-Your-Enterprise-Software-Products-and-Services-in-Asia.jpg 450 800 Katrina Chua https://www.callbox.com.sg/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/callbox-logo.png Katrina Chua2020-06-19 14:37:592020-06-19 14:39:30Selling Your Enterprise Software Products and Services in Asia

The biggest and fastest-growing online marketplaces in the world are definitely in Asia, and the consumer’s online shopping habits are far different from those that are usually practiced in Europe or in the Western world. When you think about e-commerce business the thing that’s on top of your mind is definitely changing. There’s constantly new technology on the rise and more powerful tools are changing how consumers and different businesses shop for software, expanding their expectations of convenience from vendors. 

If you’re planning on selling your enterprise software products in Asia, here are some tips to help you successfully market your SaaS products.

Employ ABM

Account-based Marketing has made its comeback and is widely used by industries around the world. It helps you with personalization and nurturing your key customers and prospects.

It’s only fair to say that every industry and company you’re trying to appeal to is different from the last one. So, marketing without creativity is almost the same as driving with your eyes closed, and aside from just helping you nurture your key customers, using ABM methods will allow you to reach and focus on the right customers and not on ones who don’t bring any added value to you. Considering that you are offering SaaS, you have niche targets, so you have to make sure that your marketing is going to be as specific as well for it to be successful.

Host Webinars

It goes without saying that webinars have taken over the marketing game and are by far the most effective way to real in leads. Bring your creative team together and come up with unique ideas for your presentation so that your audience will be left with an unforgettable experience. 

For SaaS businesses, webinars are also a great way of creating reusable content across your different channels. Let’s say you put together an hour-long webinar containing all your original content around a specific topic or product or service, you can post the replay on your website or dedicated webinar channel if you have one. You can also chop up your webinar into segments and post them on your social media channels as bite-size educational nuggets for your audience. 

There’s a myriad of things you can do with one webinar at a time, so take full advantage of it.

Empower your Sales with Qualified Leads

Highly qualified leads are everything. Having a proper sales database is not just important but also works wonders for your sales team. Being able to have all your sales figures, trends, and contacts readily viewable and available makes a huge difference when it comes to making sales. Provide your team with the right tools to nurture your leads and invest in outsourcing your lead generation. When you outsource your lead generation, the pressure on your own team for generating leads will be off and you can steer your focus more on selling to people who are actually interested in buying your product/service.

User and Business Value in an Enterprise Software Sale

In marketing, it’s common practice to balance user value and business value. You provide free content or product features that benefit the user, but may not be so great for your company. On the other hand, charging for every single feature may be great for your business but decreases the value for the user. It can be a tricky trade-off but you can definitely find a sweet spot in it without compromising either. 

Normally, enterprise software products are mainly priced by either the user or the amount of usage whether that may be as a function of time or data. Now, whether you control how much your company charges or not, you can always grow the number of users or attract them to deepen their usage. 

Here’s a strategy to increase the number of users. Have a combination of top-of-funnel content marketing that raises your leads’ awareness of your product/service advantage with a bottom-of-funnel customer success marketing approach that supports your customers’ needs and therefore, deepens their product adoption. 

You can strike a balance between paid and free content in many ways. Ultimately, this is why freemium is such a popular model to follow because it is the perfect combination of word of mouth all while maintaining your business value for you to grow, and continue improving your user’s lives.

Conclusion

If you want to sell your enterprise software products in the online marketplace giant that is Asia, these are the top strategies that you need to remember to practice. If you have any more questions, we are always ready to provide you with more insight.

3 Reasons Why You're Not Converting Your Leads to Sales

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5 Reasons You Need to Team Up with a Lead Generation Agency

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Selling Your Enterprise Software Products and Services in Asia

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Not everyone who goes to Changi Airport is a flier. In fact, some are mere spectators of Jewel’s amazing indoor waterfall, the Kinetic Rain Sculpture or the Orchid Garden, while others are perky shoppers, diners or moviegoers.

It would be a cruel thing to miss these wondrous attractions from the “World’s Best Airport”. But, more than meets the eye is the lasting experience that every flier or visitor takes back home that leaves them in awe and engaged.   

So, how do you engage an audience?

Regardless of the presentation or event you are hosting, it is important to capture your audience’s attention, not just during, but before and even after the event. This would mean being able to manage and get everyone involved – registrants, non-registrants, attendees and absentees throughout the event cycle. 

Take a look at the insights below. These are tips to help you manage event audiences and thoughts to get them engaged.

Registrants – respondents who signed up

The registration process is crucial to the overall result of your event, so allocate ample time in planning and full attention in gathering registrants to meet your target numbers. 

Moreso, this period is the starting point of engagement. Collect relevant information from the registrants like complete contact name, company name, business address, contact numbers, email address, job title and social media accounts, and use these data to connect with them and for nurturing purposes. 

Leverage multiple promotional channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Website, etc.to reach prospects, but be sure to custom this approach based on their usage habits. Choose the platforms they often use so that they could easily find the information they need. 

Include CTA buttons to make it easy for them to navigate and access landing pages, and remember to make your email copies short, comprehensive and include details like event title, date, time, venue, and maybe a 3-bullet takeaways. 

Use an event management platform to manage repetitive tasks like tracking of registrations and sending auto response copies such as “thank you” email which should be received by the registrant upon signing up. 

Moreover, the thank you email must include words of acknowledgement and again, the event details. Also, attach a link to your calendar to give them the option to schedule an appointment just in case they are interested to talk. This could help shorten the lead generation process.

Some registrants may encounter difficulties along the way and send you a manually written email, so check your inbox regularly. Your prompt reply could translate to the thought of your willingness to assist and somehow please them.

Create a nurturing scheme that would remind them of the upcoming event. Below is an example of a month-long registration period:

Non-Registrants – opened the email invite or clicked the link, but did not sign up

Non-registrants are people who clicked or opened the email invite, but did not sign up. “Not interested” may be one of the reasons, but consider other possible factors like schedule and travel. Some of them may be truly interested to attend, but were grabbed of the chance to do so. In this case, create a follow up email that informs of your intention to invite them to future events. And may be on the side, ask them the reason why they failed to register. This will give you the idea on what to do next.

If they are willing to continue communicating, send them references like newsletters, case studies and blogs that are relevant to their business. This could give them the impression of how knowledgeable you are about their industry, and possibly build interest in them to know what products or solutions you might have that can help their business grow.

See if they are willing to talk.

You may use this nurturing scheme:

Attendees – registered, confirmed, attended the event

For event attendees, your nurturing scheme would probably or ideally look like this:

Proper nurturing can help increase your conversion rates. Here are a few things to bear in mind:

• During the session, set proper expectations of how the program will flow.
• Encourage them to ask questions and express their thoughts. 
• Don’t miss to acknowledge their comments to make them feel that their insights are important.
• Create an interactive mood by providing tools that would get them to participate in activities such as Q&A and ice breakers. This may be conditional though, and should be based on the type of event you are hosting.
• Document the event by taking pictures and videos, and utilize these materials in your post-event press releases. It’s a way of showing your appreciation to them for having joined your network.
• Have a social media moderator who will manage the live stream and respond to tweets and comments to increase social media visibility.
• After the presentation, engage the attendees in casual conversation as they might have questions they missed to ask earlier.

After the event, take proper nurturing steps to drive leads through the sales funnel.

Absentees – signed up, confirmed, but failed to show up

Take a similar approach to non-registrants for this type. Check back with them and ask why they failed to attend. The fact that they took the time to sign up and confirm to attend the event is full proof of their interest. Although, and for some reason, they failed to show up, draw optimism on the notion and use it to help them get back on track.

The best action to take is to send them a follow up email that features the highlights of the event, and express your intention to connect by offering usable materials relevant to their industry. This will surely make them feel important and involved. 

And of course, see if they are open to talk.

Your nurturing scheme may look like this:

Event audiences can be well managed when you have a process in place, but knowing what they need by delving into their thoughts and feelings, just as how Singapore Changi Airport impresses and pleases its fliers and visitors with comfort and gaiety, will definitely get your registrants, non-registrants, attendees and absentees, engaged.

3 Reasons Why You're Not Converting Your Leads to Sales

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Selling Your Enterprise Software Products and Services in Asia

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Being one of the most popular global messaging apps in the world, WhatsApp has approximately 1.6 billion active users daily.  

Together with other top messaging platforms for business, marketers take full advantage of it for lead generation campaigns.

Prospecting

By getting real-time responses from prospects, marketers have a better reach to the right contacts and decision-makers at all times. 

Qualification

To properly qualify a lead, you have to remember that communication is key.

Establish a relationship with them, and once they’re fully engaged, you’ll be able to get all their information to convert them into leads. 

Conversion

Since not all qualified leads are sales-ready just yet, which means you have to keep nurturing them until they are.

The WhatsApp platform alone is loaded with features that any business can leverage from. 

Choosing the right messaging platform, such as WhatsApp, for your platform will greatly impact and further your lead generation campaign.

3 Tips To Engage and Nurture Prospects that Say "Not now"

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4 Proven B2B eCommerce Strategies To Help Your Business Grow

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Webinars: Making the Digital Switch from Live Events

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Whatsapp is one of the most popular global mobile messenger apps with approximately 1.6 billion monthly active users. (Statista)

Despite its good standing in the social network sphere, Whatsapp still faced controversies on security concerns, malware threats, and spams.

Recently, it stopped working on millions of older smartphones and iPhones, specifically Android 2.3.7 and iOS versions 8 and below in order to protect the security of its users as these operating systems don’t receive new security updates from Google and Apple which could put user data privacy at risk.  

The issues brought fear to many users but were not enough reasons for the Facebook-owned messaging platform leader to decelerate on the messaging apps runway.

In fact, it has even become stronger, joining other top messaging platforms that marketers leverage for lead generation campaigns. 

Prospecting

The lead generation landscape has widely evolved with technology. From what used to be a voice dependent approach, it has become a multi-channel, multi-touch tactic, incorporating email, mobile, website, and chat, to reach and engage potential customers. 

And among these channels, chat stands out to be the best. It enables organizations to communicate with their target audience through personalized messaging, and engage prospects in ways they are most convenient without the hassle of disrupting them from work, meetings and personal engagements. 

In countries considered to be centers of trade and industry, like Singapore, Whatsapp is the most popular among other app providers. Out of its 5.75 million population, 4 million are mobile users which are largely comprised of people from the business sector. This shows how Whatsapp has become a significant tool for business in Singapore as well as in other countries.

Whatsapp sends around 65 billion messages per day, and a large fraction of this number is messages sent by marketers who connect with prospects, speak to potential leads or schedule work meetings.

It has made doing business much easier than calling and sending emails. By getting real-time replies from prospects and maximizing the calling hours on target decision makers, marketers are able to connect with the right prospect at the right time, save time by prioritizing contacts who are open to discuss and mitigate useless efforts on negative contacts.

Qualification

Lead qualification is an essential part of lead generation because it will not only help determine whether or not a prospect is the right candidate to benefit from your product or service but save you time and effort. However, knowing how to do it and using the right tools to qualify a lead could affect your bottom line.

Communication is key. Before you can engage prospects, you need to establish a conversational relationship with them first in order to know more about them and cater to their needs. Know which tools and channels your prospects mostly use like who among them are using email, who are most reachable via mobile, or do they prefer chat over other channels. This will help you determine how and where to establish communication with them and become knowledgeable about their purchase habits.

Prospects can scale up your inbound traffic, but they will never freely give you the data needed to score if who among them are worth pursuing through the sales funnel, such as company size, annual revenue, budget, etc. unless you gain their trust and respect. And one way to do that is to communicate with them in ways they are most convenient without disrupting them from other important routines.

Among B2B messaging apps, Whatsapp has become widely used by marketers. It has 300 million daily active users worldwide. (99Firms.com) 

But, what’s more interesting about the chat platform which makes it stand out among others is that it gives marketers a great opportunity to address prospects’ needs by answering their queries in real-time either via chat or call and sharing with them valuable content like brochures, images or newsletters. 

Once prospects are fully engaged, you will be able to gather all their essential data needed to qualify them.

Conversion

Not all qualified leads are sales-ready. Some are hot and ready to fly out of the nurturing pan, others are warm and may require more time to mature, while others could go cold and may be best to keep in view for a while.

But, regardless of the type, all leads deserve to be nurtured. This means that you have to keep the conversation going. But then again, in ways and channels, these prospects are most reachable and convenient to communicate.

New tools and tactics come up every day, but you have to carefully decide which of those best share your business goals and objectives, and help you build a strong and lasting engagement with your potential customers. 

After qualifying a lead, determine the appropriate follow up steps to take: which channel to use, how often you should reach out and what type of content you should share to properly nurture them until they become sales-ready.

Choose the best content distribution channel that provides you a wider avenue to nurture these leads: send appointment reminders, follow up on the previous conversation or offer new and better deals, are some of the ways to direct leads through the conversion path.

In Singapore, Whatsapp is the most popular chat platform. 

93% of Singaporeans use the internet on a daily basis. 75% of them use it actively on their smartphone for social networking activities, and 73% specifically use Whatsapp. (Messengerpeople)

Whatsapp business platform, in particular, is packed with features that businesses of all types and sizes can leverage which includes:

• Availability of your target’s Business Profile like store hours, business address, email ids, website links, contact details, and brief business description.
• Smart Replies and Messaging. These are short quick replies like “thank you” or simple customized greetings that you may automate when you’re away.  
• Labels that you may assign to active chats for easy filtering of conversations.
• Vital Messaging Stats which provides insight on how many messages were sent, successfully delivered, and read by clients.
• Whatsapp Web which allows you to access your Whatsapp account on other devices.
• Whatsapp API which enables enterprises to reach customers from around the world.

Leveraging on the right chat platform, like Whatsapp, along with other useful channels for your lead generation campaigns will streamline all your efforts from prospecting to qualification, and down to conversion, without the hassle of having your prospects wandering on different channels.

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Selling Medical Devices and Healthcare Solutions Using Online Tactics

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Facebook acquired three major apps (Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram), the most popular password “123456” was revealed and Apple launched Iphone 11 Pro Max, were some of the biggest tech news you might have missed last year.

But, the 2019 Most Successful Lead Generation Tactics story that told, 80% of the leads generated were from social media, content marketing generates three times as many prospects as outbound marketing (but costs 62% less) and email marketing was the most effective tactic by 42% of organizations, was really hard to miss.

This year, you have the power to hit the headlines with the 7 lead generation ideas for Q1 (and Q2) 2020.

1. Socialize On The Right Platform
2. Follow the king, Email Marketing
3. Optimize and Get Searched
4. Engage your Market in Events
5. Content Means Creating More
6. Multiply Wins with Account Based Marketing
7. Find, not the best, but the Right Influencer

Socialize On The Right Platform

Social media has undeniably become an integral part of lead generation. It brings tremendous opportunities like collaboration and connectivity among users, and access to and disseminate information. Thus, enabling businesses to reach its target customers quickly and convert them into qualified leads.

• The top 3 social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but LinkedIn, which ranks 5th, works best in terms of professionalism. It’s a thriving hub of professionals and business owners.
• Define your goals by determining which areas of the business you would want to improve, how would you like to reach and communicate with customers, and what you need to learn about their needs, wants and habits.
• Examine the type of content that is most effective in generating traffic. Is it blogs, videos, podcasts or photographs? Once done, decide which social platform is best for your product.

Follow the king, Email Marketing

Although social media and all other lead generation tactics are important, email marketing ruled. In fact, it delivers 4400% roi and continues to grow in usability. From 3.7 billion global users in 2018, it’s expected to reach 4.3 billion by 2022, making it the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences.

• Establish your goals by determining what you want to achieve, which approach to use, who to engage, type of content to use and how to measure success.
• Build an accurate and updated email list to better connect with your audience, offer targeted campaigns and be able to measure results. It may include categories like new and existing clients.
• Choose the email campaign that is aligned with your goals like newsletter, event invitation or offers, and the appropriate channel/s to use.

Optimize and Get Searched

To increase site usability, is the ultimate goal of SEO. You have to be searchable which means you need to be the first to be found by your target customers before anybody else on the web. And the best way to be easily found is to rank high.

• Write comprehensive, compelling articles using well researched keywords and actionable headlines that your target audience use.
• To gain quality backlinks, do guest blogging, and utilize infographics and internal links to draw more traffic, but ensure quality on each content you create.
• Optimize your website for different channels in order to reach your target customers on whichever platform they are using and at their most convenient time.

Engage your Market in Events

There’s more to than just sharing new knowledge and skills with your event attendees – creating experience. Create the best experience for each prospect you reach out to from the time you first contacted them until the post event outreach. This will give them the reason to keep you in mind for possible partnership.

• An updated and accurate data list is key to any marketing campaign. Ensure you have filtered the right accounts and utilize multiple channels like voice, email, chat, mobile and social media to reach, engage target attendees.
• Keep a complete checklist of tasks, timelines and program flow to keep you guided on pre event, actual and post event marketing.
• Track your lead conversions.

Content Means Creating More

Marketing is basically conveying your brand message to your target audience. And one of the most effective and leading marketing channels where you can share relevant information and ideas about your brand is content marketing. As your target audience becomes knowledgeable about who you are, what you can do and where to find you, a certain amount of interest grows in them which can lead them to engage and eventually convert into users.

• Before you distribute any content, know who your audience is, where they hang out and what their needs are.
• Talk to them and ask for feedback, suggestions, and what else they would want to know.
• Monitor and nurture them throughout the buyer’s journey.

Multiply Wins with Account Based Marketing

Account based marketing will let you connect with key decision makers via inbound and outbound channels to drive the purchase process. If you are seeking specific high- value customers, want to achieve higher ROI, align sales and marketing efforts, reduce resource waste and be able to track goals and results, this is the right process for you.

• Define your ICP (ideal customer profile) and discover high value accounts in your targeted list.
• Personalize your messaging in such a way that it addresses a specific business challenge.
• Determine optimal challenges and consider the ones that are effective on your targets.

Find, not the best, but the Right Influencer

Brand influencers are individuals with a strong media presence who share their thoughts and opinions about a product or service on a social platform. And as more people are leaning towards the social sphere for varied purposes, having the right brand influencer on social media to talk or represent your brand will optimize your reach and engagement with your target audience.

• Choose a social media influencer who can speak and represent both your brand and your target audience.
• Know their reach – which social platform are they most followed, are the platforms appropriate channels for your industry type, how do they engage with their followers.
• Check their authenticity. They should be speaking from experience and tell personal stories about your product or service – subject-matter-experts and credible brand evangelists.

 
These are just a few of the best lead generation ideas for 2020, but you can create a zillion stories out of them, if done the right way.