How to Improve The Odds of Your Business Succeeding
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This is the chance of obtaining an appointment as a result of a making a cold call to a buyer who doesn’t know about the caller and the caller doesn’t know anything about the buyer...
90%
The percentage of customers who leave a business
without telling them.
A business with these statistics is likely to be experiencing difficulty in meeting revenue targets and retaining customers. The chances of the business outlasting its competitors are slim and worse over the long term.
So what can you do to improve the odds so your business succeeds?
One of the first things to consider is your business, regardless of whether it’s business to business or business to consumer, is operating in a world where the customer controls the the sales process (see “Customer Controlled Selling” see appendix.)
Once the business controlled where prospects and customers could obtain information about it and it’s products and services. With the advent of the Internet and social media this is no longer the case.
Research shows:
● 67% of the buyer's journey is now completed digitally (Source: Sirus Decisions)
● “57% of the purchase decision is already complete before the customer even calls the supplier.” (CEB)
Prospects and customers now research the business AND the products AND it’s employees online before they make contact. So if your business is to move the odds in its favour, then your business needs to look at it’s online marketing and social selling information and processes.
Social Selling is really good old fashioned customer service aided by technology. You learn as much as you can about your prospects or customers. The good news is the Internet and social media enable to you gather more information than ever before.
However, caution is needed in the use of the information gathered as there is a fine line between using this information in a genuine manner and stalking. Much depends on what is online and more importantly how you use it based on how well you know the person.
For example you might only post a “Happy Birthday” message on a prospect’s Facebook page or send them a card if you have had a reasonable level of interaction.
Would you send a business acquaintance a birthday card if you only met them yesterday? So why would you make a similar post on social media?
As Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble CRM so often points out sales and customer service people are limited by what is known as the Dunbar Number of 150. Anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist, Robin Dunbar saysthis is the number of people an individual can maintain a stable relationship with.
Between customers, prospects and networking today’s business people are trying to maintain relationship far in excess of the Dunbar Number.
So what can you do to improve relationship management?
By using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and Marketing Automation tools you and your team can build very effective relationships with customers, prospects and your contact network. With over 300 CRM and marketing Automation tools on the market today you are spoilt for choice. For information about many of these tools visit www.g2crowd.com/categories/crm.
You can stack the odds in favour so your business succeeds.
You can do this by giving some thought about your goals and objectives, implementing defined action plans, profiling what your prospects and customers look like, staff training, and using technology.
This Article was contributed by: Ross Keating, The Client Orchardist assists established businesses wanting to meet their revenue goals, to farm their existing prospect and customer databases to increase profits using customer relationship management and social selling strategies.
Ross has managed sales teams, the development and sales of customer relationship management software and held management responsibility for 40,000+ customers and $36 million in sales.
You can contact Ross by email, on Twitter, or LinkedIn. If you would like a free 30 minute chat with Ross about improving the odds for your business’ success click here.
