Make Your Website Generate Leads And Eliminate Cold Calling
When you ask sales people what they hate about their jobs, their answer will be cold calling. Approaching an absolute stranger to try and sell something to them is difficult, heartbreaking and downright unpleasant at the best of times.
Replacing cold calling, or at least supplementing it, is a lot easier thanks to the Internet. Your website should be generating leads for you every day - and there are several ways of doing this.
What most websites will have is a contact form. You can gather qualified leads this way because most people who fill it and submit it are likely to be interested in your service or product. They will have a specific query, a product or service they are interested in, or they may need you to contact them to discuss a quote.
But there may be a lot of visitors in your website that are not ready to contact you yet but they are interested in the products and services you’re offering. These are the people you want to reach, particularly if your buying cycle is generally a long one. Offering them something in exchange is the most popular method of getting these people to give you their contact details.
Depending on the nature of your business, this offer could be a voucher, a special offer, a whitepaper, an ebook or an industry report. Getting the prospective customer’s details is the purpose of this exchange, and not make a sale. The materials provided need to be industry relevant, but not pushy sales material. The details you receive can be used for email marketing campaigns so add them to a database.
Offer a newsletter (but don’t call it a newsletter) in order to get customers to give you their details. Every week, deliver an email with relevant and useful information and it could offer weekly tips, industry highlights, or secret tricks.
Adding to the information you send your prospects is your email campaign in order to build a relationship with them and convince them that you’re an expert in the industry and you’ll be the first company in their list when they are ready to make a purchase.
Occasional sales messages can be included, but ideally you should be helping your clients gain knowledge and understanding within your industry - not just trying to sell them. This also builds trust - an excellent foundation for future sales.
All the contact details you receive are leads - they were on your website, so they are interested in what you have to offer. With email automation programs, this process can be simplified to the extent that you write the emails once, and the program runs itself. This is more cost effective and easier than cold calling.