With the overwhelming volume of information available, the average American’s attention span is shrinking rapidly (down to 8 seconds in 2013 and shortening every day). The currency for sales success is often a matter of being noticed at all. In the “Attention Economy” of today, automating response is essential.
Yet many companies resist marketing automation because it feels so impersonal to create a sales process to fit all sales leads. From the prospective buyer standpoint, they appreciate lead nurturing efforts. Here is why:
Rapid Acknowledgement
Imagine the moment your sales lead encounters your information. It doesn’t matter which lead generation method you use. The moment the prospect expresses a little curiosity may be the high point of their interest in your product or service. Every minute that passes from this peak interest point follows what Jim Rohn called the “Diminishing Law of Intent”.
Companies without marketing automation gather leads, send them to sales people and hope the sales team follows-up within 24 hours. For the attention-overwhelmed prospect, they may have already forgotten any interest at all by the next day. In fact, a study revealed 35-50% of sales go to the vendor responding first.
With automation, the expression of interest is immediately followed with a pre-written email and an individual salesperson can be notified on the spot. When a salesperson calls within 15 minutes and offers to help sort through the deluge of information available elsewhere, the prospect feels heard, acknowledged and valued. Better yet, they have not had time to forget yet so the follow-up conversation has a better chance to be useful to both the company and the prospective buyer.
Respected Learning Curve
The old sales process was dependent on highly skilled salespeople. While sales is still an art to be respected and compensated well, buyers have absolutely no dependence on getting information from the salesperson anymore. This major shift has devastated many sales teams.
Our world has become increasingly complex and our options are never-ending. Companies who use automated email campaigns to ‘drip’ education over time are showing respect for the buyer need to be knowledgeable. Designing a sales process to include small chunks of information prepares the prospective buyer to digest the ideas and feel good about moving forward toward a purchase.
Responsiveness
Sales Automation works best when it responds to the needs of buyers. Your tools go way beyond the initial response discussed earlier. There are a number of ways your CRM software’s dashboard and notification tools to accomplish the goal.
Your CRM software can constantly respond to the buyer’s process with a ‘tree’ of emails to follow the path chosen by the sales lead. It can also alert people within your organization when certain actions are taken. For example, you may want to have a sales person make contact after a click to a hyperlink in your email.
The possibilities are endless. Sales automation is here to stay. The buyers appreciate not being interrupted by other methods of reaching them. And the companies who implement sales automation well are seeing an undeniable increase in sales results.