Now, your small business CRM is organizing the process and allowing you to reach more prospects and engage them. But to truly turbo-charge your cold calling process, we’ll need to add another wrinkle.
Many small business CRM systems can do all this and automate the drip marketing follow up campaign very affordably. What’s most important is to select an online CRM that will be simple and easy for you to tailor to manage your unique cold calling lead generation campaign.
It won’t work to try and use a one-size-fits-all multi-step campaign. Your business and your customers are unique. In addition, you’ll want to refine the lead generation process based on experience. Be sure to find a sales force automation system that makes this easy for you.
Most often, you won’t have the lead’s email address at the outset of your cold calling campaign. Getting that email address can greatly enhance the results of your campaign. The email is useful in making initial contact with the lead – busy prospects often will respond to an email rather than a call because it’s quick and easy for them. By obtaining the email address, you can also put the lead into an ongoing automatic “drip marketing” campaign even if you never reach them or they don’t buy.
After all, when you fail to reach a lead. It’s usually just because they’re too busy and perhaps whatever you’re selling isn’t on top of their agenda right now. If you’ve targeted the right leads, it eventually will. So, if your sales force automation system can put the leads you “fire” on an automated drip campaign, you’ll get the call when they’re ready.
Offer Leads for Free
By offering the lead something of value, for free, you’ll increase both the number prospects you initially engage and the number you make contact with over the long term too.
So, in our truck tire example, imagine a message like this – “Mr. Smith, I’d like to send you our Free Guide to increasing truck utilization. In it you’ll find 3 specific ways to increase truck utilization by over 10%. Please call me at … to give me your email address so I can send over a copy of the guide immediately.”
Now, you put Mr. Smith’s email in the online CRM system and he can go on your long term automated email marketing drip campaign but, he can also get emails from you that are part of your initial lead generation process. Imagine that in addition to 3 or 4 voice mails, each prospect also gets one or two emails from you with similar messages and requesting a time for a phone appointment.
Again, many prospects that will never return a voice mail will quickly reply to an email.
This is where the turbo-charging kicks in. Now you’re contacting your leads via both email and calls so that they can more easily respond to you through the method they prefer. You’re also offering them something they can use so, this is not sounding so much like a cold call anymore. You’ll find they will be more engaged in discussing their needs rather than just trying to get rid of you. You’ll also find that the gatekeepers are more open to providing the email address and putting you through to the decision maker.
The good news is that this is easy to implement in any business. All you need is an hour or two to develop your lead generation process and a sales force automation system that can organize it for you..