While we don’t want to keep harping on about the current Coronavirus pandemic, we do feel that we’re in a position to offer some advice on how to keep your business operating as normal as is possible in these times.
Honestly, we haven’t had to make any big changes to our marketing and sales approach, we’re still pretty much operating business as usual and that is down to the automation we have in place. This blog isn’t a hard sell either, sure we would love you to sign-up or try Zymplify but it’s more about trying to get you in the mindset of using automation tools to your benefit.Â
This pandemic has pushed automation and remote processes to the forefront for many businesses, but the reality is that you should have been using them anyway! We predict that when we get ‘back to normal’, the way a lot of companies do business will have changed dramatically. This is because those who were reluctant to use automation will now see it as a must and that won’t change when all of this is over because they’ll have seen the benefits first hand.Â
So, for all those companies starting out on their first automation journey (see what I did there!) I’m going to show you the top 3 journeys that are absolute musts, to make sure that your marketing and sales efforts are aligned and that the sales leads don’t dry up.
1. Automate Your Sales Outreach
Ok, let’s start with the basics. Any salesperson worth their salt will have a few stock emails that they send to prospects when they start the sales outreach. For example, let’s say a prospect drops into your pipeline so you pick up the phone but guess what, they don’t answer, so you send them a quick email about why you were calling – job done. But what if they don’t reply and you get stuck into other tasks and forget to follow up? Well, automation won’t forget! The below example is a two email sequence that the prospect will receive as soon as they hit your pipeline. Just think of the time you’ll save by nurturing these prospects with regular emails!
2. What Happens When You Lose or Close a Deal?
This is a common drop off point for prospects. Marketing has brought in the lead and sales have tried their best to win the business but, for whatever reason, it just didn’t work out at this time. It is SO important that you don’t let these prospects fall into the abyss. With Zymplify you can trigger an automated event based on the deal outcome. Here are some suggestions:
- Business not ready to purchase – Use the trigger to move the prospect to your longfinger pipeline and set an activity to follow-up in three months.
- Prospect not responding – If they’re not responding chances are the messaging isn’t resonating with them, why not add them to a different marketing journey to serve them more relevant content and once they re-engage they can be pushed to the sales pipeline as a hotter prospect.
- Lead score too low – They may have downloaded a top of the funnel guide but aren’t a sales-ready lead just yet, continue to send them some marketing content to increase their consideration levels and then push them over into the sales outreach journey mentioned above once ready.
3. Use Lead Scoring to Identify Leads in Your Database
If your flow of new leads is slowing down (not uncommon in this current climate), you could have a whole host of leads in your database ready for outreach, but how can you easily identify them? Rather than manually trawling through your contact records to see each prospect’s interactions and score, why not set up an automated journey that grabs all prospects with a specific score, sends them to the sales pipeline, creates an activity for a salesperson to follow-up and sends that rep a notification? The great thing about automation is that you can future proof it by choosing to include all current contacts and any that meet these criteria in the future, meaning that your flow of new leads should start to rise again.
Hopefully, after reading this, you’ll be keen to look into automation for your business and if you choose Zymplify we have over 40 pre-designed journey templates to get you started, so don’t feel that you need to come up with these solutions all by yourself – we’ve done the hard work for you.
Zymplify has been recognised by review site G2 as having the fastest implementation time in the marketing automation category. Our expert team can help set up automated prospecting, marketing and sales follow-up to leads within days.
Don’t forget, we’re offering you a free one-on-one consultation with our marketing experts to advise you on how to boost your business, even during this current climate. Book your consultation now!
