9 Ways to Keep Leads and Prospects Engaged
Sometimes the usual phone call or email is just the complete wrong way to follow-up with leads. While tempting, keep in mind that you may catch prospects at a bad time, lead them to feeling like they’re “being sold,” or have them ask you to stop attempting altogether. How can you spark action and interest into that lead without a hard sell? Simple! Here are 9 types of information you can send to your leads to keep their attention:
Recorded Webinars
Webinars are a convenient way of educating a large audience with minimal costs associated. What is also great about them is that they can be recorded! If you’re going to deliver a great presentation that highlights your expertise, make the most of it by saving the recording and using it as a sales tool for future leads and inquiries.
Recorded Sales Demonstrations
In sales, you may come across a situation where you have to deliver multiple demos for the same company before you can close the deal. While every point of contact is an opportunity to get closer to the lead, make sure they don’t forget you (and can show you off to colleagues) by sending them a recorded demo. That way, they can refer back to it at their convenience and never forget the greatest parts of your company.
Digital Company Brochures
If you have a fantastic printed brochure, turn the original PDF file of it into an electronic sales tool! It’s a great way to sum up all of your company’s benefits and services into one well-designed package, and your leads can then save it on their desktop. Be sure to share this via a software that handles electronic fulfullment so that you have a history record of sending it.
eBooks
Educate your audience with an enticing eBook that includes interesting facts about your audience’s pain points, and the solutions to those problems. You can subtly promote your services and products within them, but have this eBook act as a reminder to all that you’re the answer to their problems.
Videos
Position yourself as the expert by giving tips, best practices, and a summary of services in 1-2 minute video clips. Send this along to your prospects as a conversation starter, and let them get to know you through creative videos.
Podcasts
If you have team members who are fantastic speakers, podcasts may be the best approach to take when trying to capture their knowledge. You can get away with longer podcast sessions as opposed to videos because the listener can listen in the car, at their desk over lunch, or on their morning run. Invite educational guests and keep folks coming back monthly for more knowledge!
Infographics
If you have a great graphic design team, and some captivating statistics, highlight both of these resources in an infographic. They’re interesting, fun to look at, and share-worthy. You can share information about the industries your target audiences are in, how you have increased success for clients, or how you’re keeping up with new technologies.
Service and Product Sell Sheets
Perhaps your leads don’t need the entire brochure, all they may want is a one-pager that goes over key benefits of one service or product they may be interested in. Think real estate; they’ve mastered the 1-page sell. What’s great about having electronic sales sheets of your various offerings is that you can send a mixture of them depending on what your lead needs, and not clutter up their mind with too many ancillary services that don’t suit them.
Surveys
This sales tool is beneficial for two big reasons. If you deliver a survey with weighted questions, you can customize the end results of what the survey would say based on the lead’s answers. It also helps you qualify the lead in finding out what type of offerings would best fit their needs.
The bottom line?
The sales process doesn’t always have to be direct. Take more of an inbound marketing approach and let them come to you. Sometimes the best way to keep the conversation going is to send educational and informative materials that will captivate your leads and get them excited about what you have to say so when they are ready, they come to the expert first (pssst…that’ll be you!)
