Generating leads from your website can be an expensive and time-consuming task. As your marketing team passes leads to the sales team, what’s your follow-up strategy? Here are a few tips for maximizing your web leads:
Follow Up In 5 Minutes
A study by InsideSales.com found that salespeople who follow up on a web lead within 5 minutes are 900% more likely to convert it into an opportunity. Whatever your process is for passing leads to salespeople, keep this super-productive 5-minute window in mind.
Set Up An Alert System
To follow up within the critical 5 minute window, your system should immediately send a Website Alert to the Sales Rep as soon as a prospect visits your website. Even if the prospect doesn’t request information, the Sales Rep will still want to follow up to find out what prompted the website visit.
Ask Great Questions
When you follow up with a phone call, be prepared to ask questions that help you understand the person’s buying motivations, initiatives, and challenges. NEVER start a conversation by asking, “Do you have any questions I can answer?” Instead, find out what the prospect is looking for. What prompted him to visit your site? What is he trying to accomplish? How does he envision your solution could help?
Have The Right Call To Action
What will you ask for at the end of the call? If the website visitor can influence the decision, perhaps an appointment or demo is the next step. If the visitor would be more of a coach than a decision-maker, then it may be more appropriate to build rapport and ask for an introduction to a senior manager. In either case, make sure you know who you’re talking to before you get too far into the conversation.
Use Social Proof
If prospects are on your website, they are probably in “information-gathering mode.” Therefore, they may not have much urgency to return your calls and emails. When prospects aren’t responding, use a tactic called Social Proof, which is similar to name-dropping. For example, when leaving a voice mail you could mention a similar company you’re working with and entice the prospect to call you back to hear more. You could also name-drop other executives from his company who have also visited your website or spoken to your company in the past.
Use LinkedIn
Immediately after your initial conversation, send a connection request to the prospect. If your initial follow-up call goes to voice mail, leave a message and then immediately contact them via LinkedIn. To learn other ways to use LinkedIn during the sales process, download our free LinkedIn Guide.
Create a Lead Nurturing Campaign
You won’t be able to connect with every web lead, and a lot of them won’t be ready to take the next step. In these cases, use lead nurturing and set up an email drip that sends relevant, helpful information to educate them and keep you top-of-mind.