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June 23, 2020 |
You can still increase your sales even during this COVID-19 crisis.
What has the COVID-19 done to your business?
It’s not just your business but every other business out there has been converted from physical to digital in full form.
With the number of lockdowns and work from home measures being incorporated, every brand is being forced to sit at home and conduct their business.
The struggle is real when it comes to B2B companies like yours where leads are highly dependent on the success of the business.
Instead of looking at it as a loss deal, what if we told you that there is a way to continue your business and succeed better?
We are confident this measure can help you which is why for further details you need to continue reading more of its existence and why we are suggesting it.
In this article, you will cover:
Businesses had gone digital but not everyone was still in the online phase.
Today you will still find brands who are still using the physical platforms to engage and sell to their prospects.
When COVID-19 stepped in, the world of business was transformed. For those brands who operated online, there wasn’t much loss to be encountered but for those who depend highly on the physical platforms, it was a question of worry.
Interesting Read : When Is the 3rd Party Fulfillment Outsourcing Smart for Ecommerce and B2B Businesses?
COVID-19 isn’t going to go away soon, and with the curfews, lockdowns, and minimal efforts of stepping out, your business needs to get on a solution that can help them conduct the same workflow like it used to be.
One thing that is clear, with COVID-19 staying for long, it would be a wise decision to transform your lead generation activities online. There is a medium of live chat that will help engage with your prospects better and help you close deals when done right.
While we think that COVID-19 is here to put everyone at risk, you might be surprised to witness how slowly it is converting businesses more towards the digital stage.
It even provides a good number of opportunities to get started which you can see in our next category.
When was the last time you spoke in a more human manner with your prospects? Selling was always about the same scripts and the focus on achieving targets which is why closing sales deals took longer than expected. However COVID-19 is changing that. With everything happening online, this crisis is converting the way you speak to buyers.
You have just one medium to sell to your prospect which is the online medium and it is important that you make the medium more like a human engagement. This is exactly what COVID-9 is transforming in your business, increasing the volumes of human interactions for better business growth.
COVID-19 has eliminated the need for what your business is all about, it is letting you transform why your business should even be invested upon. You see the change, instead of you selling your brand, the focus here is on how can your brand value prospects better. This is a better way of selling because previously what is being sold is how great a brand is and how amazing the solution is, now that is not the case.
Interesting Read : Why B2B’s need to know about ‘Buyer Enablement’?
There are thousands of brands online and you need to be the best which can only happen when you sell your product on the basis of exposing the value it offers. Conduct research, get feedback, understand what your prospects are, and enhance your product accordingly. This will help you sell much better than you are doing currently.
While everything is going digital in COVID-19 why should you stay behind to show more human communication? Applications such as Zoom and Google Hangouts have made it easier to connect with prospects via face to face. You can capture prospects and conduct more such meetings which can help to close deals quicker. This is a unique concept which you cannot miss.
While others might be focusing on engaging with leads via chat, you can do the same thing except to take it one step higher, you can conduct a live face to face meeting where your prospect will be able to see you and interact just like how they would in a physical form.
The business world is going digital which means that your next sales or marketing strategy needs to be aligned according to that. For instance, you need to start investing in tools that can help you capture leads online or make it easier for you to send email campaigns with a click of a button and more. This takes place when you engage with the tools technology has provided.
These tools can make your life easier in the digital world, for instance with a callback software you can connect with your leads quickly and there are tools that can help you connect instantly, for instance, Limecall. It can help you conduct conversations with your prospects in less than 28 seconds or schedule the calls according to your prospects. This will help in capturing leads quicker.
Ensure that you are investing in digitized tools because that is what will make your business activities more efficient.
COVID-19 is transforming your business for the best, what you would do occasionally has now become a dependency because that is the best way to sell to your prospects.
So how can you sell during such a crisis?
Source BCG
The above four R’s will help you sell better during this COVID-19 crisis.
The most important factor here is to respond to your prospects. Since they are in the lockdown, there will be more chances of them viewing your website and engaging with you. Don’t miss such opportunities and immediately engage with them. Continue to monitor prospects actions and work accordingly.
You can’t start operating during a COVID-19 crisis without a plan. You need to start building a plan that can help you tackle this problem for the next few months. Work on your solutions, enhance your features, plan how you will exhibit your solution in front of your prospects. Also, modify and tweak your pricing or any other changes accordingly so that your prospects understand an investment in your brand is worth their time and money.
Interesting Read : What’s the new way of doing B2B Telemarketing?
Your next plan is to fit everything accordingly so that planning the long term takes place easily. Immediately fit in all that you have planned so that you are aware of what your next actions are. For instance, if you wish to see a rise in your conversion rates by 50% you need to work on how you can do that such as investment in certain tools or changing the strategies and more. This will help you lay down your foundation better to continue with your business.
Now whatever you have planned which contains everything such as aligning your strategies for introducing a new feature or anything else will come into action. You now will have an answer or rather a solution to manage your business during such a situation. Whatever optimization is needed to conduct it because that is what will help you in your business to grow better. Work accordingly and make the changes as stated.
All of the above tactics that you have witnessed, can be conducted efficiently when you have one ultimate solution for it to be conducted. As stated earlier, there is one solution that can help your business to grow well and be efficient in its workflows hence impacting your sales numbers.
The use of ‘Conversational Marketing’.
Conversational marketing is a refined way of communicating with your prospects online. It uses the medium of live chats especially chatbots to engage with your prospects.
The process works as an automated one where when a prospect starts to engage with the communication will take place according to the prospect’s answers.
Let’s understand this better with an example:
So say you are right now on Facebook and you see an ad of a brand selling great clothes and jewellery. What you do is you get in touch with that brand with the communication medium listed which is mostly messaging.
When you start to chat, you have the options listed above such as:
This communication will continue to go further depending on your actions. So basically if you have requested to see a dress you will find questions related to it.
How easy is this?
Imagine the advantages you are receiving:
This process is important and why it should matter to you is what you will learn in our next category.
Do you know how these top companies are staying on top always?
Take an example of the top companies who are well established, any of them, and start to observe them.
They grew so big even before the digitization was even present.
How did that happen? Even social media wasn’t much of a craze then right?
The answer is through the medium of real communications.
The process was so easy, just talking to prospects and understanding their needs and solving them. But as time grew the world of online and digital started to boom quicker. Slowly these real conversations moved to a more digitized platform.
From catering to one unique prospect, it went to capturing tons of them and throwing the same scripts to all the people.
This is what led to the fall of multiple brands and you need to understand that this can happen to you as well. Today your prospects are not worried about what your solution is, they want you to convey the benefits of your solution in a manner that doesn’t look like you’re being sales focused.
Interesting Read : How to Develop, Refine and Optimize Your B2B Sales Process in 2019?
How many times have you contacted your prospects, only to hear the usual statements of not interested or disconnected calls and more?
You need to understand that you can achieve to remain on top always, all you need to do is get real and get human.
Conversational marketing matters which is why you need to understand how it can shape your business for the best.
Conversational marketing matters which is why you need to understand how it can shape your business for the best.
The business world has grown to become more digitized in its engagement with its prospects but there is one thing that multiple of your prospects expects from you, human communication. Human communication has gone lost in the crowd which is why via the method of conversational marketing this communication channel needs to be brought back.\
With every automated process of communication, you can engage with your prospect just like how you would if you were to speak to them face to face which adds a bonus of success in your business growth.
When you know what your prospects are looking for and what they do when they engage with a chatbot, you tend to grasp a lot of information such as their behaviour patterns, what are they looking for, what are they expecting, and much more. This can help you capture such vital information and align your selling strategies accordingly.
For instance, when you realize that your prospects first would like immediate assistance to view your brand, you would walk in that direction.
Conversational marketing is a great process because it lets you capture the right leads always. For instance, say if your leads are hot leads, your immediate assistance at that moment can convert their decisions into a confirmed purchase hence improving your lead count and conversion rates.
Instead of you having to conduct the longer sales process which is capturing leads and then contacting them and then nurturing them, the conversational marketing process cuts short this process for you. With the help of communication, the process can help convert your potential prospects into sales leads.
You are aware that if you want to excel better than your competitors, you need to sell smarter and faster, and conversational marketing gives you just that. Imagine, when your prospects are looking at your website, and suddenly you start to cater to them, when your prospects find what they are looking for with your help, they would obviously want to continue investing in what you have to offer them, wouldn’t they?
Your sales pipeline helps you determine exactly where your prospects are in the sales funnel. This is important because it helps you to take the necessary actions. Now when you practice the same process with conversational marketing, the chances of your sales pipeline tend to grow.
For instance, say you have a warm lead that still requires nurturing and when you cater to them at the right time, you are opening the opportunity for them to move from a prospect to a lead quicker.
The strategy is simple and straightforward for you to conduct conversational marketing for your business.
You don’t start conversing with your prospects the minute they land up on your website. You need to hit them at the right time. When you notice that your prospects are looking at your website and are scrolling through each page, that is when you need to strike so that for any of their doubts, they can engage with you and get it clarified.
For instance, say that a prospect is on your feature page and is clicking through each of them to understand it better, when you pop up to help them, they will engage with you to learn more about your features that is when your engagement with your potential prospects becomes more fruitful.
As stated earlier, when you understand what your prospects are looking for, engaging with them becomes easier. Remember your assistance should help your prospects to find what they are looking for. This is important because on the basis of that catering your prospects would become easier.
For instance, when you understand that your prospects are on your pricing page and are checking the packages you offer, your engagement would be related to that and you will be guiding them on the same.
Now that you understand what your prospects are looking for, you will be able to assist them better as stated in the second point. Always remember when you’re able to solve the issue of your prospects, that is when they start to trust you because they realize that you want to genuinely help them. When this happens, they are bound to invest in your solution with minimal efforts of selling from your side. The key here is to understand what your prospects are looking for and focusing on helping them find it.
For instance, if your prospects are looking at an article of yours where you have written about how conversational marketing can help them, you can start to show them suggestions related to the same topic so that they can enhance their information on the same.
Now that you understand what needs to be done, you need to work the exact same way on repeat. Continue to let your prospects engage with your solution, understand what they are looking for, and assist them with your suggestions.
In 2020, the selling medium needs to be smart and efficient, if you are going to sell anything and everything to your prospects, they won’t stay even a minute longer.
Conversational marketing is helping you sell better to your prospects without the extra struggle.
When your prospects scroll your website, ensure that you try converting their attention into getting into a meeting with you. This will help speed up the process of selling and help you to close deals quicker. When your prospects are viewing a page let’s say your pricing page, they will have a few doubts.
At that time when you enter in and ask them if they would like to get on a quick call with you to learn better, they would accept it. This will help you guide them towards what they are looking for and help you close more deals quicker and that too on the first day itself. ‘’If an SDR can schedule a meeting with a prospect the same day the lead comes in, the opportunity close rate is 3X higher than if they connected with that lead 48 hours later.’’
Being human in your conversation isn’t enough, there are other opportunities that can help you bring the human side from the other side of your business waiting to engage with your prospects. You could do this by adding a profile photo of your agent, with the full name and even their designation. You could frame statements in the live chat interactions where it sounds how a human speaks casually.
It is not necessary that you have to conduct all your interactions from a bot, you could let a bot handle a few chats in the beginning and the rest could be handled manually. This will ensure that the human touch is being retained.
When you are aware that a prospect is worth your time and effort, don’t wait much, get into a conversation with them. The more you engage with them the better you can resolve their issues and get them to invest in your solution. With the prospect’s actions and what activities it conducts, you have it all covered in your sales funnel details, this will help you strike your engagements with them more efficiently.
Continue to observe your prospects and frame your engagements accordingly.
As stated earlier, not all your prospects are going to be the ideal deal for your business but there is no harm in engaging with them all to find the right ones. When you are aware that a prospect has appeared on your page more often, or are looking at your solution and digging in deeper, it is important that you engage with them right away.
The more engagements you conduct the better are your chances of growing a room of sale sleds being captured. Also, for those leads that are cold or are not sure yet to invest in your solution, engaging with them can help to convert them from cold to warm leads and finally to a hot lead.
Another reason to invest in conversational marketing is that it helps to ease the communication with your and your prospects. With such a simpler solution, there is no need for your prospects to wait for any clarifications, with such a quick engagement medium, their queries will be resolved. This will continue to keep your prospects happy as who wouldn’t prefer immediate assistance?
It’s time you too get started as well.
Source: WPForms
WPForms offers conversational Forms add on. It helps you to create conversational contact forms in an easy and cost-effective manner. This application is best suited for beginners. You can get started here.
Source: WPForms
You are aware of Facebook Messenger Bots. Multiple brands use it and it is easy to get started on it as well. You can get started for free on it if you would require the need of a developer to set it up or you could use the assistance of a paid software. This application would be ideal for advanced users.
Source: WPForms
Botfuel does a great job of letting its users build as well as managing a conversational chatbot with the help of your database details. It also helps to provide analytics so that you are aware of the performance of your chatbot. The application is well suited for mid-level users. You can get started on this application for free and you will also receive a limit of 5000 messages a month.
You are aware of what conversational marketing is and every other information needed to help you trust it.
Why don’t you take a look at the companies you have incorporated and the results they achieved?
Source: Impact
RapidMiner eliminated its traditional forms and invested in a chatbot live chat communication. They were receiving multiple traffic and hence they were sure that they would like to invest only the leads who are valuable and can matter to their brand.
Upon using conversational marketing tactics, they grew for the best. They managed to capture 4,000 leads and added $1 million in their sales pipeline. The best part, they were also able to cater to cold leads as well.
Spring focuses on delivering a personalized shopping experience for its users. The way they conduct the communication is so simple and easy that it makes users experience online shopping a better one.
Source: Impact
Look at the questions, it’s so specific and to the point and wastes no time in assisting the prospects. This ensures that communication takes place smoothly.
Source: Impact
This brand created the first chatbots on Facebook messenger. It is simple and provides two options which are Talk to support and Order flowers. Due to this, this brand was able to extend its outreach further and capture more prospects. 1800 flowers received 70% of new prospects via this automated chat platform.
Source: WPForms
Plum is a brand that helps businesses find the right resource. As you can see in the image above their chatbot is pretty simple. They ask the relevant questions and guide the prospect towards their solution. The statements too are what a human would converse like adding the touch.
Source: WPForms
When it comes to health not everyone is comfortable with asking certain questions. They would prefer more privacy which is why HealthTap helps to conduct that process. Healthtap lets you engage with doctors 24/7. It uses the help of Facebook messenger as seen in the image above to cater to its new and existing leads. For any query to be resolved they share answers from doctors who have answered similar questions in the past. This helps the patients to have better clarity and understanding.
Source: WPForms
Sephora is a cosmetic brand that helps its clients to book a service with them. It uses the help of chatbots to get it done. The process is super simple. As the image above illustrates, all you need to do is choose the book a service option and enter your pin code. The chatbot will show you the stores near you so that you can go ahead and decide which you would like to book a service for.
Source: WPForms
This brand is a real estate based company where it helps its clients to either help buy a property or mortgage for a better deal. The process is simple as you can see in the image above, you just need to choose the option when you are on the website and it will ask relevant questions according to your choice then forth.
Conversational marketing is the ideal solution for how COVID 19 is transforming your business to the best. With such an effective solution, continuing your business and ensuring that your sales figures are not at risk is taken care of.
Before you can head out to apply this practice, let’s take a quick summary of what you had covered in this article:
So, when are you planning to invest in such a medium? What are your views on this?
A writer by choice. Leena has served her passion for writing mainly into the B2B marketplaces.