Welcome to your weekly roundup for September 1-8. This week we have some valuable thought leadership from Mark Roberge, Tiffani Bova and Tamara Schenk. Scroll down to learn about voicemail strategies that actually work, owning the customer experience, and holding sales managers accountable for the effective use of sales tools and resources by the sales force.
How to Leave Sales Voicemails People Actually Want to Respond To
Mark Roberge wants you to quit it with the torturous monotony of unpersonalized voicemails. They’re an insult to all the hard work marketing has done to nurture leads, and they ruin a perfectly good opportunity. So, how do you actually leave a voicemail that warrants a call-back?
Use a context-oriented approach. Be educational. Be insightful. Personalize your messaging to the buyer’s context. Make it feel like engaging with the salesperson is the natural next step. And treat the series like a dialogue. Even though the buyer may not respond, they’re probably listening.
What that looks like…
[Tuesday at 9 a.m.]: “Hi John. This is Mark from HubSpot. I noticed you downloaded our ebook on Facebook marketing best practices. I took a look at your company’s Facebook page and had a few suggestions for improving it. I’ll email those to you now. Give me a call if you want to discuss.”
[Thursday at 3 p.m.]: “Hi John. Mark again from HubSpot. Great news! I found a customer of ours in your industry who had enormous success with their Facebook marketing strategy. I am going to send you that case study now to give you an idea of the specific tactics they used and the results you should expect. Give me a call if you would like to review it together.”
[Monday at 12 p.m.]: “Hi John. Mark at HubSpot. I actually ran that customer of ours in your industry through our Marketing Grader tool and compared their presence on social media to yours. They scored an 87. You scored a 54. I am going to send you those reports now. It turns out there is a lot more opportunity outside of Facebook in the broader social media area for you. Call me if you want to walk through the report.”
Remember to…
1) Understand your buyers context by reviewing how they found you. Look in your marketing automation to track their digital fingerprints. You can judge their interests by what they interacted with the most.
2) Share content related to their interests. Tailor the content to their role, business size and industry. Hammer away with your context-oriented, educational, personalized messaging.
3) If you still get nothing, try the “going negative” voicemail, a strategy Roberge attributes to his dad, Rick. It goes something like this…
“Hi John. Mark at HubSpot. I left you a few voicemails with suggestions and best practices on Facebook marketing. I have not heard back from you. I am going to assume that Facebook marketing is no longer a priority for you this year. Give me a call if it ever becomes a priority again.”
Mark says this approach, in his experience, has the highest callback rate. If you’ve done your job adding value, why wouldn’t the buyer come to their senses?
*This is a summary of How To Leave Sales Voicemails People Actually Want to Respond To by Mark Roberge.
How To Handle Everyone Owning Customer Experience
True or false—everybody at a company owns customer experience. The answer, according to Salesforce’s Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist, Tiffani Bova, is both.
While it’s undeniable everyone in the company—from marketing to product, sales to leadership—needs to play their part to keep the customer happy, “if everybody owns a tiny piece then it’s difficult for anyone to take responsibility, or for that matter, accountability, for actual measurable results.”
Here’s how Bova outlines we mechanize and measure the customer experience:
– Measure with NPS, or Net Promoter Score. This index measures how likely customers are to recommend your product to others. Bova suggests collecting this through a short survey.
– When you have a singular understanding of your customer’s satisfaction with your company, you can enable everybody to “do that’s right by the customer”
– Go beyond metrics: leaders should consider monetary incentives beyond sales to reward everybody in the company
*This is a summary of How To Handle Everyone Owning Customer Experience by Tiffani Bova.
Focus on World-Class, Part 4: The Linchpin Role
Are your sales managers held accountable for the effective use of sales tools and resources by the sales force? 87% of world-class performers are; 42% are not—which category do you fit into? CSO Insights research analyst Tamara Schenk outlines the role sales managers should play in enabling their sales force.
Communicate the sales strategy. This drives engagement and reinforcement. If your team knows what they’re doing and what’s in it for them, statistically, they’re more likely to perform.
Leverage the tools and resources that are provided. The best managers know from their own experience that productivity drives performance. And to enable productivity, the whole team (themselves included) needs to be using the CRM, leveraging playbooks, messaging guidelines, taking relevant training sessions, etc.
Proactively collaborate with sales enablement. This ensures effective delivery of services. World-class sales managers know they must test new initiatives themselves to determine their effectiveness. They volunteer for pilot groups, articulate challenges felt by enablement and adjust as they go.
Schenk makes it clear “these behaviors doesn’t happen by accident.” Sales manager enablement and coaching programs are necessary to prepare for sales managers this challenging role.
*This is a summary of Focus on World-Class, Part 4: The Linchpin Role by Tamara Schenk.
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