Leveraging opportunity, timing, and persistence is important because the marketing services sector is very cyclic; to make the most out of your opportunities, you will need to know how to connect, time your approach, overcome obstacles and understand the difference between healthy persistence and investing resources in lost causes.
In our extensive experience of working with marketing agencies all over the world, here are some of the things we have discovered.
Opportunity
To leverage emerging prospect opportunities, ensure you have a clear agenda and process for approaching your leads. Especially during the initial stages of contact, the last thing you want to do is spam your prospect with everything your business has to offer. Your approach should be centred on targeting the lead and working to convey how you can address their problem points, building trust and rapport in the process. Relationships are vital.
Timing
Another important factor is the timing – it is vital you develop an understanding of where and when your targeted prospect is ready, what stage of the sales funnel it is in.This way you know when you should or shouldn’t use outbound or inbound marketing to close your lead.
Persistence
Whilst persistence is a virtue and often requisite for business success, constantly bombarding prospects with prompts to buy from you is more likely to discourage them to follow through to the end of the sales funnel than it is to encourage a sale. This approach is essentially an example of being a “pushy salesman”, something that is not renowned for its effectiveness in the world of sales. Whilst persistence can help you win many battles, the onus is on you to assess when the time is right to chase your prospect and when the time is right to abandon a lost cause.
Naturally, the level of detail inherent within your sales funnel (such as an outline of what constitutes a “marketing qualified lead”) can directly affect the sales process.
