When someone fills out a form online,and it hits your CRM for the sales team to reach out to, we all know that thetime for response is the so critical.

Instead of relying on a salesperson toput in that effort, there is technology to ensure it happens.

In this episode I also cover nurturingyour prospects until they become customers.

And once they are a customer, you wantto have a technology driven system for generating referrals.

Episode 94 – Transcript

Welcome to another episode ofthe sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter.

This is episode 94 where inweek 19 of the show and this week is all about sales technology. And if you’renot big into technology or you don’t think technology should be around in yoursales process, don’t worry this week is for you to help you understand as amanager, as an owner, or even as a salesperson, where the technology for salesfits into the process. Fundamentally.

Always remember that technology should be a tool that makes everyone more effective, not a tool that gets in the way that makes everything harder.

Any kind of sales tech that you’re adding to your stack should be there to make sure that the sales people are performing better and better and producing better results and doing things that are more scalable, such that where you can add more people to your team [inaudible] get the same or better results instead of losing efficiencies.

A lot of times when you addmore salespeople to a team or new salespeople, then the results are actuallyworse overall or definitely worse per person. And that’s not what we want. Sowe want to use technology to help us get to a different level, higher level,and a scalable level of results.

Now in today’s episode I wantto talk about things that I’m going to put under the category of leadmanagement and or nurturing technology. So let’s start with lead management.And obviously you have your CRM. Hopefully if you’re listening to this, you’renot on spreadsheets.

If you are, get yourself a CRM, that would be the first thing and then we can talk about that. Now, keep this in mind. I have been successful and done a lot with sales reps, with spreadsheets, especially in the beginning when testing or building out [inaudible] a new process.

Don’t feel like you can’tclose sales unless you have a CRM, unless you have a fancy phone system, unlessyou have a dialler, unless you have all these things, what you need is a goodsolid sales process, a product or service that people actually want.

That’s a value and that youcan sell. And you can do a lot on spreadsheets anyway, so keep that in mind.But first off, you want to make sure that you get off spreadsheets as quicklyas possible. If you want a scalable business, like once you know it works andyou know where you want to go, then get yourself a CRM.

Now let’s talk about what Icall [inaudible] [inaudible] call. All right. What is that? And there’s a lotof companies that have [inaudible] technology for this and I’m not going to getinto the different companies, the different options that are out there.

If you do wantrecommendations, you can hit me up,Jason@cutterconsultinggroupdotcomyoucangoontheketerconsultinggroup.com websiteand fill out the form or find me on LinkedIn.

What I put under the categoryof instacart is this, if you’re buying leads or you have a form that’s on line,so you have a web form on your website or you’re buying leads where somebodyfilling out a form and then those leads are being posted to you, the momentthose hit your CRM, it hits your database.

That new lead is created,right? You want somebody to call on those?

I don’t have the stats, but Iknow there’s a lot of different ones depending on who you listened to, but thefundamental thing is the faster you can call that new lead, wow, they’re stillon your website when they just filled out the form, the sooner you can callthem, the better, the more likely you are to get them to answer the phone callbecause it’s still top of mind and beat out whoever else they are shoppingwith.

Because keep in mind, allright, and I don’t know if you’re like this, I know that I am. If I’m lookingfor something, let’s say its insurance, I’m going to fill out a form and thenI’m going to go to a different website.

I’m gonna fill out that formand I’m going to fill out that form and I’m going to fill out multiple ones ondifferent websites and then I’m going to get probably many calls and generallylike most people, whoever calls me first, if they’re professional, they’repolite, they have a solution for my problem, for what I’m looking to try tofill or solve or where I want to get to.

Then that’s who I’m gonna gowith. And so keep in mind that’s the same thing you want for yours. If you arebuying web leads that are posted into your system or you have a website wherepeople have filling out a form and it’s going into your CRM and you’re relyingon your sales reps to take the initiative to call them when they should, whichis right away, you will lose.

Most of the time sales repsmay call, it may not, you don’t know. It’s not predictable. And so that’s notthe way to run the business. Also, they may call it once but then won’t call itagain.

Do they leave a voicemail? Dothey not leave a voicemail? And so you want to put technology in place to takecare of that. Right? And so you want to use a system or have one built for you,which is what I’ve done in the past where as soon as that lead posts into yoursystem, it is instantly called on your phone system.

So you’re five, nine, yourRingCentral, whatever it is. Yeah, it’s instantly called. And that call isinstantly connected with one of your reps, so the rep has to do nothing. Youwant the rep to not make a decision, not to have any part to play in.

Whether that lead gets calledyou want it to be done instantly. That’s the way you win on those web leads.Even if they’re cheap. A lot of times you could buy really cheap web leads.Yeah, but the key is getting to them as fast as possible, being the first oneto reach out to that person and then also putting them into a nurture campaignwhere they’re going to get called again.

Maybe if they have an emailthey filled out, they’re going to go into that kind of nurture. So that’s thenext phase here I want to talk about in this episode is the nurture campaign.You want to make sure you don’t leave it up to your sales reps for how oftenwhen they’re being called, when they’re being emailed, what voicemails arebeing left.

You’ve got a build out whatyour ideal nurture process looks like to move your prospects out of thepipeline, out of the cold and into a sale, to being a client.

You’ve got a structure that,yeah, and then you want to put in technology in place to do those reach outs,whether it’s your hub spot email campaigns, it could be even Mail Chimp pluginthat you use to reach out. It could be your phone system that’s gonna dial orcall.

It could be something likephone burner that works well for this. And then, uh, process and technologylike drips who will send SMS messages and do a chat bot interaction with themor hello AI, where it’s going to engage with them, get them back on board withthem.

Now keep in mind this is not a paid product placement for any of these companies. They didn’t pay me to list [inaudible] them in here. However, I do have some relationships with some of them for helping them find new clients or get them set up. So if you do want more information, let me know.

But whoever you go with, youwant to make sure that you’re nurturing those leads. Yeah. You’re movingthrough an automated process and the number one key, like I said, is thatyou’re not relying on your sales reps to do it.

When you fall in that trap ofhoping or relying on your sales reps to follow up with their pipeline ornurture them appropriately, in some cases, you’re going to win some of your topreps that you’re going to have 80 20 rule. They are going to be effective.They’re going to go after it.

They’re going to call,they’re going to email, and they’re going to do everything you’d want. If itwas done by a robot, they’re going to do it because they’re hungry, they’redriven, they have a goal, they know why they’re there, they know what they wantto achieve and they see the value in their pipeline and follow-up.

Then you have the middle andthen you have the bottom set of your sales reps and that’s where you’re goingto lose and if you’re paying for leads, you’re buying leads. You need them toconvert both now in the moment, and then also lifetime in the pipeline.

That’s how the companyachieves a profitable cost per acquisition. So make sure you put in technology,what does that nurturing, and again, there’s simple, easy ways. Don’t beworried if you’re on spreadsheets and you’re buying form fills and you’ve gotthese leads and you’re not sure what to put in place.

Literally you can sign up forthings like mail chimp, which can do some of it. So don’t be bogged down andworried that you’ve got to have a fancy thing. And I must have salesforce andI’ve got to have five, nine and then I’ve got to build all these technology andI’ve got to have this and that.

Like that’s not alwaysnecessary. Now that’s where you’d want to get to. There’s some scalable systemslike that, but that’s not necessary to start and to build this in and to fillin those gaps and stop expecting your team to do what you think they should bedoing because they never will long term and not all of them. And then lastly,the other part of the nurturing campaign that I want to talk about wasreferrals.

Now once a client becomes aclient in your system, then what you want to do is you want to make sure thatyou have something in place to generate [inaudible] referrals from them.

You want to have some kind ofreferral advocate programs, some platform in place where instead of relying onyour salespeople to reach out for referrals where your customer service reps toreach out for referrals or account managers, whoever it is, you want to makesure that there’s something in place where the [inaudible] customer can easilyfind your company, send referrals and where you can nurture them.

You can send them [inaudible]notifications, messages, emails, phone calls, text, whatever that is to keeptop of mind with them so that they think about you, your company, your service,the experience you had, how amazing it was and how they want to tell theirfriends and family.

Whether you offer themcompensation or not. Maybe you don’t pay her for rewards. Maybe you do, maybeyou can. Maybe you can’t base on your industry no matter what. Even if youdon’t pay out referral compensation, you still want to make sure you have aplatform in place to stay top of mind and then it’s automated.

Don’t rely, again, this isthe theme. Don’t on your sales reps to call their pipeline of closed deals toask for referrals. They’re too busy moving onto the new leads you’ve bought forthem and are have given them and they have moved on.

They’re literally focused onthe here and now and they’re not worried about or thinking about [inaudible]how they can plant more seeds and get referrals. Of course, we would all lovethat. Every sales manager would love a team full of sales reps who care onlyabout referrals and that is their focus on planting those seeds every time theyclose the deal.

But most sales team culture [inaudible] isn’t built around that and isn’t focusing on that and it’s instead here and now, what deals have you closed today? What about this week? What about this month and how do I get you more leads that you can close and be effective and focused on that. So you want to make sure you have a referral platform.

There’s several of them outthere. The one that I recommend to people is called get the referral. Dependingon your industry can work really well. It’s very scalable from one on up, butmake sure you have something in there no matter what you do.

So don’t rely on your reps toask for referrals, take control of the company, put that in place, and thenhave that running in the background, nurturing it. I hope these things havehelped. I hope these areas have helped. And again, there’s simple processes youcan put in place.

Yeah, there’s complicatedprocesses you can put in place no matter what. Starts somewhere. Put somethingin place in any of these categories and get the pressure off of you expectingyour reps to do things that they may or may not do.

Some of them might do it.Yeah, but stop relying on it or expecting them to do it. Everyone’s human,they’re going to forget. Are they going to be sick where things are going tohappen or they’re just not going to want to do it?

So put the technology inplace to fill in those gaps. And again, if you have any questions, one of thesuggestions, reach out to me. I can also go to the cutter consulting group.comwebsite and see a list of the links from the show as well as the fulltranscript. And that’s it for another episode.

Always, remember thateverything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.