Almost every account manager is horrified by it, cold acquisition! Why? It takes a lot of time, eats up energy and it almost never produces immediate results. It is important that you build rapport with potential clients to convince them of your added value. This cannot be achieved with one phone call; building a rapport with customers is important here. Never cold acquisition again to attract new customers to your business? Then free up 4 minutes of your time and read on quickly.
Decision makers
Where you used to deal with one decision maker, that has changed quite a bit in recent years. Increasingly, we are dealing with multiple people when making a decision. Therefore, it is important that you identify the decision maker(s) first before contacting potential customers. How to do that? Take a look at LinkedIn’s business platform. This platform is now used by almost every account manager to make the first contact. Did you find the name of a contact? The name of a contact will increase your chances of being connected by the receptionist. Account managers who go for quick successes choose to pick up the phone right away. Are you going for long-term success? Then choose the approach below.
Linking through LinkedIn
Many account managers make the mistake of telling immediately what they can offer without listening to the customer demand. It is important that you find out the information needs of customers and respond accordingly. A good account manager does not come and get something directly, but comes and brings something to build a relationship. What you bring then? Take a look at a decision maker’s activities on LinkedIn. What is someone concerned with? What topics did the belisser characterize as interesting? These are all signals you can respond to. Has anyone responded a lot to posts to increase a company/person’s online visibility? For example, as a first introduction, send a
free website analysis
with a number of areas for improvement. In this way, you don’t state what you have to offer, but show what issues you can answer.
Maintaining contact
As quickly as first contact is made, someone can forget about you again. It is important to stay on the radar of your target audience. How best to do that? For example, by distributing relevant content. Don’t immediately send all available content on a particular topic, but break it down into small chunks. Why? It reads easily and you can achieve different contact moments this way. Why different touch points are important? Because on average you need 10 contact moments to achieve an appointment. Eventually you will see that the cold contact becomes warmer and warmer and the conversations become more substantive.
Make content available in an accessible way
Many companies make white papers available in exchange for a name and e-mail address. To maximize reach, it makes more sense to make content available to everyone. Indeed, chances are that someone will drop out when it is mandatory to leave certain contact information. One possible way is to regularly share business blogs on your website to stay on the radar of customers. Customer contact information should not be enforced, but earned. When someone volunteers his/her contact information, it is more likely that they are genuinely interested in your services.
Never cold acquisition again
Have you spoken to someone multiple times? Then it’s time to ask if you might give him/her a call. In most cases, you get a direct phone number and don’t have to make an effort to bypass the receptionist. The conversation with the decision-maker(s) will be a lot warmer. In addition, it becomes easier to make an appointment with someone. When someone knows who you are and what you have to offer, it becomes easier to sell. You will see that the appointments you make are of better quality than if you achieve an appointment through cold acquisition.
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