4 Ways To Successfully Prospect Inbound Leads

Abe Dearmer

May 20, 2021

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6 min read

CRM

Since inbound leads are prospects who have already shown interest in your company, they make a huge asset for sales reps. But not everyone who makes an enquiry with you will be a perfect fit for your brand and vice-versa. This is why employing effective methods to prospect inbound leads is a great way to make the most of the given opportunity.

Inbound leads can be effectively turned from prospects into customers, but if your reps are still following over-used cold call scripts, then you're definitely not going to get anywhere! Ditch the generic elevator pitch and focus more on customised conversations with context and the prospect's specific interests.

Here are some impressive tactics and strategies to successfully prospect inbound leads.

Conduct the required research

Invest time in doing a few cycles of research on your inbound leads so that you can find out every detail about their company, industry, pain points, challenges, and more. Most sales reps do this by checking the lead's company website but often forget to utilise an important area the digital age has offered us - Social media platforms.

Going through your inbound lead's social media channels can help extend your knowledge about what is happening in their company as well as their life at the moment. Follow the lead and the company they work at on various platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to know more about their interests by tracking what they like and share.

Monitoring technology and lead intelligence

Having the right information on your prospect can help you customise their experience with your brand and stay engaged in several prospecting cycles. This is because you can get detailed context about their interest in your business.

By using lead intelligence, you can also find out how your inbound lead found you, what channels led them to your website, what pages did they visit or search for, what other means of contact did they make, and more. It is also important to know when an inbound lead engages with your brand.

Just because you haven't heard back from your prospect, does not mean they aren't still interested in you. This is where monitoring technology can help understand when a lead revisits your website, engages with a message or email, searches for you, mentions your brand, and more.

Treat the whole company as a lead

While it may be a particular person reaching out to you and showing interest in your brand, it is imperative that you consider the whole company and work on them instead of just that one point of contact. This is because the person in touch with you may not be the main decision-maker for the company, though they were instructed to contact your brand by someone who can make the decisions.

Choose a simple engagement strategy that works on the whole company and not just your contact so you can properly align your value proposition with these inbound leads. To make this strategy work, you can use the following steps.

Get in touch with the company's decision-maker-

If the inbound lead contacting you is an associate in their company, research the senior posts and find out who the VP of that department or other relevant person in a higher position is. Let them know that you have been in touch with their department and are undertaking queries regarding your products or services.

You must also inform the lead that you have intimated the department head of your communication and would like them to join in on the conversation when ready.

Communicate with context-

Instead of using the same cookie-cutter script for all inbound leads, try a more personalised approach. Don't give them the same old elevator pitch and instead offer help in more specific ways. This can be done by using lead intelligence and helps in building a trusted advisor relationship between you and your lead.

Build off of your previous calls-

With each call or communication you make with your prospect, make sure to build off of your last one so that you can further the process and not let it get stagnated. Use each interaction as a way to add value for their brand and move towards a sale.

Always analyse the results

Whether you have a small team of sales reps or a big one, you will eventually accumulate several prospecting attempts (successful and unsuccessful ones). Having the tools to track and analyse these attempts can help you change the results and adapt or alter your strategy based on this analysis. By adding science to inbound lead prospecting, you can easily analyse the results and keep track of how each prospect is faring.

Choosing a Customer Relationship Management software can help you track leads and prospecting strategies with automated features, perfect for handling inbound leads. Since these leads are already further down the sales funnel, using buyer-specific interests can help provide context and make the right starting point - all easily available and accessible with a CRM system.

Call FIVE CRM now to know more about our feature-rich and scalable software perfect for small to large businesses.

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