Adjusting your sales pitch to include a sense of urgency can increase your close rates dramatically.

When you get a hot lead, the first thing you want to do is call or email the prospect and close the sale. It’s fun and exciting to reach out and make the case why your product or service is the perfect fit for your customer. However, calling without a plan can be a recipe for disaster. Planning ahead, especially with the strategy of creating urgency and a deadline for your prospect is often the best strategy.

Time and again, adding urgency to a transaction is the best way to get people motivated to act. Business owners and sales people take this into account when trying to persuade others in their call to action. There are several different techniques to add urgency.

The most common way to add urgency is to use the pricing mechanism. After a certain date the price will forever go up and the buyer will never have the opportunity to buy this cheaply again. That is the idea behind the “SALE” signs that you see everywhere each time you go to the mall.

Another common method is to use the idea of scarcity. The salesperson states that there are only a few of these items left. For example, there are only a few models of this car left on the lot. If you wait to buy they will be all gone.

Lastly, create a competitive dynamic. Real estate brokers will often use this technique pointing out that if you don’t buy now, they have another buyer preparing an offer at a higher price that will outbid you. This creates urgent demand to act before the object of your desire is purchased by someone else.

At Lead411, we pride ourselves in providing you with accurate and timely information so you can reach out at the right time and create a sense of urgency to a qualified prospect. If you would like to start a free trial to learn more, Click Here.

The best sales people are those who listen, instead of dominating the conversation. You’ll discover the needs of your customer, dispel any concerns they have, and build a positive relationship that keeps people coming back to your company again and again. Ready to improve your sales with the simple act of listening? Here are a few tips to get your started.

Benefits of listening in business

Most customers buy because they have a need that your product fulfills. But pitching the product and going for the close as soon as possible leaves potential customers feeling pressured. Instead of doing all the talking, ask some good questions and listen to the answers. You’ll get these three amazing results.

• Assess needs
• Listening and asking questions gives you a fantastic opportunity to discover your customer’s needs. In fact, research from Sales Benchmark Index found that a sale attempt without taking time to discover needs is 73% less likely to close successfully. Learning the customer’s needs helps you sell them a product that fits their needs perfectly.
• Dispel concerns
• Taking the time to ask questions creates a clear picture of customer concerns. Addressing those concerns after listening shows the customer you care about them, and lets you dispel those concerns before the customer walks away.
• Build a relationship
• When clients feel like you really listened to them, a relationship forms. Clients who are happy with their sales representative are likely to recommend your business to friends and return for more items in the future.

Where do I start?

Ready to start listening? First, take a look in the mirror. Assess your sales technique and figure out how you can turn your statements into questions. Ask yourself how you’ll learn about your customer’s needs, and put your plan into action. Don’t let your sales drop because you’re not listening. Build a better business today by asking questions, listening to your customer’s needs, and getting them exactly what they want. Lead411 provides insight so you can be informed with the right conversation topics. It may be a recent funding, a new technology adoption or a new executive hire. Whatever the sales trigger, we have the platform to get you selling smarter to prospects that are open to a conversation.

Salesforce will soon be announcing the end of a partnership with Data.com.  Salesforce acquired Data.com (previously known as Jigsaw), the crowd-sourced data provider, back in 2010 but the relationship has been rocky from the beginning.  Salesforce support chat has mentioned that they will continue to sell data.com until August of 2017 but the partnership will end in August of 2018. It is unclear why the relationship is dissolving but we have some insight as to what could have been the cause of the break-up.

Inaccurate Crowd-Sourced Data  

Data.com’s business model is highly dependent on users adding, exchanging and updating data.  This has lead to a large percentage of their database filled with old and inaccurate data, as the data.com community could easily upload a list of bad data in order to get points for additional export.  This rinse with “dirty water” and repeat process, created a snowball effect of bad data that was essentially unreliable and unusable.

In addition, Salesforce also advertised the data.com add-on as a data cleansing solution so customers could automatically update and enrich accounts within the Salesforce CRM, in attempt to solve the legacy enterprise data management struggle that so many of their customers have.  You see the pattern here, as this led to the same result of poor data to append with.

Bulk List Providers are the Dinosaurs of Lead Generation

10 years ago, when Data.com was known as Jigsaw, outbound email campaigns consisted of a shotgun approach, sending large blasts to a widely defined target audience in hopes of hitting a few prospects to follow up with.  It wasn’t uncommon to get a 30% bounce rate with these types of campaigns as email providers changed the way they handled spam indicators.

That approach has morphed into the complete opposite end of the marketing spectrum.  Today, companies want more and more data within specific targets.  This account-based sales/marketing approach has led to the emergence of sales/marketing intelligence platforms.  Companies can provide sales triggers on timely data, so sales professionals can reach out with relevant and accurate information, during times when prospects are more likely to buy solutions and services.

The best sales/marketing intelligence platforms authenticate and verify the data several times with several sources, and do so internally, to preserve the integrity and accuracy of the data.  Salesforce banked on the crowd sourcing of data in the cloud and it backfired but as #386 on the fortune 500 list, we can bet on Salesforce continuing to try and make it easier for their users to feed and clean their CRM.

As for users of Data.com, they will need to find another data solution before August of 2018. As a leading sales/marketing platform, we are confident that we can help those users as they migrate away from the dissolving company.

Building the perfect post-subscribe email autoresponder is a step many businesses often overlook when it comes to lead conversion. Email autoresponses are almost an afterthought for many brands, mainly because they forget the power it could potentially wield to turn a browsing prospect into a loyal customer.

However, following some easy tips when it comes to building the perfect post-subscribe email autoresponder will help turn that around, and ensure that prospects are able to become customers with ease.

1) Offer valuable content without wasting time

Many customers lament about the arduous process of subscribing to emails, with many giving up right away if they spend too much time trying to access content. Businesses are able to make the actual process of subscription easier in the moment, but overlook how to keep the efficiency after the customer has given their email address.

The autoresponse following subscription should offer prospective customers an easy way to access valuable content, while making it easy and fast. Avoid creating confirmation pages, asking detailed personal information and multiple steps all in one fell swoop. Instead, give customers the options and tools to provide this information at a later time for a more customized experience in the autoresponse and use the latter to engage customers within your brand.

2) Establish trust with your tone of voice

A well-crafted autoresponse is able to differentiate your brand from the rest among your customer base. Use the autoresponse as one of the first points of contact with your prospective leads, and leverage that to build trust and a relationship. Instead of opting for usual robotic language within the response, craft a message that will resonate with audiences and cement your place in their mind.

Most people are easily able to differentiate a personal email from an automatic one, and creating a message that conveys that your brand cares about individuals is a fast and creative way to demonstrate your brand personality.

3) Don’t send an infinite amount of content

For many businesses, the temptation of having subscribers to send content to is strong. Resist that urge, starting from the autoresponse. Do not clog inboxes, or use email addresses to send staggering amounts of content that do not hold value for the customer. Give them what they want while using the autoresponse as the starting point.

Often brands use the autoresponder to push content from the start, scaring customers off. Doing so conditions customers to become freeloaders in some ways, as they will ignore sales offers because of all the useless content they may have received in the past.

Businesses today have numerous avenues to announce their presence to potential clients. Social media and web content strategies have without doubt increased visibility in the highly competitive online marketplace. Targeted customers have so many options to choose from and therefore take their time before picking a particular company to engage. It can, therefore, be frustrating for a business just to sit and wait for the inbound sales. Here are the top strategies that can help you to meet your sales target through effective outbound engagement.

Intelligent leads

The days of Cold-calling hundreds of telephone numbers with the hope that one or two of the calls will land on a potential customer are long gone. With proper sales intelligence tools, you can easily narrow down your leads to specific targets that are most likely interested in your products. Big Data tools can now provide you with up-to-date prospects’ information, including preferences and the topics you can engage them with so as to build a lasting business relationship.

Selective follow-up

It is important that you follow-up on quality leads that will most likely result in a conversion. This will free up resources and time so you can efficiently respond to the needs of the prospects that are looking into establishing a long business relationship with your company.

Smart Engagement          

Make use of Sales Intelligence tools that employ inbound inquiries as triggers for outbound engagement. For example, if you know your ideal company demographics and you know you have the most success selling your solutions to executives with the title of CTO, you can set up sales triggers that let you know when a new CTO is hired, when a CTO is spending on technology, or when someone is promoted to the roll of CTO, so you not only have a reason to reach out, you have information that can help you relate your solutions to their specific needs at the right time.

The rapid rise of social media has some marketers questioning what types of marketing appeals to Millennials. Some would even argue that email marketing is a marketing tool that Millennials don’t embrace, choosing to consume marketing material in more visually stimulating formats. However, email marketing has never been more effective in achieving ROI goals for small and medium size businesses. According to eMarketer, email marketing tops the list of digital tactics driving customer acquisition and retention.

Savvy marketers are likely to counter that although email marketing works now, it simply doesn’t appeal to millennials. A recent study in AdWeek found, however, that 42% of those 25-34 years of age reported opening retailer emails more often over the past six months, compared to just 32% of other age groups, and recommended retailers use increase their email marketing efforts targeted at millennials.

The challenge for marketers is to ensure they deliver their emails in ways that appeal to the millennial market. Here are 3 tips to improve email markeitng targeted at millennials:

Go Mobile

According to one recent study, almost half of all shoppers will delete an email they can’t easily read on their smartphones. That’s especially true of millennials, 9 out of 10 of whom say they are never without their mobile phones. To make email marketing attractive to this age group, make sure your emails work and are optimized on mobile devices.

Integrate Email and Social Media Marketing

Millennials live on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Your email marketing campaigns should dovetail seamlessly with those you construct for social media. You should also make sure both email and social media posts drive customers to a dedicated landing page.

Keep Text to a Minimum

Among the acronyms gaining popularity among millennials is TLDR, or “too long, didn’t read.” More than their older counterparts, millennials like to get in and get out fast. Respond to their quick consumption tendencies by going light on text and using more visual content, like images and infographics.

Email marketing remains among the most effective strategies retailers can use to increase their customer base and ROI. Maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns by targeting millennials with content that works on mobile devices, integrates with social media campaigns, and keeps text to a minimum