Often marketers and leaders are focused on what new leads are coming in – did we get enough this month? Most of us have a goldmine of leads sitting in our databases that just need the right kind of nurturing, only the right sales and OSC teams can provide. By engaging in CRM Hygiene practices routinely, you can reduce your overall marketing spend and take the seasonality out of your selling pipeline.
Don’t Say Dead
In sales, we like to say, “until they buy or die”. Over the years I’ve see this rating and status being used liberally:
“Sally said she didn’t like the burgundy walls” – rated as dead
“Jacob wasn’t really saying much, just a looky-loo” – rated as dead
Before we get into what’s really going on with those folks the first elephant in the room is how we talk about them. At Shared Drive we’ve shifted to the language of Out of Market, for a couple of reasons.
- It’s literally kinder. Dead feels a little icky and final.
- It provides a true context – right now, for the reason I define below (usually with a measurable secondary property field) this person is not ready to buy with us.
Out of market give us the ability to recognize that as sales professionals we can’t move an opportunity forward….yet. Aside from someone completely opting out of communication, it also offers your CRM and pipeline manager, the OSC, a chance to revive them.
The Duo Who Can Bring Them Back
A healthy CRM has the right status and rating system to segment your contacts. That’s the first step in knowing who you can help and when.
The sales professionals responsible for contract writing and closing the sale best serve leads in a 6-month window. They can have the best interpersonal communications – texting, calling, sending personal notes – and really build a strong relationship with the person in front of them. That takes a lot of energy and care. That’s when the OSC comes back into the picture.
The OSC and sales professional work together in their system to hand the contact back and forth at agreed upon points. For example: when there’s no response for 30 days, despite outreach or when the sales professional believes someone is Out of Market.
The OSC is able to come back into the conversation as the no pressure voice. You may be surprised to learn the OSC isn’t writing contracts – nor are we profiting from them – for us, our entire goal is to get the contact back to the right sales professional at the right time for them to buy a home. We are the Cat Woman to the sales persons’ Batman.
So, How Do You Do It?
Technical revival of your leads is something your OSC is going to excel at, and it’s why these different roles exist. Very simply, here are the steps we take:
- Create your segment
- Design your message with a data capture method and predetermine what happens based on the response
- Deploy the messaging – via email, call sessions, or text when you can
- Act on responses (those predetermined behaviors you set out before)
- Follow up with outreach based on engagement
- Rinse and Repeat!
Creating Your Segment
This is pipeline management 101 – determine who you need to target based on a collection of factors. These can include a community of interest that needs a boost, a specific time frame since someone has engaged, or folks in a grouping of ratings.
Designing Your Message
A simple message will always win. Don’t try to be a marketer – you aren’t! Write an email that speaks to the masses but feels like it was just for you. Especially when doing a cleanup, always include a survey link. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, we use questions like “tell us where you’re at now?”, “Would it be easier to just request an appointment now?” – it can be playful, pointed, and should always have a CTA (call to action).
By including the data capture point with pre-determined answers you’re goal-stacking a lot of items here.
- You provide leadership and marketing with real data (ooh, you can even make a graph about it!)
- You’ll automatically create new segments and have a quick way to target and prospect
Act on Responses and Follow Up
The most interested folks will have already called you or responded in text format. Get them through the process first!
Then, this is where our prospecting methods come into play. Depending on your system: you can automatically set call tasks with your highest-level engagers or you can look at your open rates, click rates and answer rates to pull a list of folks to start calling.
Also vitally important: rerate the folks who just aren’t ready – yep, set them to Out of Market. This is a huge part of the process; knowing when it’s not time.
Finally, leveraging your ratings is an important part of this entire revival process. Each status or rating type should have a timeline of communication connected to it. Apply this method based on those timeframes to each of these groups and you’ll have a healthy and active pipeline, ready to engage whenever sales calls on you for a boost.
