This is the challenge for pretty much every business, regardless of industry.
And let me point out, there seems to be an awful lot of psychology thrown around on how to reach this goal, but so little of this seems tangible to the human beings who constitute your salesforce.
So here are 3 hints to consider in helping them:
Your sales force is finding it tougher and tougher, largely because the internet is so influential in providing research material which, let’s face it, the better clients will be viewing before the make initial decisions.
So in order to nurture more clients, learn to ride the wave and leverage it to your benefit and also more clients.
Apart from being the great leveller, the internet is a different animal and knowing hot to and putting your own business into its perspective can make all the difference. So, consider the following:
Forget ‘spin’, ‘dimensional psychology’, ‘attention span quotients’ and any other jargonistic term I can invent because existing terms are just as vague I can’t think of some right now.
What really matters in the drive for more clients and better clients is your number one asset – your experience. Your best marketing material is in your own mind.
Have you ever considered how effective the help would be to your sales force if all that experience and knowledge could be your marketing tool?
Well that is precisely what content marketing is all about. Nothing carries more authority than thought leadership, and it’s through content based marketing where you stand to gain most – but it has to be done the right way.
Boasting how clever you are doesn’t cut it. Whether it’s through blog content, press releases, your website or anything else, the one thing potential clients are looking for most is trust.
Content isn’t just about information, it is about the human being behind the company name, so the challenge to build trust is paramount largely because international studies prove that about 70% of people who come to your business via your web content have already decided to use your product or service.
So key to this is to establish and maintain a conversationalist tone in all your work; to be not a company that says this is us and we’re the best etc but to make the reader feel as if they are communicating as equals; that you are side by side heading in the same direction rather than raking them in like fish for a cannery.
Perhaps because you have never had a marketing tool with such powerful potential it is hard to relate to this reasoning, but to get a glimpse of the style that works to create incoming leads for instance, feel free to click here and read this.
Better clients could be just around the corner, but there is just one more thing to keep in mind.
One of the things I find operating in the new powerhouse of content marketing is most clients tend to be a little too reserved in what they are prepared to say.
After a little professional coaching and a few tangible examples, when actually running through the exercise with their own content output it becomes clear just how powerful your company’s voice can be out there.
Your potential clients will be searching, so it is important that professionals like myself can manage the style and topical approach because don’t forget, this style of marketing has a legacy unlike traditional advertising which is here one day and gone the next.
In the quest for more clients and better clients, your salesforce is in the habit of reinforcing what your company does and what it can do for them. And make sure to learn a little about good websites compared to useless websites
So don’t be shy, the most powerful – and arguably the most important – advertising your company can ever receive are the very words that come from your experienced mind.
Let’s face it, the business has been built on it and you are part of its DNA. It doesn’t come more authentic than that.