By nature I’ve always been someone who doesn’t want to deal with customers or talk on the phone any longer than necessary. Just give me a project and leave me alone, BUT that was the OLD me. I’ve just taken the Pipeline Generation Boot Camp offered by Hubspot’s legendary sales guru Dan Tyre.

I originally was hesitant to take this class, because why would I want to call people? Ugh, that sounded horrible.

But, like every other business, I did see the need to get better at customer acquisition and lead conversion. This course helped me tremendously in dealing with these important topics, and I’ve been closing deals left and right since I’ve upped my sales game. We’ve actually taken on new part time workers to help with the workload.

Now I’m not only more confident when contacting leads, but I’ve got some tips for you as well. Here were a few of my top take aways:

Warm Leads, Not Cold Calls.

• Don’t just call random businesses and try to sell the first one to answer the phone. Do your research. Find out about the person your calling and their likely challenges:
• Does their company do enough business to be a good client?
• Are they involved in an industry that I can help with?
• Do they have a bad website without strong calls to action?
• Who do you contact? Learn about that person. Are they into college football or knitting? Once you know those details . you can connect with them as individuals not just another robo-caller.
• Is your contact overworked and struggling to bring their boss enough leads? (probably)
• Are they leery of working with overpriced or ineffective “marketing agencies”?

Know the tricks to up your conversion rates.

There are number of insider tricks and tips to help get these leads to convert into customers more often. Some seem unnatural at first, but they’re part of an effective playbook.

• Pause for 30 seconds after introducing yourself and your agency. This gives you some kind of psychological edge. They’re thinking in their lizard brain, “Who is this person. DO I already know them?”
• Offer a few tips in the initial call, but not too much
• Have an agency positioning statement to tell them about your own business.
• Be prepared for their objections
• Keep the initial connection to no more than 15 minutes.
• Always follow up with an email
• Always call around 4 times before moving on.

I’m Calling to HELP.

By changing the way I’m approaching people, it makes me more comfortable dealing with them and makes them more open to my eventual sales pitch.
Rather than “I’m selling inbound marketing software” I’m calling to help them with customer acquisition and competitive advantage. I’m here to help them do their job well and look good. Who wouldn’t want to talk to that guy?

Set a Follow Up Meeting.

Those initial exploratory calls are just to get things started. Don’t try to reel in a big contract with that first call. Set up a series of follow up meetings to define what they need and then to present solutions.

Listen to Them

Be sure to listen to their needs and problems. You’ll be able to present solutions that fit their needs, rather than just providing the solutions you think they may need.

These and many other bits of sales wisdom all came together to make me more confident and successful with customers. It has paid off more than I could imagine. Let \us know if we can help with own customer acquisition and take advantage of all of this sales momentum!