We’re in the mood for love here at Zinc Digital. Building relationships in business is just like building relationships in every other part of life – it takes work, resilience and strategy, but can reap infinite reward. With happy customers comes repeat business, referrals and retention.
So how do you create a lead generation and sales strategy that makes your customers fall head over heels for you?
Start with yourself
Just like in relationships, the best partnerships come to those who are comfortable in what they want. Before you even start looking you need to know exactly who you’re trying to attract so that you can be sure you’ll be able to deliver the best service. Look at the data you’ve got available to you – who’s buying, who’s enquiring, and who isn’t. You can then create personas based on these demographics, so you’ll know that when you create everything from your website to your paid campaigns, this is who you’re talking to.
The value of personas continues through to customer experience. By knowing who you’re targeting and what they want, you’ll be able to carry this knowledge through to the way that you deliver the service so that it feels tailored, fostering loyalty and bringing your customers back every time.
Be authentic
Gone are the days of the fast talking salesman. Today’s buyer is well researched, skeptical, and can tell when they’re being sold to. Just like in relationships, success comes when you show the real you. If you’re in sales and you’ve not heard of the ‘know-like-trust’ principle, it’s something that needs to become integral to your process.
Brand awareness campaigns can be looked down on by greedy business owners who want to see immediate conversions. Though the end goal should always be conversions and profit, the road to fostering these is know-like-trust. If they don’t know your name, like what you do and trust that you can do it well then your sale will never take off. By putting yourself out there, sharing value that your client wants to see (and not just talking about yourself) and showing that you’re consistent and considerate, you’ll be able to build an ongoing relationship that’s more valuable than a hundred short-term, low value clients.
