Great salespeople have their own special tactics to land a sale. They are good at reading customers' minds. They know when to talk and when to keep quiet. They know the value of being persistent. And how to keep in touch without being pushy. They also develop deep knowledge of the market over time. And how the stages of selling work. They are not disheartened by rejections. In fact, this only increases their levels of motivation.
A great website can become a silent, persuasive sales person. But the intelligence comes from human experience. What sales and marketing people know has to be incorporated into the website flow. It also has to work without people being around at all. For some customers, it's easier to find out more about products by reading, listening and watching videos about them. A website does not start out being great - think of it as an intern starting out, then learns and improves continuously.
As they acquire more product knowledge, they get better at selling. They begin to understand customers better and modify the sales pitch according to the situation, providing details on what customers are asking for rather than mugging up and delivering the same sales pitch without any variation.
Observe customer behavior. On a website, interpretations have to be made based on what visitors read. It's not as reliable as a face-to-face conversation where customer responses can be gauged and responded to in real time. Here, the effort is to understand what it means when customers click on an article, leave and come back a few days later to read another one and so on.
Customers give subtle traces of their continuing interest based on the number of times they visit or the questions they may ask about product features. At that time, it is essential to respond immediately. And then wait for them to make the next move.
Companies who invest time, effort and money on their websites have seen results. A trickle at first but a torrent over time. One only has to look at the number of Direct to Consumer (D2C) brands which have come up in the last few years and grown to revenues in the millions.
It starts with content to appeal to customers. That's always the starting point. Provide value and trust will follow. But content does not mean writing posts everyday and then waiting back for the money to roll in. There's more to the art and science of content than is seen on the surface.
The interest shown by customers has to be tracked and responded to. As mentioned earlier, if pricing seems to be a point of interest but the customer has not converted, a special one-time offer can be sent to see if they are interested. At worst, there will be no response. But if the customer does sign on, it's revenue generation with directed effort!
HubSpot's Content Hub helps you create, manage, track and respond to the visitors based on their interests. Plan for as many scenarios you can think of and automate responses for just about any of the benefits customers are looking for.
In the early stages of building a business through the website, getting traffic and inquiries are the problem. But then, the situation reverses. The number of inquiries increases and then, immediate response and contributing to the conversation becomes vital.
This is whereHubSpot's Content Hub comes into its own. Helping you create communication around the inquiries generated and building automated response chains progressively. At each stage, you can stay in touch or hand over to a real sales person when the prospect is ready to engage.
All this happens within HubSpot, so it becomes transparent and visible to all the stakeholders involved. For sales people, having a good overview and a starting point for conversations helps to take things forward much faster. In an introductory call or meeting, they can touch upon the concerns customers have raised and address them.
We've all had the experience at support desks where we're passed around from one person to another and have to explain the situation to each of them. Imagine the customer satisfaction level when sales people start conversations from what customers have asked about first instead of rattling off product benefits.
That's a winning formula when you can put it into practice with HubSpot's Content Hub.
Our consultants will be happy to take you through how your website can be the launch pad for a sales effort that feeds your sales team and helps them through the final mile.