It’s not enough to just survive as a business. You also need to thrive. Thinking about how you’re going to grow your business is something you do every day, and so it’s going to be a crucial part of transitioning to remote work. You need a plan for how you’re going to get more leads and acquire new customers. We can help!
Your methods may change, but your challenge remains the same. If you have good sales and customer acquisition chops, you’ll easily make the transition to remote work. The principles are all the same. Have a great product and find people who are going to love it.
What changes is that you won’t be able to rely on in person customer acquisition strategies, such as attending conferences or coffee meetings. Email, social media, Zoom meetings, and other digital forms of communication become even more important. Carefully investigating your funnel metrics becomes even more important.
Now is the chance to look at each component of your digital sales strategy carefully. For example, if you have a B2B product, and you’re directly reaching out to small businesses, you’re going to be focusing intently on your customer acquisition pipeline, starting from lead generation -> Zoom call -> sale.
First, look at how you’re currently collecting leads. How much does it cost per lead? Is your strategy scalable? Does your team have clear instructions for your sales team and a set goal for them to hit? If you’re buying leads, are you under budget? And if so, can you scale up without going over budget?
At Magic, lead generation is something we do every day. Startups and small businesses regularly use Magic to generate leads for them, since Magic can easily handle any repeatable task.
In most cases, Magic is more affordable than paying your own sales team to do it. You can also do it yourself, or delegate the work to your team if you have a sales team already that has enough bandwidth.
Regardless of who is doing it for you, we recommend taking lead generation in stages, especially if you’re using a new team or method. Start small. Get an initial list of 100 leads first. Once you have that first list, evaluate the cost and quality of those leads. If you’re finding leads on your own, factor in how much your time costs. Don’t assume your time is free! After considering all these factors, you can decide if you want to get more leads or change your approach.
Your sales strategy will live or die by how well you can convert a warm lead to a sale. Being fully remote, you must rely on video chat and other digital forms of communication to figure out what your customer wants, gradually make them trust you, and finally push them to make a purchase.
For most sales pipelines that are fully remote, the sale is made on a Zoom call. Here are a few tips we recommend for great Zoom calls that close sales:
Make it super easy to schedule. At Magic, we typically use Calendly to make our sales team’s availability super clear and to move the scheduling conversation out of email, but make sure to try a few different approaches. If less than 50% of leads interested in a call actually hop on one with you, you should try a different approach.
If possible, have a second person on the call. Having two people on a call means you’ll have twice the chance of picking up exactly what the customer wants. You can also divide responsibilities. One person can be the lead, driving the conversation, and the second person can be the support, providing information as needed and building a follow up plan for what to do after the call.
Consider turning your camera off. Having the camera on will show people you’re a real person. At the same time, not everyone is comfortable being on camera. Having the cameras off and making your call a traditional call can keep both parties focused on business, instead of watching the screen to see how they look.
I hate video chat. Everyone who has remote meetings with me knows that I’m never on video. It forces everyone to be looking at their computer screen during the meeting. And last time I checked, looking at your computer screen is exactly what you’re not supposed to do during a meeting, because it’s really distracting.
Have a clear objective for the call. Don’t hop on the call just to chat. You and your team should have a clear objective for every call. For example, it could be getting the customer to tell you their specific needs and then building a custom plan to help them. Or it could be as simple as getting them set up with an account. Being remote, it’s even more important to know exactly where all of your customers are in the pipeline.
Record the call and review it later. This is especially important if it’s not you but other team members doing the call. Hearing an interpretation of what happened just isn’t the same as listening to the actual call.
If it’s not working, try something different. If there’s a part of your sales funnel that just isn’t working, it’s time to get creative. We’ve seen companies find success solely in the DM’s, closing sales just by chatting over text and never hopping on a call. Maybe you need a completely different way of targeting leads, or your product needs to be communicated differently. Now is the time to experiment if you’re not getting the results you’re looking for.
If you can retain your customers, you can grow. Making sure your customers are happy and continuing to stick around should be your #1 priority.
For most companies, customer support is already remote, so you shouldn’t see very many changes there. If your business is catered towards larger clients or businesses, you’ll want to make sure you keep a strong relationship with your largest customers.
Taking them out to dinner may no longer be an option, so you’ll need to make your best customers feel appreciated in a different way. Consider sending a gift in the mail when appropriate. We also recommend scheduling a weekly or monthly call with your top customers on a regular schedule.
