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How Can My Business Become First in Mind?
December 02, 2008
By Lisa Cramer
As you can tell from reading the previous article, "What Does It Mean to Be 'First in Mind'?," being first in mind has many phases to it—from initial marketing research, to sales pipelines, to customer care. Your company does not need to become an expert in all phases, nor do you need to implement the whole continuum to reap some benefits. However, maximizing your revenue and optimizing sales and marketing resources are essential to business growth and success.
Start at the Beginning
Being first in mind is not about spamming your potential prospect with e-mail consisting of the latest product offers. Being first in mind is a balancing act of educating and introducing your prospects to solutions for their problems. Being first in mind suggests you target relevant information to the prospect based on what the prospect's needs are.
To do this, you want to be visible where your prospect is (virtually that is).
• What do they read (online)? What Web sites do they scour? What other vendors, associations, etc. do they visit?
• What is happening in their business that could initiate a search for your products and services?
• Drop e-mails to your prospect with interesting case studies of how other companies similar to them saved money or made more money, whether in solving a problem or expanding into new business.
There are technologies and expertise available that can help you better target interested parties proactively. In addition to providing information of interest, your sales team will be much better prepared for that first conversation with the prospect.
Staying First in Mind
Being first in mind is not only about reaching the prospect before they enter their buying cycle. Being first in mind must be a continuous process. If you continually interact with your prospect throughout their buying cycle, you will end up with better results. Minimizing lead leakage (when generated leads that sit in the sales funnel—those that are usually not yet ready to buy—get lost in the shuffle and are not acted on by sales or marketing) by nurturing leads through the process will help ensure more prospects end up buying from you.
There are two aspects to minimizing lead leakage and maximizing your ability to stay top of mind with prospects.
• First, there is the tracking and identifying of leads and opportunities to be acted upon.
• Second, there is the actual action, the outbound interaction with the prospect.
Once leads are generated, it is critical to identify the leads that are "hot" or A leads and those B, C and D leads. Hot leads should be immediately sent on to sales for an action, depending on your sales process. Information about those leads' interests (what they visited on your Web site, what campaign they responded to, etc.) should be available to the sales reps in real time.
What happens to the other leads? Processes and technologies should be set up that help you to find, segment and act on the other leads. A mechanism should also exist to enable you to target those leads on a continuous basis. That mechanism should be flexible enough to change the action based on the type and interest of that lead. You need to track what each lead does, what actions they might take based on the information you send out and where they go on your Web site.
If nurtured throughout the process, when the prospect is ready to buy, your company is most likely to be first in mind. Knowing more about what each prospect is interested in is critical to providing value.
Stay First in Mind with Customers
To be first in mind with your customers, takes not only great customer service, but it takes value-add as well. Helping your customers continue to learn how other companies are successfully using your products and services has great application. Uncovering new facts or research to help keep your customer stay up-to-date becomes a value-added service you can provide.
You should have visibility into each customer. What they are using? What do they still need? What do they like, and dislike, about your specific products. When is the customer's contract up for renewal?
Do you have an extranet that’s easy for your customers to access and provides the latest information about your products, services and industry information? Do you track what they do on your Web site and immediately store all that behavior information in their customer record?
First in Mind, First in Market
Today's Internet world has changed selling and marketing forever. Sales and buying cycles are no longer aligned. No longer is the prospect dependent on you for their information. The good news for you is that there are strategies and tactics, technology and processes that can be deployed to help you better target your prospects and their interests. The Internet and the information available to your prospects can be used as an advantage. Now with demand generation services, e-mail marketing, sales management, campaign management and customer support solutions, you have the ability to stay first in mind with leads, prospects and customers, thereby maximizing revenue potential.
Being first in mind is not about having the best automation or technology. Although technology can help support the above objective, it's not the end goal. Most important for you, being first in mind is about results. It's a combination of marketing, sales, technology and processes that in total drive the desired results. It's about having prospects buy your products and services, it’s about optimizing your marketing and sales resources, but most importantly it's about cost effectively maximizing revenue potential.
Lisa Cramer is president of LeadLife Solutions. She can be contacted at lcramer@leadlife.com.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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