The new year is here, and you’re charged up to reach out to new prospects and meet your targets. But while you are at, you can’t lose track of people who you have already established a connection with. Especially if these prospects have expressed an interest to purchase in your previous conversations.
But after a long break from work, how do you effectively re-engage with these prospects?
In this article, we’ll give you three ways to hit your sales quotas this quarter by re-engaging with prospects after the holidays.
1. Connect with prospects who signed up in December
December is the time when things don’t usually move at a fast pace for you or your prospects. But this is probably the best time for prospects to analyze and evaluate new solutions for future business opportunities.
While you were on vacation, prospects would have signed up for your solution and begun their evaluation process. No doubt, some are probably even evaluating different options and engaging with your competitors in the same way.
So how can you stand out from the crowd and make an impression?
It’s simple. Before you go ahead and reach out to these prospects, find out about their interactions with your product and company. Some CRM software like Freshsales tracks the prospect’s activities on your website and product. If they have visited the pricing page, requested for a demo, or adopted certain key features from your solution, you know that they are genuinely looking to evaluate and purchase your solution – if it fits their bill.
There will, of course, be prospects who have come to your website just to download a research white paper. These prospects may not be looking to buy your solution at the time, but may consider doing so in the future.
By using a CRM software, you can go one step further and score prospects based on their behavior and engagement with your company. This makes it a lot easier for you to segment prospects—hot, warm and cold—and engage with them.
So once you have identified their engagement level with your company, you can use different modes of communication to reach out to them. For instance, you can personalize your communication with hot prospects, since you may not be the only one contacting them after the holidays.
Here’s an example of one of the emails which we send to our trial users.
For cold prospects, you can put them into a nurture sales campaign and have emails automatically sent to them.
2. Re-engage with prospects who asked for a call-back
If you have tried to reach out to prospects a few days before Christmas, you most likely heard the sales objection, “Call me back after the holidays.”
There are multiple reasons behind prospects raising this objection. Some of them could be:
– They had used up the year’s budget.
– The stakeholders involved in the approval process were on vacation.
– They were in the middle of finishing up year-end activities before going on vacation.
– They were in the middle of finalizing next year’s targets.
Before approaching these prospects again, find out where they are in your sales cycle. Did you have a discovery call with them? Did they receive a demo? Are they in the negotiation stage?
Next, look up your notes, and your past email and call interactions with them for context. That way, you can pick up the conversation where you left off.
For example, if the prospect has agreed to sign the contract in January, and has scheduled a meeting with you, you can steer the conversation as suggested below –
“Hey John, I had reached out to you in December, but you were in the middle of finalizing next year’s targets so we couldn’t sign the contract. I’ll send over the contract agreement details to you, and we can take it from there. Does that sound good?”
Using a CRM software in such cases helps monitor your relationship with prospects and customers. These tools are also great at holding you accountable for keeping your prospects warm. The CRM software can keep track of your interactions and touchpoints with prospects, making it a lot easier to plan your next set of activities.
3. Reconnect with customers for renewals and upgrades
In the book Marketing Metrics, the authors say, “The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%.”
And Q1 is a great time to talk to your existing customers for renewals and upgrades.
You know your customers in and out. You were in touch with them throughout their sales cycle and built a good relationship with them. How about leveraging that relationship?
No, you aren’t going to sell them anything, but ask them how they have been and how your solution has been working for them. Find out what they like about your solution and ask for areas of improvement. Use their answers to share the product roadmap or the new features list, and talk about how an upgrade can help their business. That way, you aren’t selling to them, but hearing them out and offering additional service.
You can also get in touch with customers for renewals. One way to ease the renewal process and save time is by using CRM software. These tools help you manage your customer and deal information, and also automate renewal reminders.
What’s more, you can also create a follow-up task one month before the renewal, and work through the negotiations and approvals.
So, what’s your strategy to re-engage with prospects this quarter? Let’s discuss in the comments below.
In the meantime, share this article with your colleagues and friends, and let’s see what their thoughts are as well!
Cover Illustration by Ashna Liza Sunny
