The Human Touch Points In Your Sales Process

By now, most among us in small and medium businesses must be knowing what easy to use CRM stands for.

We all know by now that CRM software which is primarily a lead management tool aids sales-oriented businesses to keep track of their customers and manage leads as it moves through the sales pipelines, which makes selling more easy and effective.

Nevertheless, although this business growth technology continues to make the process easier, however, there is no way to completely automate the human touch points that are most necessary for effective sales.

Therefore, in every step of your sales process, you must make direct contact with your prospects and customers and educate your buyers by informing them about your offerings, which help establish trust in the minds of the consumers of your offerings.

So what exactly are these things that you should be doing to ensure that you are helping your buyers by guiding them towards a decision for closing the sale?

Therefore, here is an outline of the most vital touchpoints that must be essentially present in your sales-related processes, with ideas to consolidate your relationship with potential prospects and buyers along the way:

Selling Touch Point #1

The prospective buyer makes contact

The primary opportunity to start a connection with your purchaser is during their initial contacts.

At this stage, the purchaser has been to your website and has shown an interest in your brand or your offerings. Like, they may have opted to fill out a web-form for showing their interest for attending a webinar or have taken an action such as downloading a free resource like a whitepaper or an eBook, or they may have just established contact with you directly with any issues or questions that they have about your offerings.

This is, therefore, your very first opportunity to create a good impression and speak out to them about their needs.

It is vital to realize that in most of the cases, this is NOT the time to make a sales pitch, but it is the moment for you to figure out what exactly your prospects are looking and how you can help them to find a solution to their problem(s).

Hence, once you decide on following up directly with your prospects try to identify the following:

• Why did the prospect visit your website?
• How did the prospect find your website?
• What made them reach out for your offerings?
• What are the problems they are facing and what are the solutions they are looking for?

This is the time for you to better understand the purchaser’s needs and pain points, and thereafter find out if your organization is a fit to suggest ways to offer help for resolving their issues.

Moreover, you can also direct the prospective buyer to several other useful resources such as blog posts, videos, FAQs, and case studies on your offerings.

You can even ask your buyers if they want to sign up for your email list or want to sign up for any of your free offers or any other seasonal promotional campaigns.

Make sure that if your buyer has questions, they can reach you via emails, phone, and live chat. Therefore, place your contact details in all your email signatures, so that it becomes easier for them to find out your address and contact info at a glance.

Selling Touch Point #2

The prospect evaluates your offerings

Once the prospect is capable of understanding how your offerings can address their issues, they advance to the mid-stage in your sales pipeline, where they will evaluate your offerings against similar options in the market.

Therefore, what can you do now to persuade your fence-sitting prospect into choosing your offerings, or rather provide them with more information they need in order to make a decision for closing the sale?

Although every sale is different, nevertheless, all purchase decisions boil down to:

1. Do your offerings meet the purchaser’s needs?
2. Do your offerings make sense financially?
3. Will holding hands with your business make your buyers more successful?

To answer the first question in the list you can set up a call or a product demo, which will allow you to speak to the prospects directly, and show them how your solution can address their specific needs.

You can also invite the prospect to a webinar or invite them personally to try out for a free trial of your solution by using a test account.

To answer the second question, you can put together a personalized plan that fits the buyer’s pocket, which will let them find an idea about the exact cost of your offering that is included in the plan.

Finally, as an answer to the last question, you can provide case studies, positive testimonials of your existing buyers, or refer them to your customers who will speak positively on your behalf about your products or services.

At this stage, you may even have to provide your prospects with a bit of a ‘nudge’ by offering a time-bound discount as a final effort to secure the sale.

Post-Sale Touch Point #3

After the purchaser has bought your offering

Finally, the purchaser has decided to go with your brand and has purchased your offering(s).

Now, although you have won the sale, nevertheless it does not signify that your sales process is over and you can simply move onto the next qualified lead in your CRM database.

If you are a user of an easy to use CRM, which is one of the most widely used lead management tools you must already know that customer retention should be your very next step in developing the buyer’s relationship.

According to a survey done by Harvard Business Review, it has been found and documented that:

“Acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times more costly than retaining the present and existing ones.”

Therefore, it is most important that you should maintain sustained efforts to keep your existing customers happy and not spend your time simply on pursuing new businesses.

At this juncture, to reduce customer churn, you must make your recent purchasers feel that they have made the right choice by continuing to stay with your brand and leverage your easy to use CRM software which an excellent business growth technology and tool to start building a long-term relationship.

Now, what can you do to ensure that you are doing the correct things?

Here is a list of suggestions that can make your customer’s transition to your brand a smooth one.

• Thank the buyer.
• Help the buyer set up your solution.
• Provide fast delivery
• Reach out often to see if your buyers need help
• Make sure your customer support reps are easily available
• Send use cases of other existing and happy customers
• Send consumer surveys like:
• How content are your buyers with your offerings?
• How happy are the purchasers with your customer support?
• How easy or hard do your buyers find your solution to use?
• What unanticipated problems are your buyers experiencing after buying your solution?

Post-Sale Touch Point #4

Continue the relationship

Ultimately, the most crucial post-sales customer relationship management touchpoint that you need to continue to make your relationship with your customer going forward is to keep on caring about the buyers of your products and services.

You can buy CRM to help you do this job, whereby you can track and measure your performance to ensure that your customers remain happy with your brand.

Additionally, here are also some unique ideas that can reduce customer churn in your company.

• Create a loyalty program
• Set up a referral program
• Send your customers freebies (like small gifts, PDFs, and eBooks)
• Up-sell or cross-sell your customers with your other offerings

Conclusion

Therefore, to wrap up, although any easy to use CRM software can make your life much easier, it is still important that you must maintain the “human-touch” with your buyers, to not only increase the efficiency of your sales process but also for building long-lasting and stronger relationships.