Lead management in the manufacturing industry comes with its own unique challenges. If you’re a marketing or sales executive in this space, you understand how difficult it is to ensure your dealers are following-up with the leads you provide and nurturing them to a sale. Unfortunately, statistics show that 44% of salespeople give up on a prospect after the first follow-up, while 80% of new sales require at least five follow-up calls before making a decision. These common lead management/follow-up issues can be solved through education and sales training programs, but it’s not the only tactic you should rely on.
If you implement these simple lead management strategies at the brand level, you will start to see immediate improvement in your sales process.
Keep Building a Relationship with the Prospect
Just because your prospects are now in the dealer’s court, doesn’t mean you should stop marketing to them. Chances are your prospects are still in the pre-purchase research phase of the customer lifecycle, so brand content from the manufacturer can still influence purchase decisions. In some cases, brand awareness and lifestyle content may be enough to close the deal.
Talk to the Prospect
It’s completely appropriate to engage your internal sales or marketing staff with the prospect while the dealer is negotiating the deal. This can easily be done by reaching out with an email or phone call to confirm the engagement or satisfaction with the dealer. In fact, two-way communication with your prospects will humanize your brand and may reassure the prospect that they are making the right purchase decision.
Start using Marketing Automation and Lead Management
Unlike many marketing automation technologies, the Aimbase platform was designed to help manufacturers manage prospects that are distributed to dealers. With Aimbase’s robust dealer and lead management tools, you will see:
- The sales status of each prospect
- The dealer’s communication with each prospect (If the dealer opened the lead and followed-up with the prospect)
- The prospect’s satisfaction with the dealer experience
Implement Dealer Sales Communications
Dealers are just as important to your bottom line as consumers, so provide dealers with communications and the tools necessary to become better salesmen. Just as you would nurture a prospect with emails, you can nurture your dealers with monthly marketing and sales tips or create a dealer community to engage dealers in the culture of your brand.
