Lead Generation & Conversion for Hosted Business Phone Resellers
- November 6, 2019
- Author: Keith Young
To grow your hosted business phone clients beyond a customer base built on referrals, you’ll need a strategic plan to generate leads organically. Then you’ll need to convert those leads into customers.
Know Your Target Market
The first step in any strategic lead generation and conversion plan is to know your target market. Without taking the time to get a clear picture of who you’re selling to, you’re really just shooting in the dark. Sometimes you’ll hit your target; most of the time you won’t.
Having a clear persona in mind will help you determine what content and approach will be most effective, resulting in a greater lead conversion success rate.
Focus on Their Problems Instead of Your Product or Service
One of the biggest aspects of knowing your target market is understanding their “pain points”. Instead of focusing on your product or service, your marketing and sales approach should focus on their problems.
As a hosted business phone reseller, highlight the benefits of a hosted business phone system to your target customer. What problems does your product or service solve for them?
Create a Content Marketing Strategy
Without a content marketing strategy, you’ll be stuck having to go out and find each customer. Instead, help the customers come to you with a solid inbound marketing plan. Develop valuable content to educate and help potential customers. Then make it available to them on multiple channels and use it to drive those customers to you.
Your content marketing strategy will have 4 primary streams:
- Your Website
- A Blog
- Email Campaigns
- Social Media
Ideally, you should be providing content at every stage of the sales journey. From the initial contact to the final transaction, you have an opportunity to educate and engage.
Your content should be relevant to your target customers’ problems, buying criteria, factors in choosing a vendor, and other topics they’re likely to research.
Offering useful content is a way for you to build an email list, which is a powerful lead generation tool. But you want to give a potential customer something valuable in exchange for their email address or any other information you’re asking for.
The Value of a Content Library
Having a library of useful content can be helpful to your sales team. It’s much easier to have a specific reason to follow up with a lead than the awkward “I just thought I’d check in”. With valuable content, your salesperson can call a lead and say, “I know you were interested in a solution to help your business support remote workers. We have an ebook about that you might find helpful. Do you mind if I send it to you?”
UnitedCloud partners enjoy the benefits of our dedicated Partner Tool, including a comprehensive library of custom-branded print marketing assets and content to use in your own marketing strategy. No need to “reinvent the wheel” or hire a content creator. Our marketing team has done the work for you to support your business and help you grow.
Keep It Simple
People lose interest quickly. If the process isn’t easy, you’ll lose them. The “K.I.S.S.” approach (Keep It Simple Stupid) applies to every aspect of the sales journey. Is it easy for a lead to:
- find your website and the information they’re looking for?
- navigate your website?
- understand your content, or is your content full of industry jargon?
- submit their email address or contact information?
- get in touch with your business for more information? (You may want to consider a chat module on your website, for example.)
- know what to do next? (Include a call-to-action at the end of each blog post or email campaign.)
Turn Leads Into Customers
Generating leads is important, but you want to go beyond that and turn those leads into customers. Better yet, you want loyal customers who keep coming back and referring others to you.
So, how do you successfully convert a lead into a customer?
Your content marketing strategy should help with that. By addressing their needs, helping them to understand the benefit of your hosted business phone services, making it simple for them to learn more and engage with your business, you’ll be well on your way to making a sale.
Naturally, great customer service makes a world of difference. Especially because you’re in the business communications industry, your own communication should be exceptional. Use your own product to your advantage. These days, picking up the phone and having a verbal conversation can set you apart from your competitors. Email is convenient, but phone is more personal.
Persistence Pays Off
80% of sales are made on the 5th to 12th contact. Twelve contacts! It pays to be persistent.
People are busy. Sometimes they just forget. Or maybe they haven’t forgotten, but they’ve been too busy to make a decision. As long as a lead is open to engaging with you, don’t give up.
That said, don’t waste valuable time pursuing a lead that’s not going anywhere. If someone has become unresponsive, even after multiple attempts at contact, it might be time to let them go and focus on those who are willing to listen.
Don’t Leave Lead Generation to Chance
Don’t wait for customers to come to you. Put a strategic content marketing plan in place to generate leads. Then focus on nurturing those leads until they become satisfied customers.
Every interaction you have is an opportunity to educate and thrill customers who will sing your praises and send you more leads. It’s a perpetual success-generating cycle.
A key part of our purpose at UnitedCloud is to support our hosted business phone resellers by providing a full suite of integrated tools to help you run your entire hosted solution. We take pride in assisting our reseller partners on your path to business success. Find out more about our White Label Program to boost your business.
