In any business, the sales pipeline is essential to growth. It would be best to have a steady stream of leads flowing through your channel to reach your sales goals. But growing that pipeline can be easier said than done.
Fortunately, software suites like Salesforce provide everything you need to generate new leads and nurture them until they're ready to buy. Cloud CRM software makes it easy to cultivate leads and turn them into customers. In this blog, we will discuss seven steps, following which you can maximize your digital investment and keep your sales pipeline healthy and growing. Read on.
Step 1: Identify and focus on your target market
This may seem like a no-brainer, but getting specific about who you're trying to reach is essential. Trying to sell to everyone is a surefire recipe for failure. Define your target market by industry, company size, geographic location, and other relevant factors. Who are your ideal customers? What needs do they have that your product or service can meet? Use this information to create detailed buyer personas.
Step 2: Build a targeted list of prospects
Once you know your ideal customers, it's time to start building a list of potential buyers. Salesforce provides several powerful tools for finding and managing leads. Use them to develop a comprehensive list of companies and individuals that fit your target market criteria.
Step 3: Nurture your leads with content marketing
To convert leads into customers, you need to establish trust and credibility. Share helpful blog posts, infographics, ebooks, and other types of content that will educate your prospects and build your brand.
Step 4: Stay top of mind with email marketing
It's not enough to share great content; you also need to ensure your prospects see it. Send regular emails featuring new blog posts, promotions, case studies, and other content to keep your business top of mind.
Step 5: Convert more leads with lead scoring and nurturing workflows
Lead scoring is a way of rating prospects based on their likelihood of becoming customers. Use Salesforce's lead scoring capabilities to prioritize the hottest leads, then create nurturing workflows designed to move them further down the funnel.
Step 6: Schedule more discovery calls
Einstein Activity Capture is a Salesforce tool that automatically logs emails, calendar events, and other interactions with leads and contacts in Salesforce CRM. This makes it easy to see which prospects are ready for a discovery call or other type of meeting so you can close more deals faster.
Step 7: Measure your success
Salesforce provides a wealth of data that can be used to measure the success of your sales pipeline efforts. Create reports and dashboards that track key metrics such as the number of leads generated, conversion rate, average deal size, and others. Doing so will help you identify areas where improvements can be made to keep your pipeline growing strong.