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Archives for March 2019

How to Streamline Your B2B Company's Material Handling Cold Calling Strategy

By Evan Lamolinara | 03/25/2019 | 8:40 PM | Categories: Current Affairs

PhoneHow much time does your material handling company spend cold calling prospective buyers? Even with the advent of digital and online sales channels, many material handling companies such as forklift, aerials, conveyors, AGV, AGC still use cold calling as part of their overall buyer outreach strategy. It's an easy, inexpensive way to promote a product or service to prospective buyers. But not all cold calls will result in a sale. On the contrary, a study cited by HubSpot found that just 1% of cold calls lead to an appointment, and even fewer result in a sale. You can still use cold calling to sell your company's products or services, but you should consider streamlining this tactic so that it doesn't consume all your material handling company's time and resources.

Limit Calls to 10 Minutes

Some material handling sales reps assume that longer cold calls are more likely to result in a sale than shorter cold calls. A report published by ZoomInfo found that calls lasting six to 10 minutes have a 29% higher conversion rate than calls lasting longer than 10 minutes. Therefore, you should try to keep your cold calls under 10 minutes. Stretching out a call for the sake of keeping the buyer on the line isn't the best way to use your time. If a buyer isn't going to make a purchase, you should move on to the next phone number on your list.

Reach the Decision Maker

Another way to streamline your company's cold calling strategy is to try and reach the decision maker. The person whom you call may or may not have the authority to make purchases on behalf of his or her business. If you reach a receptionist, for example, there's a good chance he or she won't be ale to make a purchase. To overcome this challenge, you should try to reach the decision maker. Whether it's the company's CEO or any other executive, decision makers have the power and authority to make purchases on behalf of their business.

Call at the Right Time

The time of day when you call prospective buyers will affect the success of your company's cold calling strategy. Statistics show that the best time of day to make cold calls is between the hours of 4:00 and 5:00 p.m., unless you know that they start their day earlier and end earlier too. Many warehouse, manufacturing and distribution centers often start their day by 6:00 a.m. or 7:00 a.m. So, adjust your time accordingly as the right time to call.

Now that you know how best to handle cold calling strategies, here’s how you can get to the right decision maker that has an active project going on that can use your products and services. As you may be aware, our team of researchers uncover active projects in industrial facilities, warehouses, manufacturing plants. Our Project Reports provide you with the contact person(s) for the active project as well as direct phone number and direct email. Give both strategies a try. You only have appointments and sales to gain.

Is Cold Emailing an Effective Sales Tactic for Systems Integrators?

By Evan Lamolinara | 03/25/2019 | 8:30 PM | Categories: Current Affairs

Email1Most sales reps have heard of cold calling -- it's one of the most common strategies used by system integrators to sell their products or services. However, a sales strategy that's often overlooked is cold emailing. Like cold calling, it involves communicating with a potential customer with whom you've had no previous content. The difference is that cold calling involves calling potential customers, whereas cold emailing involves emailing them. So, is cold emailing an effective B2B sales tactic, or should you focus your sales efforts on other strategies?

15% to 28% Average Open Rate

You may assume that cold emails have a low open rate since the recipient isn't familiar with the sender (the business). But according to a report by Preopeller, cold emails have an average open rate of 15% to 28%. That means for every 100 cold emails you send, you can expect 15 to 28 recipients to open them. By optimizing your cold emails with an eye-catching subject line and familiar sender name, you may achieve an even higher open rate.

Easy to Get Started

It's also easy to start a cold emailing campaign. You only need the email addresses of potential customers, at which point you can send them cold emails to promote your business's products or services.

The trick is, where to get high quality emails. That’s where SalesLeads can help. Our Sales & Marketing Intelligence service is a high quality content and contact database with email addresses. Not all services provide the email addresses, and if they do, they charge extra. You can use our service in a couple different ways. 1. Use the high quality content database as is, and search for contacts for targeted companies, filter by city, state etc., or 2. Let us know exactly who and what you want to target and our team will create a custom targeted list with the information verified.

Increased Brand Exposure

In addition to selling products or services, cold emailing can increase your system integrators brand exposure. Even if a recipient doesn't open your email, he or she will still see the subject line and the ‘From’. By including your systems integrator name and other identifiable brand elements in subject lines, you'll expose more users to your business's brand. The next time one of these prospects want to make a purchase, they may choose your business because of its brand.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

If you're going to use cold emailing in your system integrator’s sales strategy, though, you should familiarize yourself with the CAN-SPAM Act. Some B2B sales reps assume that the CAN-SPAM Act prohibits them from emailing potential customers with whom they've had no previous contact, but this isn't true. Rather, the CAN-SPAM Act requires businesses to give recipients the ability to opt out of receiving future emails. In other words, you must include an "unsubscribe" link in your cold emails -- and you must honor this request if a recipient clicks it.

Now that you’ve had the opportunity to view who opened your emails, you may want to track particular companies in the news so you have additional reasons to call. SalesLeads released News Alert, a way to track pertinent information about that company. You will automatically receive this service with your subscription. Test it out with a free subscription to our service.

The opinions expressed herein are those solely of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of Agile Business Media, LLC., its properties or its employees.

About Evan Lamolinara

Evan Lamolinara

Evan Lamolinara is president of SalesLeads, Inc., a company that has been around for over 60 years, generating high quality sales leads dedicated to the sales & marketing professionals in the industrial marketplace. Mr. Lamolinara, an entrepreneur and competitor, purchased the legacy company in 2014. Since then, he's redeveloped its core software delivery platform and grew the company over 400%. Evan graduated from Mount Union College with B.A. Business Management and honed his competitive skills as a 3-year letterman on the College football team.



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