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Archives for June 2019

How to Lower Your Material Handling Company's Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

By Evan Lamolinara | 06/07/2019 | 4:50 PM

How much money does your material handling company spend to acquire a typical customer? Known as Customer Acquisition Cost  (CAC), it's an important metric you need to track. While countless factors can affect your material handling company's CAC, a Money-1673582_960_720414
higher-than-average CAC will hurt your company's profits. It's disheartening when you spend an average of $50 to acquire a new customer, only for customers to yield an average of $40 in revenue. The good news is that you can lower your company's CAC in several ways.

Align Marketing and Sales Teams

Even if your material handling company has separate departments for marketing and sales, as a sales or marketing manager, align them to streamline your company's sales process. Marketing and sales teams have different functions, but they have a shared goal of generating quality leads that result in sales. If your material handling company's marketing and sales teams operate independently of each other, it may take longer and require more money to acquire new customers. Start by identifying key prospects you want your material handling company to acquire. Then determine the types of communications and who’s responsible. Tag team the two departments to foster internal communications and efforts.

One way to enjoy some quick success and for the two departments to realize the value of working together, use the Project Reports by SalesLeads. These Project Reports have already identified who is moving, renovating or modernizing their equipment. They’ll get the Project description, contact names, titles, phones and emails. Now they have a strong start to quickly prove the value of working together for a common goal.

By aligning your material handling company's marketing and sales teams, you'll reap the benefits of a streamlined sales process as well as a lower CAC.

Marketing: Add Relevant Videos to Landing Pages

If you use landing pages to reach prospective customers, consider adding relevant videos to them. According to WordStream, landing pages with at least one video have 80% higher conversion rates than landing pages with no videos. Conversion rate is a metric that reflects the percentage of visitors to a landing page -- or other sales channel -- that make a purchase. Therefore, a higher conversion rate will result in more customers and, ultimately, a lower CAC.

Sales reps know which customer would be best for a video…and also agree to it. A video can consist of showing your product in use, but also support the reason to purchase such as video testimonials, and video installations. Remember, leads or prospects need to build a business case for purchasing your product / service. Give them the information they need to take to the Board.

Sales & Marketing: Ask for Referrals

Don't be afraid to ask your material handling company's existing customers for referrals. According to a survey of sales reps within the material handling industry, 78% say referrals have a higher conversion rate than other types of leads. When an existing customer recommends your material handling company to another company, he or she is essentially vetting for your company and its products or services. The new company contact will then feel more confident in your material handling company's abilities to provide a valuable product or service that's worth purchasing, resulting in a higher conversion rate.

Sales: Look for Sales Triggers

Another way to lower your material handling company's CAC is to look for sales triggers. As explained in a previous blog post, sales triggers or "trigger events" are indications that a prospective customer is ready to make a purchase. Sales triggers can be classified as either problem indicators, change indicators or opportunity indicators. Problem indicators suggest the prospective customer is having a problem that can be solved using your material handling company's products or services. Change indicators suggest the prospective customer is undergoing a change, such as a corporate merger or the appointment of a new CEO. And opportunity indicators suggest the prospective customer is looking to grow their company.

How can you find out this information quickly? Enable your sales and marketing team with a News Alert. But not any kind of new alert, because you can quickly get overwhelmed with unwanted news events. As part of the SalesLeads system, there’s a News Alert feature. Identify the company or organization, the type of news you are interested in receiving and only get notifications when the criteria is met. Now your sales and marketing teams can work together to use the strategic information to get into the account or move them through the sales funnel faster.

Marketing: Develop Valuable Content

A form of inbound marketing, content marketing is a highly effective tactic for lowering CAC. It involves producing and distributing content that's relevant to the interests of your material handling company's audience. Publishing blog posts or articles on your material handling company's website is a form of content marketing. Search engines will eventually index these posts and pages in the search results, meaning prospective customers may find them when searching for the respective topic. Over time, content marketing such as this can send countless new customers to your material handling company. When creating content, you should add a call to action (CTA) that tells prospective customers to contact your company.

Keep in mind that content marketing encompasses all forms of content. While most content marketing is performed using text, you can use other types of content to connect with prospective customers, including the following:

  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • Slideshows
  • Webinars
  • Podcasts
  • PDFs

Marketing: Use Targeted Advertising

If you're going to use paid advertising to reach prospective customers, you should create targeted ads. What are targeted ads exactly, and how can they can lower your material handling company's CAC? The term "targeted ads" refers to promotional ads that are only viewable to your material handling company's audience. Rather than creating ads that everyone sees, for example, you can create targeted ads that only your company's key demographic will see. Targeted ads typically yield higher conversion rates than untargeted ads, so they'll naturally lower your material handling company's CAC.

Sales & Marketing: Source High-Quality Leads from SalesLeads

Focus the sales and marketing efforts by sourcing high-quality leads from SalesLeads. Just a handful of high-quality leads can drive far more sales revenue for your material handling company than hundreds or even thousands of low-quality leads or purchasing a list. With a steady source of high-quality leads, you’ll be able to focus the marketing and sales teams’ efforts for a common cause.

Begin by opening a complimentary account and ask for a few recent Project Reports. You’ll be able to try out a few opportunities as well as explore the system. There’s plenty of functions to help support the prospecting process and sales pipeline process.

A Sales Management & Marketing Guide: What's the Average Conversion Rate for Material Handling Leads?

By Evan Lamolinara | 06/07/2019 | 4:07 PM | Categories: Current Affairs

Facebook-analytics-2265786_960_720445Conversion rate is arguably one of the most -- if not the most -- important performance metric for material
handling companies. As you may know, it refers to the percentage of users who purchase a product or service. With a high conversion rate, your company will generate more sales using fewer resources. So, what's the average conversion rate for material handling leads, and what steps can you take to increase your company's lead conversion rate?

Lead Conversion Rate Explained

First, familiarize yourself with the term "lead conversion rate." Conversion rate is a metric that can be applied to any marketing or sales tactic, including lead generation. The term "lead conversion rate" refers to the percentage of your material handling company's leads that make a purchase. In other words, you convert those leads into paying customers. If your material handling company attracted 500 leads last month, 50 of whom made a purchase, your lead conversion rate for that month would be 10%.

Exploring Material Handling Lead Conversion Rates

If your company transports, stores, packs/unpacks or even automates materials or parts within a warehouse, distribution center or manufacturing facility, different companies will experience different lead conversion rates. With that said, a report published by Salesforce found that 13% of all B2B leads convert into opportunities. And of those opportunities, only 6% convert into sales.

How to Increase Your Lead Conversion Rate

Here is your guide to maximizing every lead opportunity. The content can be for you…personally, or it can be for a member of your team. Regardless of years of experience, we can all improve our lead conversion rate.

#1: Use personalized messages when communicating with prospects or leads. When a lead first provides your material handling company with his or her information, you should use that information to personalize your communications with the lead. At minimum, you should know the lead's name, in which case you can address emails and other marketing material to the lead by his or her name. It's a subtle modification that can boost your lead conversion rate by as much as 30%.

#2; When making a phone call, be sure your sales, inside sales or telemarketing team uses the person’s name. Be careful if you choose the say the person’s last name as well. Try saying their first and last name so it sounds more ‘natural’, rather than trying to figure it out to the gate keeper. It’s a dead giveaway that you’re cold calling.

#3: If you’re leaving a voicemail message or if you’re speaking to them ‘live’ for the first time, address them by their first name and how you both are now connected. “Hi Tom, this is Susan from Material Handling Inc. You called and left a message because you’re looking for repairs on your fleet. Tell me what’s been going on?”

#4: Follow up your phone call (if you connected or not) with a personalized email letting them know you called and left a message. This will be a great way to have them recall the voice mail message you left and get a quicker response back from the lead. When they call back, be ready. Be sure to communicate in a way that makes them feel special. “Hi Tom, thanks so much for calling me back. I was doing a little research for you, but I need to ask you a few questions first.” Each one of these communications shows the prospect respect, undivided attention and an interest to know more about their problem.

#5: Another way to increase your lead conversion rate is to harvest high-quality, targeted leads. If all your leads are generic and not necessarily related to your material handling company's industry, you'll probably experience a low conversion rate. But if you focus on high-quality, relevant leads, you'll achieve a higher conversion rate.

Where can you find high quality leads that are for the material handling industry? That’s where SalesLeads Inc. comes in. Many times, material handling companies want to be able to find out when a new construction, renovation, expansion, or modernizing equipment project is going on before it actually happens. That’s what we do.

Every time a new Project Report is released, you’ll get a notification. The purpose is so you and your team can call the validated contact name to begin the sales cycle. Yo
u’ll receive all the pertinent information such as project description, contact names, titles, email and direct phone numbers. Now it’s up to you to use the personalized communications we just discussed for a higher conversion rate. The best way to be convinced of its value is to try it out. So, try it out for free. You only have business to gain.

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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