9 years ago
January 6, 2015

How to Use Your Website to Warm Your Sales Prospects

Use your website to convert leads into sales opportunities and warm sales prospects with the following tips.

Rhys Metler

Your company’s website should be acting as more than just an internet brochure about your organization. It should also be generating qualified leads and helping your sales people warm sales prospects to be converted into sales. When an individual clicks on a link or types your web address into a browser from a physical marketing piece or referral, he or she is likely already a lead. Use your website to convert leads into sales opportunities and warm sales prospects with the following tips.

Establishing Rapport by Increasing Prospect Engagement Before the First Contact

Rapport is the first thing that your sales people should be looking to build to warm sales prospects on a cold call. It is also the first thing that your website should be focused on promoting. Rapport starts with creating a conversation, finding common interests and goals, and ultimately constructing a relationship that can lead to mutual benefit. Try establishing rapport with your website to warm sales prospects by:

  • Inviting prospects to connect with principals, sales people, or other influencers over social media like LinkedIn or professional Twitter accounts
  • Enabling comments on your website where feasible to drive prospect engagement; prospects who reach out to comment are immediately warm sales prospects
  • Asking prospects to sign up for periodic newsletters or better yet, collateral materials to encourage them to familiarize themselves with your business.

Adding Depth to Standard Pre-Call Research

Pre-call research is a great way for sales people to increase conversion rates, since it allows your sales people to begin a dialogue with the prospect without asking basic questions about the company, industry, and needs. However, pre-call research does not warm sales prospects; until the sales person makes the call, the prospect may not even know that the call is coming.

Your website, though, can warm sales prospects. Not only does it increase prospects’ familiarity with your organization and purpose, but it can lead sales prospects to anticipate a call if your website is using contact forms and other inbound marketing tactics. At the moment that sales prospects decide to share additional information with you, they become warm sales prospects.

Building Value in the Eyes of the Prospect

It goes without saying that a company website should be professionally designed, but it takes more than an eye-catching site layout to build value for prospects these days. Your company can use its website to promote the kinds of value that prospects are really looking for, establishing a baseline on which your sales people can build. Warm sales prospects with early value propositions using strategies like:

  • Making your organization’s expertise available by offering white papers on common issues and potential solutions
  • Ensuring that your value proposition, or at least the basic framework, is visible and readily understood in all areas of the site
  • Incorporating professional visuals of the product, past customers, and similar story-telling images to reinforce the benefits of doing business with you

Providing Success Metrics and References to Build Trust

Inbound marketing through your website is as relationship-based as traditional outbound marketing. To truly warm sales prospects, the first stages of trust must be established. For prospects who are interacting with your website, it is important to:

  • Use language that is relatable, easy to understand, and has a cohesive corporate voice and tone across your website
  • Point towards past successes, such as your growth rate, industry position, and similar metrics that demonstrate your track record
  • Display quotes or feedback from clients as references, especially those that are higher profile; this can warm sales prospects to doing business with you directly

Whether on the phone, in person, or over the internet, to warm sales prospects your organization must make a connection with prospects and the issues that are important to them. Let your website do the initial work to warm sales prospects before your sales people make contact, and you will see your conversion rates rise.

Rhys Metler

Rhys is a tenacious, top performing Senior Sales Recruiter with 15+ years of focused experience in the Digital Media, Mobile, Software, Technology and B2B verticals. He has a successful track record of headhunting top performing sales candidates for some of the most exciting brands in North America. He is a Certified Recruitment Specialist (CRS) and has expert experience in prospecting new business, client retention/renewals and managing top performing sales and recruitment teams. Rhys enjoys spending quality time with his wife, son, and daughters, BBQing on a hot summer day and tropical vacations.

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