Rather than focus sales efforts on seeking out prospects and making cold calls re-focus your efforts so that the emphasis is on demand generation. Why? Demand generation shortens the sales cycle and increases sales opportunities by nurturing and engaging potential customers. Moreover, demand generation is a commitment to long-term customer relationships.
Demand generation builds and nurtures prospect and customer relationships for the long-term. To do this effectively, companies need to do things like host webinars, create a blog, and promote blog posts through social media. Companies need to create and disseminate content-driven resources that establish themselves as a thought leader and as an industry influencer, and which engage prospects and customers alike.
Demand generation is not a sprint. It takes time to build and implement a successful strategy. However, once a strategy is in place and is consistently and continuously implemented, there will be positive results. Specifically, website traffic will increase and, by extension, so will the number of prospects. These prospects are warm leads. These prospects are ones which your sales team should focus on as they are more likely to convert to customers than the cold call prospect. In fact, prospects that come to you via a successful demand generation strategy are five times more likely to become your customers.
To grow sales through demand generation it is important to identify your target customers and their needs. In short, get to know your target customer and identify how your company can anticipate and respond to their needs. Furthermore, take the time to choose the right content and choose the right place to disseminate content.
Shorten your sales cycles and increase your sales opportunities by focusing time and effort on creating and implementing a demand generation strategy instead of on cold calls.
If you’d like to learn more about demand generation and what it can do for your business, get in touch. Fronetics Strategic Advisors works with companies in the logistics and supply chain industries to develop and implement a demand generation strategies.
A version of this post appeared on DC Velocity.