Sales prospects, even the most interested, are often a challenge to engage with. A salesperson must compete for a prospect’s time and attention while the prospect is bombarded with information from multiples channels on their devices. For this reason, salespeople must deliver the right message through the right channel at the right moment to hold the prospect’s interest. A good sales team should be able to craft the right message through their knowledge of the prospect’s profile and estimate the right moment by following where they are the buyer journey. But what about the delivery mechanism? For many businesses, the solution is clear: texting.
Many sales teams have now fully integrated texting into their correspondences with prospective customers. Research has shown that texting is the customer’s preferred channel for engaging with sales teams. It drives higher open and response rates compared with email, leading to more interactions and increased revenue. Texting is also pressure-free, since a prospect doesn’t need to respond right away as they would with a phone call. Rather, prospects can text back whenever they feel ready.
Texting prospects can be fully automated. By implementing conversational bots that work via customized question flows, sales teams can accelerate leads through the funnel and prioritize those most likely to convert. Bots act as a lead qualification process that reduces time spent calling and emailing prospects. When a conversation is routed to a sales rep, the prospect is already near a decision. Texting not only aligns reps with the most promising prospects, but also enables engagement with multiple prospects at once—therefore expanding bandwidth without expanding team size.
Text Strategies for Sales
Text messaging enables businesses to take a heavy load off sales teams’ shoulders by qualifying a high volume of leads. Text bots can be used to screen website visitors who have elected to give their information, for instance. They can also be programmed to ask a series of questions to qualify the prospect, and once certain criteria are met, a sales rep is sent the information to take the conversation forward. One of our customers is an online real estate listings platform that uses texting as the main source of communication between their real estate agent customers and sales team. Communicating via text has been highly convenient given the on-the-go nature of their work. Agents, like customers in other industries, prefer text over calls and emails due to the familiarity and ease of use.
Getting Started
There are many reasons for a business to choose text messaging as a primary form of communication. Text is by far the most convenient channel for sales teams to communicate with their prospects and can qualify a high volume of leads for staff members. If you are interested in discussing the benefits of text messaging in your business, contact us, or download our eBook to learn more.
