The Optimum7 members deal with eCommerce businesses as well as some lead generation businesses. Some service-based lead generation. That’s because there’s a lot of overlap when it comes to organic visibility. The team also develops custom functionality for service-based businesses.
Clients report, “We’re having issues with our conversion funnels.” They then require assistance. Usually eCommerce, experts often talk about nurture, but that’s really web-based. What that means is do you have a dynamic email retargeting funnel? Are you retargeting on Facebook, AdRoll, or YouTube?
With B2B eCommerce clients, fifty to seventy-five percent of the sales happen offline. The team members actually will call the sales representatives, and they won’t answer the phone. When they answer the sales process is all over the place: they don’t have set scripts of what to say on the first, second, or third phone call. Right. In addition, they don’t have an active closing process to acquire a customer or project.
Optimizing Your Offline Sales Process
The marketers keep increasing their traffic and web-based conversions, but they’re not happy. Clients say, “Our sales are not up. They are flat.” When developers actually test their sales flow processes, it’s a disaster.
What do you do in this situation?
The agency or development partner was increasing traffic and web-based conversions, their web-based conversions. The problem lies in offline phone calls. Then the team needs to get involved with that.
Clients pay for marketers to drive traffic and leads, which then lead to conversions. However, if there’s a disconnect between their sales team and their marketing efforts, then they’re not going to continue being clients because they’re not able to convert those leads.
Marketers want to retain them as clients. They get involved and customers consult them throughout that process. Optimum7 has a sales process and playbook. The team knows from that first touch to close throughout that entire nurture process.
So, in this case, the marketers will act as a sales coach to guide their sales team. How to answer the phone, how to put a proper script together, and then how to nurture leads those to finally turn them and convert them into sales.
Some clients earn $10 million in annual revenue but they don’t have a CRM. That means they’re not registering leads, tracking,or recording their phone calls. Six representatives answer the phones to handle customer complaints, and you cannot evaluate performance. How do you enforce accountability in an environment like this?
The CEO loves to hear this but the sales manager hates the messenger. The marketers will say, “You know what? Your processes right now suck. Your close ratios have nothing to do with us. We’re actually getting you more leads and opportunities, but you’re not managing your sales team properly.”
You can’t say that because the company will shoot the messenger. As the business owner or the CEO, if traffic and leads are increasing, but the close rates are bad, gather that data. If you don’t have a CRM, you need a CRM. If you don’t track your phone calls, do so and record them. Implement a disclosure about recording for your customers.
Clients can use numerous internal and external tools. The Optimum7 team has experts who can assist with the sales process, including the funnel and the flow book.
As an agency, the marketeers will lose that business if they can’t fix that problem. Team members consult and provide value on this aspect.
Functionalities For eCommerce Sales Flows & Nurture Funnels
Let’s talk about the functionality aspects.
As complicated as it sounds, sales playbooks, sales flow, and CRM management are straightforward. Consider CRMs and recording phone calls related to business and customers. Why is it important or why is it so important to grab this data?
Data’s new oil, the most important thing that you can possibly gather for your business aside from revenue. Data is what leads to revenue. So without collecting that data and the functionality behind it really is having it all integrated. Right.
Without everything integrated, without your site automatically pulling in those leads and throwing them into your CRM, without your CRM, then spitting those emails out into your email nurture, without having that entire ecosystem and having the data flow throughout that ecosystem, you’re not going to have an effective sales funnel.
When it comes to functionality, integrate everything. Some large companies don’t even have a CRM and others have outdated models, desktop versions, or offline ones. They don’t even have a cloud-based CRM. Their sales team is manually entering the data when on the phone call, which obviously becomes a nightmare. It’s impossible to scale, research, and collate that data.
Having an effective, prominent CRM is key right now. That will allow you to open up any type of functionality.
Optimum7 has built specific functionalities, like phone tracking. One type of functionality is called a session ID, a phone tracking system with a quick JavaScript. You install it on your site. It will integrate with your big commerce or your Shopify, Volusion, Magento, WordPress, WooCommerce, 3dcart, or Miva storefront. The team built CRM; if you don’t have a CRM as a B2B company, you can use the in-house one. It can also integrate with your Salesforce, Nutshell, Zoho, or another specific CRM you’re using.
The team has received forty requests from B2B companies in the past month. It’s significantly up because B2B has learned their form of eCommerce is skyrocketing. Every marketing, UX/UI, and PR agency knows this.
One issue is this integrated ecosystem; business owners think that this development is not possible. It is with functionality and integrations.
Where do you see the biggest challenge? Is it on the management, executive, or technical level?
Nurture trickles down the employment hierarchy. At the executive level, if you don’t initiate this, it’ll never happen. The same goes for management and technical employees.
Take a three-prong approach. Everyone in your business needs to be on board. You need to have technical ability. If not, you need to partner with someone who does. And as a business owner, you need to understand your pain point.
If you can’t identify your pain point, that’s a pain point in itself because that you don’t have the data to actually see where you’re hurting, choking, or potentially losing sales.
Building an Integrated Sales & Nurture Ecosystem with eCommerce Technologies
A B2B business cannot cruise. If you cruise, you will die. There is a thin line between prioritization and dismissing a specific task or execution.
At the executive level, you need to make these decisions for marketing, for technology, for integrations. You don’t have the luxury to just say, “We don’t need it right now,” because that’s exactly how a competitor beats you.
Look at your metrics, financials, and analytics. Then make decisions based on those metrics and KPIs that you set up, follow through with your team, and make your team accountable to those KPIs. If you are going month to month without looking at your conversion rates, cost-per-acquisition (CPA), net profit, gross profit, or LER, you are not running an efficient organization.
If you are having difficulties with your system and this integrated ecosystem– where you record your calls — make sure that your representatives are answering your calls. You have a sales flow, and sales playbook where everyone is on the same page. If you need any assistance with this, reach out to the team members
