These Sales Messaging Mistakes Could Hurt Your Results

How you communicate with prospects can be a determining factor in whether they decide to purchase from you or abandon the deal for a competitor means better sales or not. Contact with leads extends to your Internet marketing methods. Everything your sales employees tell potential customers in pitches needs to be consistent with the information they find on your website and other online channels. An online marketing system can help you accurately tailor your content to buyers’ needs, which facilitates the sales process.

Here are several ways you may be alienating your inbound leads and ultimately impacting sales effectiveness:

1. Missing the point of your brand story

Even in highly technical B2B industries, brand storytelling can help leads make a more meaningful connection with your organization. In this story, the wrong way to present yourself is to be overly self-promotional, according to a Salesforce blog post written by Geoffrey James. Focusing too much on your company can turn customers off. In more competitive sectors, it’s likely that other firms are utilizing this self-centered approach, so you can differentiate yourself by placing more focus on your client base.

2. Not accounting for different buyer personas or segments

If you’re running effective Internet lead generation campaigns, your website is the source of a great deal of activity. With the right types of content marketing, you may even see a high number of leads return to your blog. However, many companies do very well catering to separate buyer personas right until it comes time to convert them into customers, Pat Owings wrote for Inbound Marketing Blog. These leads need to be approached in a way that’s consistent with the content on your website. Having a really good grasp of different buyer personas can help you experience better sales.

3. Overloading your content with technical jargon

This is an easy trap to fall into when you sell complex B2B solutions. These buzzwords may serve a purpose for inner-office communications, but jargon will likely confuse your potential customers, James said. Sales messaging can be strengthened when the wording is condensed and simplified instead of highly technical. Lead confusion can breed mistrust. It’s important to keep in mind that B2B buyers won’t always be the same as the end-users of your solution.

4. Failing to recognize leads

Because a great deal of the sales cycle happens behind the scenes before buyers contact you, it would be a major messaging mistake to not recognize them when they return to your site, Owings wrote. If a potential customer has visited your site multiple times, subscribed to your newsletter, and downloaded a white paper or other content, approaching them with a bland sales pitch can instantly alienate them. An online marketing system can help you gather more details about prospects to make pitches more personal. This is an important way to improve sales messaging. Leads will appreciate personalized attention, and it could result in higher sales rates.

5. Bombarding every visitor to your site

Nearly as bad as not giving personal attention to leads is overdoing it, according to Owings. It can be tempting to contact leads immediately after they visit, but this is a quick way to ensure they never return, let alone convert into customers. Just about every first-time visitor to your site has no intention of purchasing on their initial viewing of your page. Calling and pitching to them right away comes across as overeager. With lengthy B2B sales cycles in many sectors, it’s a better approach to save the phone call for later in the customer journey.

How to get sales messaging right

Generic communications with your prospects can severely bog your team down when it comes to closing deals. However, you can’t ignore this issue and hope your numbers will increase. One of the best ways to more closely align your messaging with what potential clients are looking for is to focus on their needs, James said. Although it’s tempting to talk about how great your product or service is, buyers are wary of this approach. Focus on what your product can do for customers’ companies.

This generally means speaking the customer’s language. While avoiding technical jargon is important for all target audience segments, various buyer personas may require a slightly different message. Your sales team should always tailor the approach to the situation. Prospects want personal attention.

There are a number of factors at play when determining an effective sales message. Marketing automation can help your team keep all branding consistent, contact prospects in an appropriate way, and close a higher number of deals. These platforms give your employees real-time visibility into lead activity so they aren’t pitching too soon. This can also provide a better indication of a lead’s potential buyer persona and his or her stage in the revenue funnel.