No, You Can’t Have 5 Minutes of My Time

Regardless of the industry you serve, finding new ways of capturing business is crucial for growth. To this end, many businesses engage in email or phone-based marketing campaigns, targeting like-minded individuals and companies to develop relationships, build rapport and potentially win their business.

However, many of these efforts fall on deaf ears. Not because their services or solutions are not exceptional; but rather, because the recipient doesn’t always have the extra 5 minutes to discuss them.

While cold calling, in general, has lost a lot of value, there are more effective methods for connecting with potential customers and building long-lasting relationships. Likewise, however, all the methods available to do so take time. And the first thing you must do is focus on saving your customers time.

In this article, we’ll introduce three of the best practices of business development that have been shown to increase email replies, produce higher conversion rates, and open the doors to new business opportunities… all while showing your customers and clients just how much you value their time.

Step One – Qualify Your Leads Before Investing Time

The first step that must be completed to save valuable time for your customers is really simple; determine if they’re a good fit for your product or service.

While most email and phone marketing contact lists might be good starting points for outreach, many are wasted simply due to a lack of customer-based research.

Research is the most important element of any marketing or sales program. Knowing your target’s business, structure, consumers, and their strengths and weakness allows you to craft messages that are relative to the product or service you offer but in a way that cuts right to the point.

However, if they don’t need the product or service you offer, time is wasted – on both ends.

Ideally, you always want to start any marketing campaign by doing a bit of due diligence to ensure that anyone you plan on contacting is a good fit.

This not only saves you time by reducing the number of cold calls, or impersonal emails that just go to the junk folder… but it saves your customer’s time as well.

Step Two – Find the Right Recipient

It’s amazing how often marketers and other B2B development experts focus on trying to contact the CEO, President, or top executive in an organization.

While the bosses might make a final decision on a major purchase or investment in new technology, those who will use these tools the most are the people that you want to connect with.

This is especially crucial when it comes to critical infrastructure solutions.

For example, if you offer a transportation management solution that is used mainly by fulfillment managers and their teams does it make sense to contact the President of the company – or the management of those who require the solution to improve their efficiency?

The answer is simple – connecting with those who are actively looking for a solution you offer is the best way to connect with future business partners.

There are several reasons for this:

• It puts you in direct contact with someone who can use your solution.
• You can encourage engaging conversations by listening to their current hurdles, problems, and challenges, then address them on an individual case basis.
• It saves everybody time, which is the first step to building a long-lasting relationship and more loyal clientele.

Step Three – Customize Your Initial Correspondence

When you have the right contact with the right company, you’re ready to draft the right email. But where do you start?

At the beginning of this article, we led with the one thing you’ll never do – asking for 5 minutes of their time.

Here’s a secret: Nobody makes a business decision in five minutes – so why start your correspondence with a lie?

Every opening email to a qualified lead should be short, sweet, and to the point. If you have a solution that will help improve their operational efficiency, improve customer service, or expedite fulfillment solutions – address it immediately. Let the strength of your solution provide the guidance that leads them deeper into the content of your email.

• Don’t waste your time or that of your recipient by trying to sugarcoat or overly enhance the power and features of your solution.
• Be factual, explain what it does, how it works, and how it benefits their business specifically.
• Every email communication should be customized for that business specifically.

Time is indeed a valuable commodity. Even if it is just 5 minutes.

While there are several automated solutions for expediting email marketing, simply creating a generic email blast does not produce positive results. The key to saving time is investing some time to improve your outreach and conversion rates.

By doing some light research to find the right potential partners, the best contact within that group, and cutting straight to the point while providing more in-depth information deeper into your body content you’ll save a ton of time on both sides of the spectrum.