How to approach a customer in sales via direct contacting

Whats the most powerful way of how to approach a new customer in sales? Direct contact! Nowhere else you do have more control, can you use all you know and can you address your leads more directly with all their wishes, needs and problems. And still, according to a Forbes statistics, 76% of leads never get contacted…. What?

Yes, entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches and agents are leaving big money on the table by simply ignoring the power of direct contact. In this article we are going to talk about dos and don’ts of direct marketing and we are starting with some myths and the truth, ready? OK, lets go.

Myths and Truth about how to approach a customer in sales via direct contacting

Myth: Direct Mailing is (too) expensive

Truth: Sure, it costs you more than a call and more than an email. But even if you have a well designed campaign with a fitting „gimmick“ for your audience, you will not pass 10$. For three customers you need about 100 Leads, if your campaign is really good. So what is a customer worth to you? What is the lifetime value of this customer for you? More than 333$? Then 10$ per lead is a bargain!

Another myth: Direct eMail does not work, no one opens my mails.

Truth: If you are prepared and get in contact with your leads before (how? Read on til you come to the part about preparation…) you mail them, and if you use best-practice copy for your mail and especially your subject line, you will get open-rates most marketers will never get, above 40%. It is good copy and testing what makes the difference.

Myth no3: Cold calling is useless, people don’t like to be contacted via phone anymore

Truth: Nowadays many marketers are really really really bad when it comes to calling their prospects. And if we are contacted with: „Hi my name is…, and do you wanna buy that…“ without asking anything and pitching with the second sentence we all are surely annoyed. So you have to have a good script and improve this steadily. You have to know which hook to use for your prospect. And for this you need to know your prospect and audience well. Wait….yes, there was an article on this topic not long ago, just take a look here

Myth: people don’t like to be contacted directly and it is very likely to be sued…

Truth: it is very uncomfortable to get in touch with someone you don’t know. I experienced this myself. And if you don’t know what to say or write, and if you are not clear about your solution and you never acquainted yourself with the needs of your audience, well, this bad feeling will never change. And this way, your audience will recognize within seconds, that you do not like to contact them and mirror this back to you.

You want to be successful in sales? Try to contact your customers directly.

Harassing People with DMs is not the right way of how to approach a customer in sales

Raise you hand if you already experienced this:

1. You get a friend request from someone who is offering nearly the same solution as yours and directly with this friend request you are asked a question: „do you need more customers“ or „is there some space in your calendar to accept new clients“. And you ask yourself: did s/he read my profile data? Did s/he really look for a contact or did s/he only want to offer a product/service?
2. You get a DM, without further information: „Do you want to grow your Following on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube“. And the profile sending this message has <10 Followers…
3. You get a friend request and a message: „I want to connect with you, I don’t want to sell anything to you“ and when you accept the friend request you get a message like „is there some space in your calendar to accept new clients“….
4. …

Now, please be honest: how did you feel? Annoyed? I did. Many times.

And I am still annoyed about these complete !#+#%! doing this. Why? As I already said: direct contact is the most profitable way of getting in touch with your clients. But if there are such morons out there, annoying people around the world, this amazing way of contacting new customers will get more difficult day by day.

Additionally there is no need for this harassment. You can inform yourself about your prospects before you contact them. In most profiles of business owners on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram they write what they do and what they like and what their struggles and achievements are.

I know: this takes time… but seriously: our job as salespeople – and every entrepreneur is sales person No1 for his/her company – is to know our audience!!

So there is no excuse for harassing people with any kind of contact. Do your job first and then go and contact your prospects!

Did you experience 1, 2, 3 or another form of harassment? What was your answer? Tell me in the comments.

Three magic words for the right way of how to approach a customer in sales via direct contact: Know, Like, Trust

These words are the basis for a good relationship: be this personal or business relationships. And this applies to contacting your prospects as well. Especially when you are contacting your new customers directly.

Without Know, Like and Trust there will be no sale. Without Know, Like and Trust there even will be no real contact.

So how do the customers get to know, like and trust you, when it is the first time
they hear or see from you?

Short recap: Skipping the necessary work by not informing yourself about your prospects and pitching with the first contact are NOT the right moves to be known, liked and trusted, right?

The best is to do the exact opposite: be prepared, be informed, let your prospects know that you value them and their time.

A detailed step-by-step description for this process is an article for itself. For now I will focus on a short list of steps. If you want the detailed information and don’t want to wait for the relevant article to come: just DM me and you will get them for FREE. You’re welcome!

Steps:

1 Focus on one niche
2 Focus on one problem people in this niche have
3 Focus on the one solution you can give to them
4 Go where people in your niche are
5 Make a list of the first 100 ideal customers for you
6 Get informations about those 100 (social media groups/pages/profiles/accounts, website, websearch)
7 Get your script or copy (phone or e/mail) ready, and your FAQ
8 Focus on WIIFT and how they get it with your solution
9 Fill-in personal informations about the customer (in the script)
9 Take massive action: contact them all!

The better prepared you are the more success you will have. Like this? I hope so… If not, tell me in the comments and also tell my why not 😉

What happens if you chose the wrong tools for how to approach a customer in sales?

Your Account is shut-down! You do not have access to your lists or subscribers anymore!

This happens if you use your autoresponder i.e. active campaign, getresponse, mailchimp, aweber, infusionsoft or any other autoresponder tool for sending out cold direct email.

So please, don’t do that. Autoresponders are not for cold emailing. They are for your subscribers (double-opt-in in most countries on earth!) and your customers. They are for emails, be this sequences or broadcasts, to those persons who gave their OK to you that they want to be contacted by you.

When your autoresponder realizes that you are sending out emails to unknown people through spam complaints for example, the system will punish you with shutting down your account. That means: no more access to your own lists and no more access to your own subscribers.

Short Value-Tipp: always and regularly export and save your lists from your autoresponder…. Just in case, you know?

Cold emailing, if it’s done the right way, is very profitable and successful. But how can you send many mails to many people and how can you automate this process, WITHOUT using an autoresponder?

Here’s the solution: there are mailing platforms that specialize on sending cold emails.

Some of them limit the sending amounts, just like standard autoresponders, some of them just send out your mails without checking your sender reputation (what the heck is this?? Watch out for a new blog article, or just: contact me), most of them don’t check if your email list contains valid email-addresses.

But a few of them give you all: sequences, broadcasts, sender verification, integration of gmail and outlook, list cleaning tools, tracking tools, UNLIMITED emails and so on. I checked them out and if you want to profit from cold emailing, if you want to profit from my personal experience with these tools, just contact me. I will provide you with my personal reviews. You will love it.

Ready for the best way of how to approach a customer in sales via direct contacting?

It is turning your cold audience into a warm audience or possible buyers.

Let’s finish our direct contact article with a statistic:

Did you know that only 3% of people on social media and the web are looking for an instant solution of a problem? Those 3% are the so called hot audience.

And everyone wants to get their offer right in front of this buyers audience…

This means for you:
1) Amount of buyers relatively small,
2) competition in this field absolutely high!

How can you avoid this situation?

First: use direct contact and use it consistently, i.e. if you already have a list of customers and subscribers (aka the warm and hot audience), stay in touch with them, every day, by email, phone and mail.

The most easy way to do this, is to write an email sequence and inform your customers about interesting things and things they really need to know about you, your niche and your expertise. You don’t have to offer them any product with these mails, just give them valuable informations and show them you are their expert for…. Whatever your niche is.

Do you like to hear a funny or rather sad but real story about this? As you all know I am in insurance business for over 25 years now. And I am helping my colleagues around the world in getting new customers and raise cross-selling-rates for over one year. And not one of them had daily, or at least weekly contact with their customers!

In other words, they had a list (every online marketer would scream with excitement) but they didn’t use it and in the end, this list or rather the amazing value of this list died… And the same agents are wondering why their customers don’t buy the accidential care insurance when they get a marketing email from the insurance company…

Second: Go for the 97% and again use direct contacting for that. Yes, I know, cold audience means the „hard way“. But did you ever think about a way how to turn this cold audience into a warm audience? And how to automate this? Naturally you have to develop copywriting skills or a very good first contact phone script. And you have to give value before you offer something to your prospects. You remember „know-like-trust“?

But nearly all of this can be put in place automatically, so that you are perceivable  as an expert for your target audience with low effort and you can focus on talking and engaging with your prospects on a personal level. Every single agent I coached last year tripled their cross-selling-rates just by doing this.

Now it’s up to you: What is your favorite way of how to approach a customer in sales? And would you like to know more about how you can use the amazing advantages of direct contacting? You can do this on your own or you just set a (free) strategy call with me on this topic via this link. Either way: I wish you a lot of success and a great weekend. And stay tuned for the next article.