HubSpot and LinkedIn teamed up to produce an informational webinar to help entrepreneurs keep their business sales cranking in the second half of the year.
As a marketer at a young technology company that tries to keep our sales funnel full, I found their recommendations helpful, so I’ll share my new knowledge with marketers at other growing companies.
The five-step process for enaging with your decision maker:
LinkedIn- A virtual waterfall
Seventy-five percent of decision makers are influenced by their social networks. By engaging with the right people, it increases your brand and develops relationships that could help your business in the future. LinkedIn is the bullseye for B2B companies because it is a networking platform for professionals that provides a lot of information about the most effective influencers and how many connections away they are from you. By seeing your connections with other professionals, it creates a virtual waterfall for who to continually stay connected with. From first identifying the right people to connect with, we then move to step 2.
Warm introduction vs. Cold outreach
According to HubSpot’s findings, decision makers are 5X more likely to engage with sales professionals who present a warm introduction rather than a cold outreach. A warm introduction is created through your network of connections and relied on providing your new connection something of value. Instead of going with an “old school” cold-calling approach, start engaging with them in a warm way that isn’t pushy. This gives your decision maker a much better idea of your company who is more likely to remember you and desire to do business in the future. Once you have made the warm connection, then…
Sending an email on the weekend.. wait seriously?
Yes, it’s true. Decision makers are more likely to open your email on Friday and Saturday than during the business week. Seems crazy bothering an executive on the weekend, but from all of the junk they receive during the week, they will be more willing to open an email when their mailbox is not blowing up.
Email subject line vs. no subject line?
As marketers we have heard time after time to always have an intriguing subject line when sending emails. It turns out emails that don’t have subject lines are eight percent more likely to be opened than emails with subject lines. There are two reasons for this: People are curious why there’s no subject line and will open the email to find out. And a real person is more likely to accidentally leave off a subject line when sending out an email than a spam-bot. Most recipients would rather hear from a real person than a robot e-blasting a contact list. Personally, I like knowing what a new email is about when it hits my inbox, but it might be worth testing the non-subject approach.
Remove your company from the body content
Now that you have figured out when to send an email and what the subject line should be, always make sure the body content is related to the prospective client and their business. Pushy introductions about your company and why they should do business with you rarely works. By starting the conversation about them, it shows that you are invested in their needs and want to learn more about the challenges they face so that you can offer a credible, strategic solution.
