Time management is a must-have skill for any high-ranking business executive (and for anyone aspiring to reach their level for that matter). With that said though, they’re the ones in charge and it’s likely that they would want nothing short of full control over their time. This means that your marketing strategies, the way you make your appeals, and your lead generation methods must allow that control by having less of it for yourselves.
Of course, you might say in your defense that the reason why things like BI software and other enterprise management tools are difficult to implement is because of the substantial lack of information between the two parties. And truth be told, it is imperative that the entire business virtual roundtables knows exactly what you’re going to do for their organization because even if you had the approval from a higher authority, that higher authority will only regret it once the complaints start coming in.
So how can you reach a compromise between being an informative provider and one who doesn’t waste too much of a decision maker’s precious time?
Again, the solution is still to minimize the control you have over the time you spend and leave it up to them to decide. The trick is you don’t have to inform them in one setting. And speaking of setting, setting appointments can serve as your model of how to do just that.
First off, your methods of initial contact mustn’t take too much time. Use what little time you can give yourself to gradually nurture their interest and keep them wanting to know more. If you started with a call, tell them it won’t take much time and you’ll leave or send something else for them to peruse at their own convenience. If they found you instead, be it via an advertisement or a webpage that came in their search engine results, make sure your site doesn’t take too long to read in terms of features. Let them dictate the pace of the engagement by giving the option to engage further (be it via email or an inbound call). After that, try to use the little bits of time they give you to slowly fill them in, find out the necessary details (like business size, budget, and especially their needs), and then get them interested enough to wrap things up.
This gradual method of giving in allows your prospect the freedom to be qualified at their own pace. The beauty of it is that it lets them fit the stages of the process in accordance to their own time. You allow them the right to determine how much they want to know, when to know it, and hopefully set a date when they can finalize everything and close the deal.
B2B leads generated in this manner are guaranteed to have really high chances of success when it comes to sales. The potential client is well-informed, the process was done without too much inconvenience on their part, and you in turn know everything there is to know about their budget and needs in order to ease the implementation process.