Sales touchpoints play an important role in shaping the perceptions of prospects and customers about your product.
These touchpoints, where communication occurs, can either be a lasting connection or lead to disengagement.
Understanding the significance of these sales touchpoints is crucial for any business striving to achieve deal closures.
In this article, we’ll delve into key touchpoints that can positively impact prospects and contribute to successful sales.
1. Emails
Emails remain one of the most preferred modes of communication because 99% of B2B professionals check their email every day.
You can use emails to send messages with just words or include pictures and files to provide the value your potential customers need. It’s a great way to be helpful without being too pushy.
Key driver: Do not be pushy or salesy. Talk less about your product and more about how you can solve the problem.
2. Phone calls
Talking on the phone is still one of the strong sales touchpoints to connect with people in today’s digital world.
When making cold calls, have a script to cover important points, but also be open to personalized talks. Focus on genuine conversations, understanding prospects with empathy.
Key driver: Make conversations authentic and adaptable. Don’t just stick to your script rigidly.
3. Online ads
With search engines, social media, and professional networks so widely used today, it’s unlikely you’ll want to leverage the power of online ads.
Because they can fit all budgets and give you deeper performance insights, online ads can be your key sales touchpoints. More importantly, they can be targeted based on your ideal demographics, making sure every ad dollar is spent in the right direction.
Choose your platform wisely, because there’s no single platform that suits all products and services.
For instance, games would be best suited to social media platforms like Facebook. Fashion accessories probably would find Instagram a better choice. A risk management service would find more leads and customers from LinkedIn than elsewhere.
Key driver: Proper targeting is essential to make sure you achieve results without overshooting your budget.
4. Social media
Be strong on key outbound platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
Learn where your potential customers are active and reach out to them on that platform.
Because social selling is gaining significant traction. As businesses increasingly recognize the power of building relationships and driving sales through social media, the adoption of social selling practices is becoming more widespread.
This approach not only enhances brand visibility but also facilitates meaningful interactions with your prospects, making this another best sales touchpoints to have in your sequence.
Key driver: Respond promptly to your prospects’ messages and as always, keep providing value by sharing relevant resources.
5. Events and exhibitions
Another good old promotional sales touchpoint in your sales and marketing strategy action plan, trade fairs, events, and exhibitions provide you with a unique opportunity to meet people in real life.
Such events bring suppliers, manufacturers, consumers, authorities, and other stakeholders under one roof.
What’s interesting is the quality and the quantity of people you’ll meet.
In some cases, exhibitors walk out a rich order book by the time the event ends.
In other cases, you take home a rich database of contacts that you can begin nurturing. This is why it’s important to be clear as to what you expect out of the event.
That will also steer your budget, as the size of the event, location, and other factors.
In all cases, be sure to train whatever teams especially for the event. That’s because the event will provide you with a short window within which to network with people and leads who can help your business grow.
Key driver: Pay the most attention to the space you’ve got to exhibit. If you’re just a visitor, be sure to network with the right people since the time will be limited and the attention of your target group could be divided.
6. Webinars
Sometimes, the events and exhibitions that can be done offline, a webinar can pretty much do the same online.
By getting people together to listen to your team and you, you get an opportunity to do several things.
Webinars provide you with an almost informal setup in which you can better listen to them understand and articulate their problems.
Also, they provide you with a subtle opportunity to establish yourself as an authority in a certain field.
Don’t go looking for any immediate sales in webinars – that likely won’t happen. Focus on delivering value. Interact respectfully and be generous in helping.
Focus on the presentation quality – be sure to check in advance the slides and videos you plan to run during the webinar. Have an elevator pitch that best showcases your company but avoid being elaborate and salesy.
Always be on the lookout for small signals of how your attendees perceive your brand or the competitors’. You can understand this mostly by the questions they raise.
Key driver: Always adopt the problem-solving approach. Show how your clients solved problem A or challenge B.
7. In-person appointments
Not all sales touchpoints can happen online – you often need physical meetings.
For instance, a real estate agent will find that taking prospects on a tour of the property and showing them around the neighborhood is almost always imperative before the buy signs on the dotted line.
Sometimes in-person appointments are an indication of the prospect’s willingness to finalize the deal and lead to sales closure.
In other cases, such events may be one more step in the sales funnel and there may be extra steps involved before the purchase happens.
In-person appointments are an invaluable opportunity so be sure not to take it lightly.
Firstly, double-check the time and venue and be on time. Next, make sure you’re carrying all the documents and presentation assets you think you’ll need.
Whether you should negotiate the price there and then is a tricky situation, so go with a clear idea about how much you will be able to let go and where you will need to draw the line or ask for confirmation from your seniors.
Key driver: Be prepared with answers to as many questions as you can think of. Be clear how you’ll be handling objections, because you likely won’t get a second chance.
Final thoughts
Optimizing sales touchpoints is essential for creating meaningful connections with prospects.
These are most channels that people are active on these days. You can easily put these sales touchpoints together in a sequence with each step well spaced out.
This will help you automate your process and hence save time & increase productivity.