When I talk about the ‘Green Banana Effect®’ in my consultations or seminars, I often get the following, justified objection from sales: ‘But how do we know that the banana or lead is not already ready for sales when it is generated? The lead could already be ripe and want to buy.’
What is a ‘sales fast lane’?
In order to recognise leads that are already sales-ready at the start of your digital process, build a ‘sales fast lane’ into each stage of the process that leads directly to sales. This ensures that no more ‘hot leads’ slip through the sales department’s fingers.
How do you realise a ‘sales fast lane’?
It’s simple: at every stage of the automated, digital process, you ask your lead how they would like to proceed with you. They can continue to consume content ‘unsupervised’ or request contact. You leave it up to the (potential) customer to decide how and whether they want to stay in contact with you. At this point, please think about the efficiency of a salesperson. Why should he deal with a contact who is not yet ready to talk? His attention is much better focussed on prospects or customers who have expressed this need.
How do you ask the prospect or customer whether they would like to talk to the sales team?
You can offer a direct consultation or an online demo with a corresponding link in several media – such as a landing page, email, website or content module. If the prospect/customer is interested, nothing stands in the way of a conversation. If the prospect/customer does not respond to this offer in the first stages of the buying process, they will probably not yet be ready for sales and enthusiastic about a call from a sales representative.
However, you can also place offers in your content modules, emails and landing pages that do not directly offer a contact or conversation, but suggest that they are ready for sales.
Examples:
- Online-Demo
- Preisindikation / Angebot
- Dokument „Implementation Note“
- Dokument „Fahrplan / Roadmap zum Start“
- Dokument: „Checkliste zur Auswahl einer Lösung“
If a prospective or existing customer is interested in one of these offers, you can conclude that they may be ready for sales. A contact/call at this stage is highly likely to have the potential for an interesting conversation.
A ‘middle way’ between another content module and the ‘sales fast lane’, which leads directly to sales, is the offer of a chatbot.
Excerpt from my book: ‘Digitalisation in marketing and sales’
