Ultra-High Performers Use An Omni-Channel Approach to Prospecting

Text messaging is an important part of an omni-channel approach to prospecting that allows you to meet buyers where they are. Discover our five best practices for reaching prospects with text messaging.

For Many Salespeople, Text Messages Are An Untapped Gold Mine

At Sales Gravy we often talk about the importance of utilizing an omni-channel prospecting approach in your sequences. Ultra-high performers are obsessed with bending the statistical odds of winning in their favor, and this is true at every stage of their sales process.

Prospecting is no different, so, they use every channel that is available to them in order to reach their prospects. Luckily, there has never been a more exciting or opportune time to be in sales because there are so many channels by which you can reach the people that matter most.

No Prospect Is Impossible To Reach

We have more than just the telephone and email at our disposal— we have video messaging channels, social media, video conferencing, and the list goes on. Many of these are blended into multiple channels at the same time.

For example, by utilizing just LinkedIn (social media) I can spark engagement and build familiarity by sharing relevant content, liking/commenting on my prospects’ content, sending direct messages, sending video messages, and even scheduling a video call with them.

There is literally no excuse for saying a prospect is impossible to reach.

Yet, one area of prospecting that gets ignored much of the time is text messaging. It is a channel that many of our clients and learners ask us about because it can be incredibly difficult to figure out what to say and how to say it.

So here are 5 best practices to help you better utilize text messaging to reach prospects.

5 Ways To Leverage Text Messaging for Prospecting

Prospecting Sequences

I have found that text messaging is most effective when you send a text message to a prospect as a part of a sequence rather than as the first and only outreach.

Text messages convert better when they follow several other prospecting touches, such as a phone call, email, video message, or voicemail.

While there is nothing wrong with sending a text message outside of a sequence, maybe as a last resort to engage a hard to reach prospect, recent studies have found that text messages alone convert less than 10% of the time.

When they are used as part of prospecting sequences, text messages convert at exponentially higher rates.

After Networking Events

One of the things we, hopefully, will have the opportunity to continue participating in is networking events. These can be as small as joining your local chamber of commerce or as large as attending annual industry conventions.

Networking is an integral part of everyone’s success, especially in sales, but there is a problem with networking. The problem is that we meet so many people and collect so many business cards promising each person that “we will definitely get in touch.”

Then, at the office or at home we enter those cards into our CRM and move on. When we finally get around to reaching back out to those people, too much time has passed and we lost that connection.

So, a strategy that has worked wonders for salespeople around the world is using text messaging to anchor their conversations.

After Trigger Events

If you have a list of prospects with whom you have formed a relationship, then you can utilize trigger events to create deeper conversations. Something like a competitor’s merger, a shift in market demand, sudden or rapid growth/decline of a prospects company.

You can send text messages after trigger events because those events are urgent and text messages create urgency as well. I find that these messages work best when you utilize articles or relevant content to that particular event and quickly turn the conversation into a phone call.

To Remain Persistent But NOT Annoying

Nurturing prospects can be an undertaking all on its own but text messaging is a fantastic way to stay in front of a prospect without becoming a blocked email.

However, I CANNOT stress enough how important it is to know your boundaries with text messages. You know how it feels to get bombarded with text messages. Don’t be that person.

You need to focus on your qualifying criteria when prospecting because 80% of what you prospect is going to close later, not today. If you find a qualified prospect with the budget, buying history, and need for your product or solution, but the timing is not correct, then take the time to nurture that lead.

Text messages are best leveraged as part of a cadence when nurturing. Utilizing an omni-channel approach (Phone, Email, Social and Text for example) allows you to spread out each interaction. I recommend using text messaging as the channel with which you send the most valuable information so as not to diminish the channel’s value.

Excuse for Engagement

Maybe you don’t have a trigger event that you can utilize or a particular piece of insight that relates in the right way. But, you do have LinkedIn notifications for birthdays, promotions, work anniversaries etc.

So, use those as an excuse to reach out and send a text message. It will be more effective than a like on the automated LinkedIn post or LinkedIn message that says, “Congrats on your promotion.” Be creative with your outreach and send a message that anchors you in their minds.

Text messaging is certainly one of the most underrated tools in every salesperson’s kit. Don’t limit yourself to one or two communication channels. Don’t worry because there has never been a better time to be a salesperson.

Not only are text messages more acceptable as a means of business communication, there are so many great tools that allow you to be personal at scale. Creating nurturing campaigns, prospecting sequences, and automation to track data for text messaging efforts has never been easier or more effective.

SKIPIO is our text messaging platform of choice here at Sales Gravy. It allows us to reach and engage prospects at higher rates, convert marketing leads into sales leads, and know our text messaging stats. Learn more about SKIPIO here to see how their platform can help you and your sales team.