To help you maximize your sales and marketing resources, this Playbook includes the following:
For most professional service firms, the largest potential revenue source is your existing customers, which includes former clients and relationships with individuals who have gone on to new companies that meet your ideal client profile.
These customers (past and current) already trust your brand and are familiar with your product offering. There are lots of available stats on how much cost is saved when selling to a previous customer vs. acquiring a net new customer, as well as the typical overall boost to the profit margin. Harvard Business School found that increasing customer retention and repetition rates by just 5% can increase profits anywhere from 25 to 95%.
Using MarketLauncher’s own prospecting efforts as an example, here is how our FANS strategy is designed to produce consistent results.
Once you apply your own metrics to the equations we’ve shared here, you can work out how much activity is needed month to month to establish your own predictable pipeline.
Sales Targets / Closing Ratio = $ Pipeline
$ Pipeline / Avg. Deal Size = # of Proposals
Proposals / Opportunity Ratio = # of Discovery Mtgs
Discovery Mtgs / 2.5% Avg. Conversion = # of Calls Needed
Because we are calling 250 unique contacts each month, we aren’t hitting our total database in any given year. This can cause portions of the database to fall dormant unintentionally.
Therefore, sometimes it pays to occasionally allocate additional resources to re-energize a portion of the database that has gone dormant.
We recently added a campaign for that purpose (321 calls to 220 dormant contacts) which resulted in an additional 8 meetings in 30 days. This gave us a 30% boost in the pipeline that quarter.
You need a dedicated effort to fully maximize the potential of your FANS-base. Conventional wisdom would imply that FANS will reach out when they have a need. But that is only partially true. Here is how the ML FANS program evolved to a predictable model year over year.
By using HubSpot as our primary outreach platform, we were able to use the analytics tools to give us full visibility into lead pipeline and automated the process to give us more time for sales activity.
Over the last three years, ML has seen the FANS-base continue to increase revenue, contributing to 80% growth in 2021.
The following elements can systematically work to help you get the most from your customers and followers of your brand:
Group your FANS into these 4 buckets:
Establish categories to prioritize your outreach. These are the categories we use at MarketLauncher:
Set your revenue goal and work backwards from there by applying your conversion metrics at each stage of your sales funnel.
Understand your outreach conversion metrics:
Track your goals:
Track revenue moving into your pipeline:
Reach out with thought leadership content on a regular basis via email to stay top-of-mind. This should rotate on a cycle to mix things up:
This is all part of what we call the one-way dialogue. Then, monitor what your audience is reacting to in order to gauge their motivations and interests.
Proactive follow-up means using insights from content reaction and social media activity to determine when to reach out to your FANs – particularly when you have a new story to tell or when you notice something in their life has changed.
The FANS calling campaign will depend on multiple factors: what you already know about your FANS, your sales cycle, the client’s fiscal year and how long the client has been inactive.
At ML, we develop a calling cadence based on the category we’ve assigned each target and designate a specific month to follow-up. If progress isn’t made, the lead stays in the monthly email cadence and is recycled back in for phone follow-up in 6 months, unless behavior such as engagement with email content or company news or a career change warrants pulling them back into a cycle earlier.
A typical calling sequence is every 6 months, but this can be shorter based on what we learn during communication.
Some best practice tips:
Spend some time daily scanning your publications – follow information that helps inform where to spend time in your FANS base.
“I am on LinkedIn daily – at least 30 minutes scanning my feed, following active/past client companies and relationships – this gives me real time updates on their business initiatives.
“A real example: I was following a client contact from a company ML had worked with for several years. Our contact had left the client company and moved on to a similar position at a new company. I reached out on LinkedIn and congratulated him on his new role. As he started to post regularly, I would comment and like the posts. One day he posted about hiring SDR’s, I sent a personal message that we should talk further about this need and see if ML could augment what they are trying to do. He responded with an introduction to the company’s global CMO for a Discovery call.”
“I read ZoomInfo Scoops/updates, PE Hubwire for investment updates to inform market activity, look for clients receiving funding. Triggers like this help me be more strategic with outreach to FANS – calling with informed knowledge on their business, and congratulating them on recent funding, – further discussing what initiatives are being put in place based on funding, etc.
“I regularly review client websites / news pages – this is a good place to view before a call – what are they talking about that is something you can reference – if it’s there, it’s important to them and should be important to you when calling. Front page of website – what are they featuring? Look for updates/changes, information that is valuable to call with purpose.”
The goal of any FANS strategy is to remind the client you exist, which means staying in front of them in a timely manner to stay top of mind.
One way to do this is to get your thought leadership content directly into their hands in a personalized way that your customer will find helpful (blog posts, social media, podcasts).
At ML, we create a monthly cadence of thought leadership blogs and use social media posts recognizing employee accomplishments and promotions.
Use an email marketing platform (like Marketo, Pardot, HubSpot) to push out monthly content to your FANS-base. Let your CRM work for you – see who is opening / clicking on emails to direct further strategic outreach.
If you have a surplus of content already created, you can pick and choose based on what each customer might find relevant and send it off with a personalized 1:1 email. Categorization of the FANS is key here, so ensure you’re only sending content that will resonate with each customer.
All FANS want to feel appreciated, which is why sending out a special offer has been one of our most effective re-engagement strategies. At ML, every year in Q2, we reach out to our FANS base and offer a special promotion on Target Market Development work at a 20% discount.
This is a great way to show customer appreciation and tap into a new stream of revenue.
Technology is key to helping you manage all of your data so that you can analyze, report and nimbly pivot but it’s not enough to simply license products. You must also identify internal owners of the technology and invest in their education to use it to its fullest potential. ML’s entire team is encouraged and supported in keeping current with all the software we license and most have obtained… and maintain… multiple accreditations. Most software publishers have online courses available that make this quite easy and inexpensive.
“We use HubSpot’s strong automation capabilities to track a variety of data points. We also have team members responsible for ensuring our data is complete and accurate and updated regularly, using ZoomInfo and other list sources. We have full adoption of the HubSpot sales platform at ML and each team member understands the importance of tracking every touchpoint within HubSpot.”
The HubSpot Flywheel model explains the momentum gained when you align your entire organization around delivering a remarkable client experience. How fast it spins and how much value it delivers is impacted by a number of factors.
ML is a HubSpot Platinum Partner and keen proponent of the Flywheel model. Both of our companies share a “client first” attitude. Embracing a client-centric corporate philosophy will align your success with your clients’, to create delight, loyalty, and trust.
At ML we employ a personalized nurturing process to stay connected and help create the remarkable client experience the Flywheel espouses. Our process is very similar to our overall ABS methodology but personalized to this unique audience of buyers who have familiarity with our brand.
Once you have invested in the foundational strategy, processes and tools, the execution is quite simple, low cost… and effective.
We hope you found this playbook helpful. If you would like to learn more about MarketLauncher and how we can help you achieve your lead development goals, please get in touch.