New prospects are always being added to your sales pipeline, making it easy for old sales leads to get lost in the dust. While it may be exciting to fill your pipeline with new potential opportunities, forgetting old qualified leads can damage your business growth efforts. This is why it’s important that you implement re-engagement campaigns into your ongoing sales process.
In this blog, we’ll cover the following topics regarding winning back lost sales leads:
Why Re-Engagement Campaigns Are Successful
If you want to reconnect with old potential sales opportunities, your SDR and marketing teams should put closed lost prospects into re-engagement campaigns. These campaigns are successful because:
Old Sales Leads Are Already Familiar With Your Company
Sure, getting new prospects in the sales pipeline is exciting. While it may feel like a breath of fresh air, sales and marketing teams often forget how much time and effort it takes to qualify new prospects, nurture them, and initially pitch your company’s product or service offering.
When SDR and marketing teams implement lost sales leads into re-engagement campaigns, they’re reducing the amount of time and effort it takes to introduce your business because they are more than likely already familiar with your company. This means SDRs can spend more time learning if they’re still struggling with the problems that your business solves, or learning about their current approach and if they could still benefit from your company’s solution.
They’ve Expressed Interest in Your Product or Service in the Past
When reconnecting with sales leads that had initially expressed interest in your product or service, allowing sales and marketing teams can rekindle the conversation. When SDRs reintroduce your company to prospects, they can use previous conversation notes in your lead management system or customer relationship management (CRM) software to drive the discussion further.
A Prospect’s Business Goals Have More Than Likely Changed
A company’s business goals are always changing, whether it short- or long-term. Reviving old leads in the sales pipeline allows SDRs to open the door back open from previous conversations and explore what changes the prospect has made (or is planning to make) within the next year. This empowers SDRs to learn more about the prospect and uncover ways that your company’s product or service could help them meet their goals.
Previous Sales Objections May No Longer Be Relevant
Decision-makers often have a number closed lost reasons. However, prospect sales objections are changing all the time, meaning there are new ways SDRs will need to approach prospects in the pipeline.
For example, if a decision-maker objects to a sales meeting because they’re not in the buying cycle, SDRs should ask them when they reevaluate contracts. This allows the SDR to reach out when the timing makes the most sense for the prospect and that initial objection will no longer be relevant, so they can prioritize learning about what the prospect is looking for when it comes to a product or service provider.
Types of Leads That Can Be Revived in the Sales Pipeline
So, what makes a lead one that needs to be “revived” in the sales pipeline? Here are the different types of leads that should be re-engaged to secure more revenue:
- Appointment no-shows: Appointment no-shows happen all the time, but that doesn’t mean the lead is a lost cause. There could be an unlimited number of reasons the prospect doesn’t show up, so it’s important that SDRs reach back out to the the appointment back on the calendar. For insight into how to reduce sales appointment no-shows, read our blog here.
- Previous sales meetings that didn’t convert: Did an account executive hold a sales meeting with a qualified prospect, but the prospect didn’t convert into a customer? Whatever the reason for not converting may be, this doesn’t make the lead a lost cause. SDRs should reach back out, discover their reason for not converting, and explore ways that they can overcome this objection to secure the sale.
- Former clients: Clients are going to leave from time to time, but that doesn’t make them untouchable in the sales pipeline. If a former client leaves your company on good standing, it may be worth reaching back out to see why they may have left in the first place. When SDRs reconnect with past clients, they can explore the state of the prospect’s business and see how your company could help achieve their goals.
How to Revive a Dead Conversation With Lost Leads
Not sure where to start with re-engaging closed lost leads? Here are some ways that your sales and marketing teams can revive dead conversations with lost leads:
Use Social Media
Social media is incredibly powerful. People rarely answer their phones nowadays and delete 48% of the emails they receive every day. Personal contact on social media is preferred.
A direct one-on-one chat is sometimes the best option to get your old leads to reconsider your offering. That’s why effective social selling helps sales reps meet their sales quota 50% more often.
Study the demographics of your old leads. Older generations prefer Facebook, while small businesses and SMEs favor LinkedIn. Millennials will usually reply via direct messages on Twitter.
Leverage Different Communication Channels
In many cases, outreach efforts fail because your leads are not on the platform you used, don’t use it anymore, or the timing was wrong. You want to give your sales team the best chance to get a response by using the right tools.
Test these things with some trial and error, changing around the times that you post to specific platforms.
Keep Re-Engagement Efforts Short, Sweet, and Straightforward
Make your point clear. Use short, witty emails with smart subject lines to establish a sense of urgency. Re-engagement takes effort, and you don’t want to talk in circles or turn them off by taking too long to make your point.
It’s a good idea to do your prep work before you start sending emails. Go through your old conversations for insight so you can inject a personal touch and clearly understand what pain points you need to address. If you took notes in your CRM, take advantage of them!
Organize Lost Lead Data in Your CRM
Store and manage all your leads in a CRM system. Keeping your lead data clean and organized is crucial in following the leads that weren’t ready to move forward at your last point of contact. CRM software also helps salespeople optimize their daily schedules and prioritize tasks to make sure no lead is ignored or forgotten.
A sales enablement tool integrated to your CRM allows you to automate email sequences, helping your reps reach out to way more leads. It will start, pause, or stop sequences to your cold leads automatically, detect replies, analyze what content resonated better, and allow your team to re-engage more leads faster and more effectively.
Revisit Old Conversations Through a Phone Call or Email
Focus your current conversations with old leads on anything valuable from your past interactions. Your sales team has spoken with the leads before, and they should be able to review your old notes. Try to find something that will make re-engagement more personable for every old lead. Make them feel important, and welcome them back.
Use sales enablement tools to easily design email threads that address your previous interactions with an old lead. This can help you re-establish the connection, build trust, reignite awareness about your products or services, and keep them interested until it is time to make a purchase.
Engage Lost Leads by Offering Free (or New) Insights
Your old leads might engage more if they get something new and valuable for them. On the other hand, old and boring content will annoy them and make them hit the unsubscribe button. Make sure the content you send prospect is relevant to them, their industry, and their overarching pain paints.
A free ebook, webinar, case study, or something that displays your company’s value is essential in reigniting interest in your products of services because of the following reasons:
- You provide them with proof of the value you can provide
- You can measure their interaction to frame the next interaction
- You build trust and brand awareness
- You continue to keep them interested and engaged
Key Takeaways
While there are many closed lost reasons, this doesn’t make prospects in the sales pipeline untouchable. Reviving a dead conversations with lost leads empowers your SDRs to reintroduce the conversation with a decision-maker who already knows about your business and explore what can be done to fit the needs of buyers in your target market.
At Abstrakt Marketing Group, our SDR teams know how to make warm calls and craft re-engagement emails to revive dead conversations with our clients’ formerly hot prospects, allowing them to understand why the deal didn’t go through and what can be done to bring them onboard.
No matter the closed lost reason, our high-performing SDRs have all the hard and soft skills to reintroduce your business, secure qualified sales meetings, and provide your account executives with high-converting sales opportunities. If you need a hand re-engaging lost leads your sales pipeline, contact the sales experts at Abstrakt!
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