Entrepreneurs and startups usually run into the problem of being understaffed in their infancy, having to make decisions to forego one part of their business in favor of another to focus on other things.
Sometimes lead generation takes a hit when the focus shifts to other aspects of the business.
However, firms can still grow their sales pipeline even if they have to shift their focus. All it takes is a little planning, good management, and a little automation.
Be Smart With Prospecting
Tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Leadfeeder, LeadFuze, etc., just to name a few, are all powerful tools in the hands of the right user. However, not everyone uses prospecting tools efficiently, resulting in time spent going through lists and trying to reach out to the wrong people.
The right way to do it is to determine the ideal customer profiles and stick to these profiles initially, but you will want to expand these profiles as you create new products and get feedback further down the line.
Once the ideal customer profiles are hammered down, you can then move to prospects with highly specific parameters. This ensures that you get a filtered list that you don’t have to go through.
However, it doesn’t just stop there; marketers have to ensure that they have supplementary information related to these contacts. This information will allow them to create personalized messages that can create better engagement.
An example would be running a toolkit such as Phantombuster to grab profile URLs on LinkedIn.
By being smarter with prospecting, you can easily amplify your growth at only a fraction of the time.
Use Your CRMs Wisely: Automate Email Campaigns and Workflows
One of the most difficult tasks with growing a sales pipeline is keeping track of email workflows and nurturing leads, but that’s not a problem with modern CRM solutions such as HubSpot.
The CRM solution you pick will make a difference in getting all your leads organized. Firms want to have a centralized system that lets them keep track of emails sent and how far leads are in the pipeline.
This way, the focus is shifted from managing databases to acquiring new markets for growth.
However, it doesn’t just stop there. Email-centric CRM solutions such as Mailchimp and Mailshake will allow you to create customized workflows meaning that you can automatically follow up with non-responsive leads or send hot leads and lead nurturing messages.
One can basically take a complicated email workflow and fully automate it.
Some CRMs even have outreach tools embedded in their tool stack so that you don’t even have to leave one tool to prospect for new leads.
Take Advantage of Integrations
Firms usually use several tools in their tool stack to help with their marketing campaigns. It could be combining an appointment setting tool like Calendly with Google Sheets and a Trello board to keep track of new leads or setting up a retargeting system by
Some applications will have native integrations with other platforms, but for everything else that you want working together, you can use a tool like Zapier.
Zapier is an integration platform that allows different web-based tools to communicate with each other. They work by registering actions on one application that can trigger another event on a different tool.
Take, for example, someone books a lead on a tool such as Calendly on your landing page; you can have that automatically trigger a card being created on Trello for another member of your team to take a look at.
Using native integrations or tools such as Zapier will help scale any number of lead generation campaigns without the need for extra people to keep track of developments.
This frees up valuable time and resources for people to focus on growing other aspects of the business.
Periodic Check-ins and Metrics are Key
Just because a process is partially – or fully – automated doesn’t mean that it should forego the need for complete detachment.
Remember, automation and workflows are only tools, and they’re only as good as the people using them.
Metrics still have to be analyzed regularly, A/B tests should be constantly improved, and campaigns switched out as needed. Getting a degree of automation in your sales pipeline just means being able to do more with your campaign with less human effort, not completely removing the human touch.
Additionally, something might go wrong, or automation or integration might backfire as these things happen from time-to-time.
Outsourcing the Entire Operation
Alternatively, firms can outsource their entire lead generation process to a third-party, which might make sense for a lot of companies.
Outsourcing is relatively cheaper than building a sales pipeline, hiring and training the right staff, preparing campaigns and materials, and purchasing all the infrastructure needed to get everything going.
Firms get to take advantage of expert solutions backed by real first-hand experience. Plus, there’s no need to set anything as the agency will build everything for you.
Even companies with in-house lead generation teams frequently collaborate with third parties to supercharge their efforts and benefit from the expertise they bring to the table.
There are many benefits to spending a sizable investment in automating your pipeline. You minimize the element of human error, a lot of time is freed to focus on the other facets of a business, and scaling becomes easier. Growing your sales pipeline doesn’t have to be difficult, especially if you have the right tools in place.
