According to TrueList, it takes 8 touches from sales reps to close deals. Of course, this will always vary, but it's important to acknowledge that in B2B sales, you need to get as many touchpoints as possible. What's more, those touches should also be personalized. It's a lot to ask but that reality of sales in marketing today.
What are Customer Touchpoints and How Do They Impact the Customer Experience?
Whether you're selling a product or service, touchpoints are any points of contact with a potential customer. This can include email, social touches, cold calls, texts, and the list goes on. The goal of customer touchpoints is to create a positive experience that will keep customers coming back. However, if a touchpoint is poorly designed or executed, it can create a negative experience that will drive customers away.
Companies that focus on creating a lot of touchpoints, generally also improve the customer's experience because multiple touchpoints create a feeling of hands-on customer service. It's important to ensure that your service is friendly and helpful, but doing so creates positive experiences and minimizes pain points along the way.
Do the Number of Sales Touchpoints Matter when Engaging a Prospect?
By this point, you should know that yes the number of touchpoints matters. That means tracking touchpoints with your CRM is something really important. The TrueList estimate is eight touches but this will change based on what you're selling. Conversion is another thing to think about with your prospects. You must realize that you're taking a cold prospect and trying to turn them into a believer in what you do.
Enterprise sales is a nightmare for gauging customer touchpoints because a sales cycle can span the entire year. What does all this mean? Taking an average of eight touches is not extremely helpful. What's better is looking at the sales history of your current customers and figuring out how many touchpoints does it take for our business to close a deal?
Understanding the Touchpoint Process
A salesperson that doesn't have touchpoint data will always be limited. Getting benchmark data on customer touchpoints from within your organization will improve both sales and marketing processes. We can say this strongly enough: prioritize touchpoint data!
Understanding the customer's journey will help you figure out how different touches are distributed. Let's say you do track touches already. Begin to look at the key touchpoints, and what helps make a purchase. This involves looking at those that make contact and those that don't. Evaluate everything, and try to find patterns the customer might be leaving behind. Eventually, you will find the average customer touchpoint across multiple platforms. Tracking touchpoints can help you enhance customer experience and also make things easier for your sales professionals.
Negative Engagement doesn't Nurture Leads into Buyers
Here's one caveat. Negative engagement doesn't nurture leads into buyers. In fact, it often has the opposite effect, pushing potential customers away. There's no reason to create touchpoints for the sake of having them. Every touchpoint should be intentional and positive for them to make a difference. If you want to turn leads into buyers, you need to focus on positive engagement, providing them with the information and support they need to make a purchase.
How to Leverage Customer Touchpoints to Get More Sales?
Customers are looking for a great sales process. Customize your outreach across multiple touchpoints and with a focus on your target audience. That is a touchpoint strategy that will drive qualified leads into the pipeline and help you close more deals. Knowing when to give up and when to keep going all get better results, and help you not waste time during the qualification process. You need to know how their potential customers interact with your business. If you think this is important, we're happy to have helped. Poseidon offers the ability to automate a lot of these processes. Reach out and let's take your top performers and help the do better.
