LMS Sales: 6 Strategies to Keep Your Prospects Engaged

Every Learning Management System (LMS) sales pro knows the importance of building strong partnerships with qualified leads. With the long sales cycle being the norm, engagement is the best ways to engage leads and keep them warm. The more you engage them, the more opportunities you will have to convert new clients. The industry is growing and getting more competitive, so the salespeople who are the most effective will win the most business. Here are a few strategies for engaging your Learning Management System (LMS) potential customers to gain an edge:

1. Understand your ideal buyers

Let’s face it: there are a lot of potential customers out there, and if you try to win them all, you’ll spread yourself too thin. Recognizing your ideal buyers is the first step in making more sales. Start by working with your marketing team to craft Buyer Personas, which are imaginary personalities that describe your excellent customers. For example, you can begin by developing personalities such as ‘Clinician Carol’, ‘Hospital Administrator Alex’ and ‘Physician Philip’. Then, ask the following questions for each person: What are their duties in the company? What are their goals? What obstacles do they face? What inspires them? What is their buying process? Where do they get their information? Answering these questions will help you prepare individualized engagement strategies for every Buyer Persona. You want to be as specific as possible. A current ITSMA research study found that only 44% of organizations have Buyer Personas. So what are you waiting for?

2. Use LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great venue to engage your leads and convert them into customers. You could start by creating a LinkedIn summary that shows what value you could offer your prospective customers. This will show that you understand their needs and can help them. It is also a good idea to put a call-to-action at the end of your summary. For example, you might ask potential customers to send out an email or call you for a free consulting session. Another method would be to engage potential customers on LinkedIn by using its feed to share content from your site. Make sure the content is informative and shows you are a leader in the industry. This will build your credibility among your leads. Hootsuite is a good example of a B2B company that shares lots of blog content on their LinkedIn feed. Remember to keep an eye on LinkedIn notifications for special events. Take time to congratulate your leads on professional milestones, new jobs, or birthdays. Customize your message and end it with a call-to-action that will keep the conversation going.

3. Customize your sales emails

Just sending emails to potential customers won’t ensure success. You need to optimize your emails to make the most of the engagement. Customize them using the name of the recipient. According to research by Experian, individualized emails produce six times more returns than non-individualized ones. The subject line of your email should be short and appealing so the recipient wants to open it. Don’t use boring or common subjects like “Newsletter #4.” Inside the email, your content should be less “salesy” and more informative. Don’t forget to include a call-to-action at the end of your email, like a free ebook or record. Lastly, make sure your email is optimized for mobile viewing.

4. Conduct webinars

According to the Content Marketing Institute, more than 60% of B2B online marketers are using webinars as a part of their total strategy. Unlike other types of marketing content, webinars take place in actual time and let you engage with leads using sound and video. You could work with your marketing team to inform your potential customers on relevant topics or give them a product demo. Having a Q&A session at the end of the program allows you to answer any concerns quickly, reducing the sales cycle.

5. Nurture Leads with content emails

In addition to sending out customized emails to your potential customer through your individual email account (Gmail, Outlook, Etc), you could collaborate with your marketing team to repurpose content produced on the company’s website (blogs, ebooks, whitepapers, etc) in Lead Nurturing Email campaigns. These could be a collection of HTML emails that give your prospect valuable content, once a week. These emails should not be sales pitches or all about your product or service, but should supply informational content to keep your potential customers engaged and returning to your site. These emails, when integrated with an innovative email marketing system like Hubspot, could offer both the marketing and sales teams important information on lead engagement.

6. Follow-up quickly

Timing is essential when it comes to engaging leads. Research by the Harvard Business Review found that many companies were slow-moving to act on their leads; 24% of companies took more than 24 hours to react, and 23% never responded at all. The timeliness of your response could make the difference between making a sale and losing a customer. If a person reveals some interest by joining your newsletter or requesting more information, you need to respond right away with relevant content. One of the best ways to do this is by automating your email marketing. This will help you win the trust of your potential customers and could improve the chances of transforming them into customers.

The Final Word

The strategies described above belong to the unique marketing and sales method called Inbound. Your Learning Management System (LMS) business could use the Inbound Methodology to engage with existing leads, more easily qualify them, and more quickly close sales. It could be really tough to do this alone. Responsify works with Learning Management System (LMS) specialists to offer strategy, support, and help in carrying out these tasks. By collaborating, we help marketing and salespeople tactically draw in brand-new site visitors, convert them to qualified leads, and then satisfied clients, right in the convenience of their own company website. We’ve helped several great sales pros boost their lead engagement and accelerate their sales cycle. Do not hesitate to book a cost-free strategy session to help you examine your methods and get free advice to engage more leads and turn them into customers.