Text messaging is a largely undiscovered gold mine where prospecting is concerned. Follow these tips for leveraging text as a prospecting channel and you will watch your numbers soar.
Why Salespeople Aren’t Texting Prospects
Salespeople avoid leveraging text messaging as a prospecting channel for the same reason that they avoid picking up the phone and calling prospects.
All too often, salespeople are afraid to ask for what they want in the sales process. This holds back the most highly skilled sales professionals from going out every day and finding new business.
Fear of Rejection
Texting a prospect or even a client is unnerving because salespeople must constantly face their fear of rejection. Without disciplined emotional control, salespeople can become paralyzed by their fear of rejection.
The fact is, there is always a potential for rejection when talking to prospects or clients, but there is also always the potential for new business or an opportunity to expand a current relationship.
In order to open new doors, salespeople must also accept the possibility for another door to be shut in their face.
The Protected Inbox
Socially, texting is a medium of communication almost exclusively reserved for people who have a closer relationship with you. We receive text messages from people we know and from businesses that we trust.
Many businesses use text messaging as a marketing tool, but customers must opt-in to receive those text updates and offers.
When people we don’t know text us or we receive texts from businesses we didn’t give permission to send us a message, we view that communication with heavy skepticism.
Nothing feels more intrusive than an out-of-place message that has no clear point of origin or isn’t clear in its intent.
Those messages make people confused, unsure, frustrated, and angry at the sender.
The Dichotomy of Dialogue
We can divide text messages into two distinct categories. The first is transactional information transfers (i.e. where to be, to give a call, send locations, or ask for simple information). The second is relationship building which is done in bouts of asynchronous and synchronous communication styles.
The latter category is a mode by which we stay connected to loved ones, friends, and colleagues about mostly erroneous matters that don’t require us to perform tasks or create obligations. Once the text message conversation reaches its threshold of burden the conversation reverts to an asynchronous state.
3 Essential Text Messaging Tips For Prospecting and Account Management
So, how can you use text messages to create meaningful dialogue that doesn’t make your prospects feel as though you are crossing a personal boundary or burdening them?
Here are 3 simple prospecting or account management guidelines for sending text messages that match your sales professionalism.
Identify Yourself, Your Business, and Your Humanness
Make sure that when you send a text message you identify who you are, what business you are with, and that you are in fact a real person (even if you choose to automate). The message should read like you would text someone you know. Here at Sales Gravy, we turn to SKIPIO to help build scalable humanness when text messaging.
Clear and Confident Ask
Ask for what you want upfront. As a salesperson, you can ask for time, information, or action in a text message. Ask for the meeting, the qualifying information you want, or an action from your recipient. Do not ask for all three or for multiple things in one exchange.
Bridge Your Why
Immediately after your ask, you should provide a compelling reason as to why they should comply with your request. Your prospects should never have to work out the reason themselves.
It is important that you are able to step into their shoes to determine what reason you can provide that would be interesting enough for them to engage with you.
Here is a quick hint: The number of customers you currently have, testimonials from past customers in quotes, a list of key customers you hold dear, or how long you have been in business are not compelling reasons.
Your first message should be under 4 full sentences in length. Create a message that reads like a text message and not an email. Build your messages to sound human and not like a marketing robot.
Seek to create a genuine connection and qualify your prospects for future engagements through text messaging.
Take your prospecting campaigns to the next level, get into more doors, build deeper relationships, and close more deals with the techniques in our FREE guide, The Seven Steps To Building Effective Prospecting Sequences.
