6 Tips for Successful Client Acquisition

1. Maintain Your Contact Lists.

Build meaningful lists: Pull out all the stops when it comes to identifying potential clients. A well-maintained lead database will propel your closing rate to unprecedented heights. Do a bit of homework first: online research, engaging via social media, networking at regional events. Collect business cards and plot the addresses on a map—perhaps you can stop by when you are in the area. Do you have a blog or a newsletter subscription option on your website? Provide a mailing list sign-up sheet at your trade fair booth, organize a survey, or run a contest. Many of your competitors let such opportunities slip by: this is your chance!

Through such initiatives, a relationship is established between you and the recipient, allowing you to ask for their consent to receive information from you.

But wait: who will provide their email address for mailings just like that? Only someone who feels they will receive something of real value in return.

Therefore:

2. Offer Added Value.

Share expertise: Suppose you want to reach senior living facilities and care homes with your offering. Why not write a blog post about increasingly tech-savvy seniors and their need for WiFi hotspots in care facilities? To do this, call the senior living facilities in your area and ask them a few questions on the topic.

Your advantage: You find out who is responsible for the internet in these facilities, whether there is already a satisfactory solution or an ongoing need, and you position yourself as an expert. From this vantage point, you can now provide consultation with an established base of trust. However, always do this independently of any immediate intent to buy on the part of your counterpart. There is no need to hide the fact that you sell such services. But only when the consultation itself provides value independent of a purchase—value that is of genuine interest to your client—do you establish the proper legal prerequisites. Your bonus: not only will you avoid being perceived as a nuisance salesperson; you simply aren’t one. You are an expert sharing specialized knowledge.

PLEASE NOTE: Your phone call is the first and most critical sales tool in such a campaign. Prepare for it meticulously, as described in Acquiring New Clients via Cold Calling?, using all available preliminary information and identifying the correct contact person.

Sales tip: Solve a problem—but not right away! To avoid being brushed off immediately, your interlocutor must quickly recognize the value of speaking with you. Therefore, avoid using the words survey or study at all costs, as most people do not see any value in them. Consider which problem your product can solve for the client, and address it directly. In our example, this might sound something like this:

“Mr. Müller, my name is XY from Sample Company. I was referred to you because I have a few questions regarding seniors online.

We are currently preparing a blog article about the challenges this trend brings. You will be surprised by what we have discovered. How is this handled at your facility—do you provide internet access for your residents?

How do you ensure that less tech-savvy users can get online independently?”

Then let the other person speak, asking specific questions every now and then: How many residents go online daily? What devices do they use—smartphones, tablets? What do they use it for most: Skype, email, Facebook? What about streaming movies and playing games? How does authentication work; do they log in? What about data protection?

Finally, bring up your product, mention that you have a specific, very attractive offering for care homes, and note that the blog post will be published soon. Which email address may you send the link to?

With that, you have already secured consent to send the client information via email. IMPORTANT: Record this consent in your call notes, including the date and, if applicable, the time.

And what about the solution to the problem and the surprising facts? Those are your cliffhanger. If asked about them, refer the caller to the upcoming email/blog article and celebrate, because you have piqued curiosity and very likely gained a reader. However, ensure that the email arrives within a reasonable time frame (three days to a maximum of one week).

Now to the core of your campaign: the email.

3. Surprise Them with the Subject Line.

Think like your client: Would you open an email from someone you don’t really know if the subject line reads “News from system integrator XY”? Subjects like “Your requested info” or “Our phone conversation” are also abused far too often by spammers and no longer inspire confidence. Take the time needed to put yourself in your client’s shoes. Reference the topics discussed during your phone call, perhaps as a provocative question, or share a few hard facts straight away:

• 3x more seniors online on mobile
• Who says you’re too old for the internet?
• Seniors are happier online

4. Deliver on a Promise.

Not a trick, but a matter of diligence: As the creator of your campaign, your email must align with your overall client outreach; otherwise, the recipient will hardly remember you. Even so, they will likely have only a vague recollection of your conversation. That is why it is essential to briefly recap what it was about:

Dear Mr. Müller,

As promised during our phone call on {DATUM}, here is the link to our blog article. You will be surprised at how much time seniors spend online using mobile devices today, and how frequently they do so. But do they know enough to avoid unexpected cost traps? What about security—is access regulated and traceable? Naturally, in times like these, this cannot be overlooked, and it comes with a certain degree of responsibility.

At Sample Company, we have been offering secure, efficient guest WiFi solutions for XY years, which are already in use in numerous senior care facilities and comply with GDPR regulations. Due to current high demand, we are running an attractive special promotion that is ideally suited to your facility. I would be pleased to get in touch with you for a brief, complimentary consultation.

Your email could look something like this. Ready to send?

HOLD ON, not yet! First, you need to take a few steps to increase your chances of being read. It would be an absolute shame if your carefully crafted email were to fall victim to the spam filter.

5. Avoid These Two Traps.

The spam folder: You have IT professionals on board—put them to work! Every email is inspected by servers and spam filters to determine whether it belongs in the inbox or the junk folder. Work with your technical team to ensure that your email complies with standardized authentication criteria such as DomainKeys or SPF, preventing it from being filtered out because of technical issues.

Unsolicited advertising: Cold outreach has become substantially more difficult in recent years, especially in the B2C segment, but also in B2B. Cold emailing (reaching out without an existing customer relationship) is fundamentally prohibited, and marketing phone calls may only be made if the recipient would “presumably” consent because they are receiving information relevant to them.

For us marketers, this by no means implies abandoning email and telephone as powerful marketing instruments. Rather, it means playing by the rules. We ensure that recipients gladly consent to receiving emails. For the aforementioned blog post on seniors online, you hopefully remembered to obtain implicit consent to send the link once the article was published.

6. Pay Attention to Timing.

Email open rates vary significantly depending on the day of the week. Timing is therefore a critical success factor for any mailing campaign. While everyday office work is becoming increasingly flexible and mobile, statistics indicate that most emails are still viewed in the morning. In the B2B sector, the first half of the week is generally considered more effective. Monday, however, tends to perform poorly. Overloaded inboxes mean that unsolicited promotional emails are more likely to end up in the trash than on, say, a Tuesday. Tuesday boasts the highest open rates, closely followed by Wednesday. Sending emails on Friday afternoon is a particularly bad idea, as the message will most likely sit unread in the inbox over the weekend and already feel “outdated” by Monday.

With these 6 tips, you have not only set up a legally compliant cold outreach campaign, but also created valuable material for your content marketing. Publish the article online and share a preview on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. You can readily repurpose all of this after an appropriate period, updating it as needed. It is remarkable how many new readers can be reached six months or a year down the road. If you also manage to incorporate relevant buzzwords into your blog post, it will help your website climb in search engine rankings.
Above all, remember: document everything you do, from the initial phone call to the post-email follow-up. Keep your CRM up to date—every client interaction is another step toward sales success.