How to Create Meaningful Sales Conversations With Your Customers and Prospects

Sales | November 20, 2020 | 5 min read
Vendasta market research shows that the Number 1 challenge most digital marketing agencies face today is growing their business by acquiring new customers.

A core reason for that is the failure to conduct meaningful sales conversations with prospects that inhibits customer recruitment and growth.

It can be challenging for salespeople to start conversations with prospects who are complete strangers. Apart from connecting emotionally with them, salespeople must also have a compelling business reason to get their attention and start the conversation. 

And once they manage to do that, the pressure is on them to constantly keep the prospects engrossed and complete the sale.

At these times a deal might be lost because a supplier or vendor, who may have had a great product or service to sell, could not initiate a meaningful customer conversation. 

Often it was because they lacked the insight and knowledge about a prospect’s business -- a starting point for a much deeper and relevant discussion.

Forrester estimates 77 percent of executive buyers believe salespeople do not understand their business issues during conversations with them. The research further shows 70 percent of executives believe salespeople are not prepared for the questions they might ask.

Digital marketing agencies and salespeople can be well prepared for such discourses with Vendasta’s Snapshot Report.

What is a Snapshot Report?

Snapshot Report is a prospecting marketing cloud application that scrapes the internet for online performance information about a specific business and creates a summary report of results.

It provides an overall score and gives detailed information about where online problems and information gaps may exist, and suggests improvements that should be made.

Think of it as a digital audit that salespeople can use as a starter to meaningful conversations with prospects on various online attributes, including their business listings, online reviews, social media presence, website health, digital advertising, and search engine optimization (SEO) performance and success.

Consider the example of a marketing agency that has identified a restaurant as a prospect. 

Running a Snapshot Report for the restaurant might reveal something as simple as missing information about the business or a much more serious situation of unanswered negative online reviews that may be damaging the business brand and discouraging customers.

This information sets up a deeper conversation that can be had with a prospect where they can be guided to solutions that a marketing agency can provide through various products and services.

Learn more from George Leith about how to become a Snapshot Report ninja!

Expanding opportunities with Snapshot Report

Kelly Geary, former Director of Marketing Solutions for Swift Communications, says using Snapshot Report helped her agency reach a segment of businesses that they hadn’t talked to before.

Using the Snapshot Report and campaigns, we've really been able to reach businesses we haven't talked to before. Since implementing Vendasta's platform, we've seen over a 1,500% increase in the number of accounts that we've been able to contact about digital solutions.
Kelly Geary

Former Director of Marketing Solutions, Swift Communications

Snapshot Report provides conversation-starting insights that can be broken down into seven categories:

1. Business Listings

Missing or inaccurate information in a listing can make it difficult or impossible to find a business on search engines like Google, which can lead to lost opportunities and potential new customers.

Snapshot Report gathers online listings information for businesses from more than 70 different directories, and shows where information may be missing. 

2. Online Reviews

Approximately 95 percent of consumers make purchasing decisions based on the online reviews they read. Negative reviews can lead to the risk of losing business and customers.

Snapshot Report gathers review information about businesses from more than 30 different review websites, and provides the industry average ratings based on similar businesses.

3. Social Media Presence

Most local businesses today have a presence on at least one social media channel where they can assess the purchasing intentions of their customers.

Snapshot Report provides an overview of a prospect’s social channels, including post activity and engagement. This information can be compared with other similar businesses to assess relative performance.

4. Website Performance

Sean Work, the former Director of Marketing at Kissmetrics -- a customer engagement automation provider -- estimates 40 percent of consumers close a website that takes more than three seconds to load.

Since a business’s website is the first point of contact that a customer has with the business itself, it’s important that businesses offer customers with a pleasant browsing experience.

Snapshot Report analyzes that information and provides website performance metrics, including loading speed, mobile responsiveness, and site content.

5. Digital Advertising

Digital advertising campaigns can help businesses increase their brand awareness, drive customers to their website, and increase their sales.

Snapshot Report analyzes a business’s digital advertisements and offers recommendations on keywords that would improve impressions and click-throughs.

6. Search Engine Optimization

Organic health helps businesses not be over reliant on paid marketing efforts. Targeting the right set of keywords can help businesses get a competitive advantage.

Snapshot Report helps businesses find the best organic keywords to use to help attract customers, and compares their keyword performance with those used by competitors.

7. Ecommerce

Finally, there’s ecommerce. With the growing trend of ecommerce and business being conducted online, it’s imperative that marketing agencies and businesses embrace the trend.

Using Snapshot Report, salespeople can get deep insights into their prospect’s ecommerce challenges, a valuable insight to start conversations and provide solutions.

Learn more about how Snapshot Report can be a powerful conversation starter

How can Vendasta help you

Vendasta’s churn study, of more than 10,000 businesses, concludes agencies can increase customer retention by 30 percent by identifying their needs and then proposing relevant solutions.

By using Snapshot Report, marketing agencies can do exactly that.

When we [Vendasta] started sending the Snapshot Report years ago through our email marketing campaigns, what we found was that it solves one of the biggest problems in marketing automation. Curated content that speaks directly to your prospects. It’s an insight machine that gives you insights on your prospects, things that they don’t even know about themselves.
George Leith

Chief Customer Officer & EVP Sales, Vendasta

Vendasta can also train agency owners and show them how to get the most value from Snapshot Reports plus how they can create meaningful conversations with customers and prospects.

Sign up for a FREE Snapshot Report training course where Vendasta Chief Customer Officer, George Leith, shares his expertise and shows you how to use this powerful marketing and sales solution.

Take the course today and become a Snapshot ninja.

Turn your digital agency into a scalable power house with Vendasta

About the Author

Ankur is a former Content Marketing Specialist at Vendasta with years of experience in marketing communications and journalism. When he's not writing blogs and producing content, he can be found tweeting, playing the guitar, and watching sports.

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