5 Ways to Find Out to Call Or Email When Selling to a Prospect in Malaysia

Your first impression will set the tone for your entire sales and negotiation outcome. There are conflicting pressures to productively make first contact with a prospect. You want to reach out enthusiasticly but you don't want to do it in an obstructive manner. Productively making first contact with any prospect is a delicate art for sales reps.

How you reach out to your prospects during the first connect makes a significant difference in response rates. The key to deciding which method to use depends on which method you feel your prospect will be most responsive to.

What's the difference between a cold email vs. a cold call?

Cold emails vs. cold calls are both effective. The difference is a matter of volume, convenience and directness. Emails are easier and less time consuming than calls, but calls are more effective when gathering a direct reponse. It's also easier to convey emotion during a call compared to a written email.

A call is inherently more personal than an email. It gets an immediate response and let's you address a prospect saying no. Calls are also more dynamic as it allows you to adjust your strategy to fit a prospect's needs as your conversation with them progresses.

However, calls do have some downsides. They are by nature intrusive. People are usually not receptive to receiving them and many will get frustrated when you use one to reach them. There's also a chance that you may get frustrated / impatient during a call when it isn't going smoothly.

Emails on the other hand lends a different strategy. They are more efficient and make it more scalable. In the time it would take to make a single call you could distribute several emails to several people. There's also an opportunity to be more visually appealing and informative with targeted content. Emails are also less intrusive and recipients tend to be more polite in their response. Emails can also be automated, tracked, and forwarded, making it easier to distribute and keep tabs on.

Emails have a downside as well. It's the risk of having your emails ignored. Some prospects receive many emails every day, and in some cases your email may also get blocked. 

To help you decide if you should reach out through phone or email, here are 5 tried and tested ways to find out whether to use a call or email when selling to a prospect for the first time in Malaysia.

1. Time / Day of the Week

Statistically phone connection rates increases as the day progresses and as the week progresses. In other words a prospect is more likely to answer their phone later in the workday and workweek. If someone doesn't reply leave a voicemail. Calling late usually is a great strategy.

2. The Ask

What's your objective for your first outreach? Is it to set up a meeting? Get some more information? Receive a referral? Categorize what you are asking for as "weak" or "strong" will help you to determine to choose between a call or email.

Strong asks require commitment and if it's a strong request you should always pick up the phone. This requires more from the prospect and you may need to employ sales skills to secure a "yes". On the other hand if the ask is weak. Draft an email. Don't let fear block you from connecting with a buyer. Reverse this equation and watch your response rates climb.

3. The Level of the Prospect

Do individual contributors have assistants? Not usually. but do C-level executives? Almost always. That is why the higher up your prospect is in an organization the more likely you are to reach a live person when you call. If individual contributors don't answer their phones, no one else is going to pick up - and they're not likely to return a call from an unknown number.

4. The Buyer Persona

Some buyer personas favor a different communication style than others. Preferences are dependent on multiple factors such as, age, nature of job, their industry, and more. Millennials prefer to communicate via email but professionals in customer-facing roles are more amenable to speaking on the phone.

5. The Deal Momentum

Are things moving along at a swift cadence? If this is so then you should not stall your deal an email will not get in the way. However, if your prospect is unresponsive or on the fence it might be faster and easier to pick up the phone.

Conclusion

Follow up. If you follow the criterias above you should be able to choose between email and a call. In our opinion, the beginning and the end of each sales engagement should be phone-heavy, since that's where the strongest asks are and in between email should work as a rule of thumb.

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5 Tested Tactics That'll Get People to Buy Product

Selling to people who are already interested in what you have to offer should be straightforward. These are people we call warm and they would have likely done some initial research and have more a less decided that what you have an offer can solve that. This leaves the final push to your sales team. It's the ability to answer their questions, overcome any objections they have and bringing to light the solutions you are helping them to solve.

The best salespeople know how to quickly distinguish between prospects who are interested vs. those who are uninterested, quickly. This is an entirely possible and repeatable process. With sufficient practice of relevant skills, the empathy to understand people and well thought through plan it's likely that you will be able to get people to continue to purchase from you.

In order to persuade anyone to buy from you, first solve a problem that they have. Sell how your solution can help them from their perspective, how it can provide a valuable resource and emphasize the positive experience they will encounter. There's no right balance, but there is a fair balance between logic and emotion - which will help gently move them towards a decision.

1. Sell the dream

Not everyone you sell to will be immediately captivated by the product's features. However, one thing is certain. People always care about themselves. Help them to envision what their prospects of life might be like when they purchase from you.

Let's have a look at this. "Hi! I'm Adam from Sales Group, and I sell sales training and consulting products. I'd like to introduce my services. Is this a good time?"

Compared with this. "Hi. I've got you live on my first dial, and when you hire me, I'll teach your sales reps how to do the exact same thing."

If you sell copywriting services, you might look for errors on their website and add, "As your copywriter, I'd ensure your site (and other materials) will be 100% typo-free at all times."

2. Pique their curiosity.

Here's how you can keep their attention.

At the beginning here's what our sales reps usually say, "Before I forget, I want to ask you something related to our last conversation. Let's get into the agenda now, but will you remind me?"

At the end of the call, they'd usually respond, "Hey, what was that thing you wanted to talk to me about?" or they won't mention it. This is a great way for me to know if they were engaged and present.

3. Use past successes as your guide.

Look for trends in past successes and repeat those successful approaches with future prospects. The best answers for how to sell can usually be found from the people you have already closed.

4. Enlist your prospect as a teacher.

One of the fastest ways to earn engagement and interest is to understand the fact that your prospect wants to be respected and heard. Learn the opinion of the person you're speaking with and take that opinion seriously.

If you look at it from the perspective that we generally agree that we do not speak to strangers. However, this would not be the case if a stranger approaches you to ask for help. Use this to your advantage and find a way to get them to speak.

5. Create a sense of urgency.

We don't encourage you to use scare tactics to make a sale. There are other ways you can create urgency to get your prospect to consider your offer quickly.

• Offer a short-term discount or incentive
• Emphasize the immediate benefit of your product
• Communicate scarcity

Conclusion

Make what you sell irresistible to who you sell to. There are a few different ways to sell your products and services to people who are ready to make a decision. The common thread that ties these tactics together is usually customer empathy. Appeal to your prospect for help, and you'll satisfy their desire to be heard and earn their interest in helping you close the deal - yes, it's really that straightforward, just ask for it.

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7 Steps on How to Create an SEO Strategy for your Malaysian Small Business for 2021

Search engine optimisation (SEO) isn't what it used to be. Keywords should no longer be your focus, these days the basics of SEO has changed and it's important to understand it to help your small business to thrive on search engines.

Here we'll explain the latest 2021 SEO Strategy you should adopt and how you can create your own version to boost your content marketing goals.

What is SEO Strategy?

An SEO strategy is a process of organizing a website's content by topic to improve the likelihood of you appearing in search results. This is a process you implement in order to maximize your opportunity to obtain organic search results from search engines.

It's difficult to stay focus and to stay on track, and this is where the SEO strategy will help you. It helps you to solve how your content will come to be seen in search engine result pages (otherwise known as SERPs). If your content is not organised, search engine bots will have a hard time to decipher your content and therefore make it hard for your website to be found (your page rank wouldn't be good).

Don't Forget Mobile

In today's age, there are numerous studies that have shown that more and more people today use mobile in their everyday interactions with the internet. Optimise your content and webpage to ensure that it is easily accessible through mobile. How is this important? Google now practices mobile-first indexing.

This isn't a separate process, however, there are distinct considerations for mobile SEO like page speed, responsive design, and localisation. Regardless high-quality content is a mainstay no matter which device you target for.

Here are some steps you can go over to ensure your SEO Strategy is geared for success

1. Make a list of topics

Although keywords form the foundations of SEO, however, they are no longer the only step to achieving organic growth. Today it's important to create content that is truly useful and valuable.

To start compile a list of 10 words and use an SEO tool. Do this to find out popular slightly longer keywords (short-tail keywords).

2. Make a list of long-form keywords

This is a step to take when you begin to optimize your words for specific long-form keywords (otherwise known as long-tail keywords). For every short-tail keyword identify 5 to 10 long-tail keywords that dig deeper into the original short-tail keyword.

For example, rather than just talking about SEO we write about how to conduct keyword research, optimize images for search, and other subtopics under the SEO universe.

3. Build pages for each topic

Websites rank better when they have a focus. Getting your webpage to rank for a handful of keywords is next to impossible. Ultimately the number of topics you create should coincide with your business needs and products. This will make it easier for people to discover you when they conduct a search.

4. Set up a blog

In item 3 it was noted that websites rank better when they are focused on delivering one topic per page. Blogging can be a potential game-changer for you as it is an incredible way to rank for long-tail keywords and engages with your webpage's visitors. After all, every post is a new web page and an additional opportunity to rank better SERPs result. 

5. Create a consistent blogging schedule

Every blog post or web page you create does not need to belong to a specific topic. There's value in writing about topical ideas your customers care about, and this has surprisingly helped build authority with search engine algorithms.

The secret formula is to make it a point to write an article a minimum of once a week.

6. Create a link-building plan

The first 5 steps above represented all the ways you can attract traffic on your own webpage (on-page SEO). Link building on the other hand is the process of attracting other web pages to guide visitors to your website.

7. Compress your medial file sizes

This is an often overlooked step in the SEO process and is especially important for mobile optimisation.

As your web page grows this means you will have more images, videos, and other related media. Although these assets help to retain your visitor's attention but these large files affect your page speed. Make sure you control the size of the files you upload to your site.

Conclusion

SEO is an ever-changing mechanism as search engines continue to improve on their algorithms and customers need change. Here are 5 great resources to stay up-to-date with SEO:

• Moz
• SEOBook
• Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Engine Land
• Diggity Marketing

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Top 7 Skills Every Sales Rep in Malaysia Needs to Master in 2021

One thing about sales development has become increasingly clear. The standard process for sales reps of sending out sequenced emails, calling, leaving voicemails has developed into a dreadful rinse and repeat process - and we've noticed that this is no longer working well.

If you're new to this role, or if you're leading a new team, let's start by going back to the basics - what is sales development?

A sales development rep is a member of the sales team whose role is to focus on external prospecting, moving leads through the pipeline and qualifying leads they've connected with. Most times they don't close deals, but they help other members of the team to determine if a lead will be an ideal customer fit - or not.

Their role or measure of how well they carry out this role is often measured on their ability to move leads through the sales pipeline. Their focus is to nurture lead quality, not close deals.

Here's an ideal scenario:

The marketing team shares lead information to Sales Development reps to qualify and nurture leads until they're ready to make a purchase and Sales reps then take over to offer the right products at the right time in order to close the deal.

This is the simplest sales workflow and forms the basic operational foundation for most sales teams. 

What does this mean?

Sales development rep roles can be challenging as you navigate your way through different obstacles. And with a clear understanding of the role, here's what industry experts have cited as the top 7 skills that are essential for every sales development rep.

1. Video prospecting

Currently the buzz of the world for the past few months for food reason. This is a customized outreach in a short, two-minute max, video format. Unlike a phone call or an email, prospects get to connect with you on a more personal level without the hassle or time commitment of scheduling an online call.

You don't need to be a tech-master or an Oscar-worthy movie to star to this. Just practice being comfortable on-screen and show a genuine interest to have a meeting with the prospect.

Here's a tip:

Create a script, practice to deliver a short and engaging clip, introduce yourself, deliver value with a quick tip, and end asking to schedule a call.

The more videos you make the more efficient your workflow will be.

2. Customised Outreach

Balancing quantity and quality when prospecting can be tricky. There are two sides you want to build and maintain a healthy pipeline but on the other, you know you have to connect with the leads and this requires time. Research at Hubspot shows that there seems to be a shift - the most successful reps are actually slowing down spending more time on outreach and connecting with fewer prospects.

Here's a great balanced outreach example:

Hi [name],

I hope this email finds you well! I wanted to reach out to you because based on my research on LinkedIn, it seems you're heading marketing initiatives that focus on the overall growth strategy for [company name].

After doing some research on [company name], a bunch of things stood out to me as reasons to have a conversation about how inbound marketing & Hubspot cold help.

• Point 1
• Point 2
• Point 3

Any interest in connecting sometime this week? Feel free to book 15 minutes with me here.

Thanks in advance,

[Your name]

3. Active listening

Here's the biggest distinction between you and a chatbot. A chatbot may be able to qualify a lead. It's the interaction between you and a prospect that's genuine, helpful, not robotic and not forced.

It does not matter what you sell, it's how highly attuned you are to certain phrases that indicate whether a prospect could be a good fit for your product. You should focus on gathering valuable information that will help move your prospect further along your sales pipeline as opposed to just ticking off lead qualification boxes.

4. Follow-up

Ideally speaking on the phone is the best option, but we've found voicemail to be the next-best option. If you leave quality voicemails you'll at least have a chance to receive a callback but if you don't leave any voicemails your probability of getting any callback diminishes significantly

Here's a great example:

Hi, I'm [name] from [company]. I would like to speak with you about [strategy]. Give me a call back at [number].

5. Organisation

The process can vary from person to person, but the key is to stay organised. Whether you choose to write out your to-do list or to use a calendar management tool to create your schedule, creating a strict schedule will help you master the cadence for outreach and keep you in line with your prospects.

6. Relationship-building

Your primary objective is to prime a prospect for the sale before turning them over to the closer for a close. Build genuine relationships with prospects and build trust. You must be able to communicate with a wide variety of people across multiple different channels. The key is you want to make sure that you communicate your points and ideas while keeping them engaged.

7. Overcoming objections

This is one skill that has survived through the times and is a great asset for any sales development rep. Overcoming objections is a skill that most reps get better at over time because they've come to understand all the solutions their business provides and have seen them work in creative ways. This skill is very critical but a great way to go around this is to prepare some basic objection answers and help you along the way.

Conclusion

We're confident that these skills will improve your performance. It's simple to understand but the key is to put this into consistent practice. 

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5 Benefits of Finding an Ecommerce Niche in Malaysia

Online retail giants such as Lazada, Shopee, Mudah.my sell everything from books to diapers. Seeing their success, it's difficult to imagine how specializing in one category can make your online business more profitable.

Lazada and Shopee are successful because they have extensive resources and strong funding. Everything from staffing to warehousing, they have the bandwidth to efficiently manage a very large inventory.

Selling only one product helps you to save significantly on operational costs while allowing you to focus your resources on building a unique brand. Below, let's take a look at the benefits of finding a niche - with real-life examples to help you visualize how you can do the same for your ecommerce business too.

1. Extract more value from your marketing and advertising.

Targeting a specific audience usually results in a lower ad spend. This is because the smaller your audience the less you'll spend as a whole. A great example of this is when you create any Google Ads campaign. You can either choose more expensive, highly-searched keywords or more specific long-tail keywords. "Shoes" have approximately 1.1 million global monthly searches whereas, "women's shoes" have approximately 25,000 global monthly searches. Knowing your customer identifies great opportunities because if anyone who's searching for "shoes" could end-up with results they are not likely looking for.

Great long-tail keywords should be specific and answer key questions people are looking at (depending on where they are in their purchase journey). In our example, this would mean, "women's waterproof hiking boots" which have approximately 450 global searches. 

2. There is less competition

Here's one way you can beat Lazada / Shopee at their game. Do this by focusing on a key niche, because there are generally fewer brands in your space. This means more people will focus on you instead of a general "have-it-all" competitor.

For example, in the hair accessory niche, products can be very specific and wooden hair forks are a great example of an extremely niche marketplace. These generally do well as there are little to no competition within this niche.

3. Your customers will be more loyal to you

You can inspire brand loyalty with little effort, because you're solving specifically for your customers' needs with your product, meaning they will automatically feel loyal to your brand. Rather than appealing to a mass audience, you're appealing to that specific buyer. And if your product is the only one of its kind, your buyers will continuously look to you as a supplier.

Consider large online retailers such as Lazada or Shopee. It's common to switch from one to the other depending on what's most convenient. There's very little loyalty, but this wouldn't be the case if you find a niche for your online business because your value proposition is unique to your brand and product, customers are likely to come back to you, not to your competitor.

4. You can charge more for your products

Being in a niche usually means you have a unique product that solves a specific problem. This means you can charge more for it - especially if it's produced in small batches, by hand, or in a sustainable manner.

5. You can operate on a lean budget

Most tasks can be automated or run with limited staff. With a smaller inventory you'll be saving in storage and operational costs.

Conclusion

Choose the right ecommerce niche and with the new normal it's essential for retailers to be flexible, adaptable and prepared to pivot as and when necessary to ensure their current and future success. Whatever niche you ultimately choose, take your time to study the market and understand your target audience before you dive in.

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