Guilt. It’s always there. And I’m not talking about that fudgy brownie from last night. While we’re busily reaching for the low-hanging fruit, relationships with other prospects, customers and key influencers tend to suffer. It’s difficult to stay in touch with everyone.
Sales professionals are still dealing with the legacy of the Great Recession: too few people handling too much work. We’re all spread very thin. Turning to technology for answers, we use email and social media for blanket communications that, often, feel like too little frosting spread over too large a cake. Gaps and holes turn into missed opportunities. Developed to address this situation, Tickle & Woo is a turnkey B2B lead nurturing solution. Use our hand-offs, hassle-free Tickle BoxÔ mailings to keep your company top of mind.
Tickle Boxes deliver company-branded, highly personal, tactile experiences that solve problems you face every day:
- You’ve enjoyed numerous conversations with a prospect, you need to keep circling back, but you’re short on time
- Your quotes languish on the client side while decision-makers and key influencers debate the issue
- You’re currently doing business with a client with whom you have little to no personal contact
- You have valuable clients who buy intermittently and are currently MIA
- You’d like to warm up cold calls and make them more productive
- You need a clever way to get past the gatekeeper
- Your industry has a long sales cycle and you have to stay relevant between occasional calls and emails
- You’re grasping for topics to discuss besides business
Admit it. You’ve done your homework. You’ve crept around prospects’ social media pages, scoped out office mementoes and scribbled notes at any mention of hobbies or personal information.
Recently, a longtime client of mine complained about terrible hemorrhoid pain. I’m not ashamed to admit that, within minutes, I had shipped off one of those hole-in-the-middle pillows via Amazon. Besides being grateful (and relieved), she was amazed that I had actually been listening to her…really listening.
You can cater to your prospects’ personal interests by signing them up for Tickle BoxÔ subscriptions in one of 14 themes: Avid Golfer, Business Traveler, Dog Lover, Outdoor Recreation, etc.
We’ve seen companies attempt to create lead nurturing programs on their own. Sales tells Marketing they need support and here’s how it typically unfolds: newsletters, blogs, e-blasts and postcards are churned out on time…for a few months. Eventually, Marketing struggles to gather content and images, their focus turns to other priorities, and the program is abandoned.
Consistency is the key. In 1988, when I first opened Longbotham Strategic Marketing, Tickle & Woo’s sister company, I targeted a large manufacturer as a prospect. Since they were already using a renowned, global ad agency, my first call was quite depressing. But I was young, tenacious and had my heart set on landing that account. For three long years, I consistently dropped off treats, made calls and stopped in. Long story short, after finally earning their business, we enjoyed a relationship that spanned a decade…well worth my early attempts at lead nurturing (although I had no idea what it was called at the time).
To ensure consistency, Tickle BoxesÔ are available in 6 and 12-month subscriptions, each of which includes monthly mailings that feature your full color company logo, your sales message, a theme-related tip and a theme-related item.
Tickle & Woo’s curators select items that feel special, useful and memorable. Even prospects who shy away from gifts due to company policy happily accept these small tokens masquerading as direct mail promotions. To elevate perceived value, our elegant, matte black boxes are artfully die-cut and wrapped in decorative belly-bands.
Getting past gatekeepers can be a challenge for the best of us. In my early days in business, I had little money but an abundance of creativity. Accordingly, I tried to get “my foot in the door”… literally. I stocked up brightly colored acrylics and swirled the paints on an old cookie sheet. After dipping my clean, bare foot into the mixture, I stepped on a large, white envelope. As I lifted my foot, the paint rose up in stiff points, creating an unusual, tactile impression. After drying my creations on clothesline strung around the office, I filled them with our sales literature and delivered them to prospects prior to the first cold call. Most people picked up the phone.
Since then, Longbotham Strategic Marketing has created highly sophisticated sales support and lead nurturing programs for numerous clients, projects that required a significant investment.
A few years ago, building on our experience, we created Tickle & Woo, an affordable solution that any B2B sales team can implement quickly and easily.
We spoke with reps in a variety of industries and noted their requests. A full color logo. A custom sales message. A proof. Mailings that go out automatically, requiring no (emphasis on ZERO) effort on the part of the rep. And the list went on. In the end, Tickle & Woo was developed by sales professionals for sales professionals.
Learn more about our lead nurturing solutions at www.tickleandwoo.com. Getting started is easy. Simply sign up your prospects and customers, supply a logo and a sales message, approve the proofs and you’re done.
You’ll be surprised at the relief you’ll feel once you’ve outsourced the work to Tickle & Woo.
Now you can return to that low-hanging fruit, 100% guilt-free.