Can a virtual assistant for executives make a difference to your conversion ratio and increase sales? A truly effective sales funnel is one which nurtures and reinforces your relationship with a prospect at every stage. Whether you’re interfacing with someone barely aware of your offering, or a buyer ready to purchase, the same attention and energy is required.
A sales funnel can (and should) be automated as effectively as possible, but there’s still one element that requires careful human input. That element is the developing dialogue between you and your prospect. If done poorly or automatically, it can quickly alienate a potential buyer. But if done correctly and with insight, it can fast-track the sales process and accelerate your sales.
Lead Generation and Nurturing: Sensitivity is Required
From a prospect’s viewpoint, what sets you apart from your competitors? Assuming your offerings are similar, it’s the level and type of interaction they experience that attracts them to buy from you. A one-size-fits-all approach is ineffective and guarantees a high rate of churn. In turn, that means a lot of wasted time, money, and effort applied to prospects who will never buy from you anyway. And if the exposure to your brand or offering is uninspired, those lost prospects will never revisit or recommend your brand, too.
This is where a virtual assistant for executives can add enormous value. In an increasingly competitive business landscape, brand differentiators are growing smaller every day. Being able to properly score, segment, and communicate individually with prospective customers puts you ahead of the pack. It’s a process that requires diligent oversight – and one that gives you an instant advantage.
Lead Scoring Using a Virtual Assistant
As your business grows and you attract more prospective customers, so the complexity of converting them increases. The most effective way to allocate your marketing resources is to develop a lead scoring system for your prospects.
However, that’s only the first step in the process of guiding the prospect as they journey through your sales funnel. And to develop an effective lead scoring system, you need someone knowledgeable to analyze the data you collect on your leads and prospects.
Essentially, that data comprises two elements:
- First, analyzing your existing customers to see what they have in common. So: what buyer behavior did they exhibit prior to purchasing? What questions (if any) did they ask? Did they respond to certain offers or buying triggers?
- Second, analyzing the attributes of prospects who didn’t become customers. Do they share common points of disengagement? What disqualified them from buying? Was it a pricing threshold, or perhaps a perceived product or service incompatibility? Was it something else?
By answering questions like these, it becomes possible to identify key points that enable you to weight or score potential customers almost from the outset. It also means you can fast-track the sales process by performing the right actions at the right time.
The downside? All of this requires time and continuous adjustment. And if you don’t have the time – and don’t want the expense of a fulltime customer data analyst – then a virtual assistant could be a perfect fit for your business.
Lead Scoring Models
To build a truly effective lead scoring system, there are certain key areas of interaction you may want to focus on. These include:
- Demographic information
- Company or industry information
- Email or online engagement initiated by the prospect
You’ll also want to gauge product or service suitability versus customer interest. Your offering may be a great fit, but until the prospect realizes that, they won’t buy!
Lead Segmentation: Personalization Means Better Conversion
What does lead segmentation really mean? In essence, it means creating sub-lists or collections that enable you to send those prospects more persuasive sales messages. And the more accurately those messages are tailored to the prospect’s actual desires, the more likely you are to make a sale.
Generally, there are 4 primary types or areas of lead segmentation that are most commonly used:
- Demographic segmentation. This focuses on elements like prospect income bracket, gender, education, and social or professional status.
- Psychographic segmentation. This is more subtle, and is focused on attributes like interests, beliefs, relationships, and emotionally motivated buying triggers.
- Behavioral segmentation. This relates to the browsing and buying patterns exhibited by a prospect. This pertains particularly to someone who may already have purchased from you. In a broader sense, this can also include a prospect’s responses to communication or a tendency toward – for example – impulse purchasing.
- Geographic segmentation. This is self-explanatory, but it’s particularly relevant where a marketing campaign is targeted toward a community or is designed to appeal to those within a specific geographic grouping.
There are many other sub-categories, like value segmentation, generational or age group segmentation, and lifestyle segmentation. Ultimately, though, you will need to decide which of these is most relevant to your brand and offering.
Prospect Nurturing With a Virtual Assistant
A skilled virtual assistant for executives will already have a good grasp of the general principles of lead scoring and segmentation. However, your business is unique, and that means a consultative process will deliver the best results.
You’ll need to provide your virtual assistant with the appropriate insight into your business model, so there’s a clear understanding of how best to implement lead segmentation and nurturing. Without that, your virtual assistant is really just fulfilling the role of a data capture clerk.
The key here is to provide as many details about your in-house sales process as possible. This enables your virtual assistant to more accurately interface with potential customers – and present your brand in the best possible light.
The Power of Personalized Communication
A prospect faced with a buying decision will always consider two key factors:
- What they’re dealing with, and
- Who they’re dealing with.
Truth is, a sale doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s a dialogue, a conversation, even if much of that conversation happens inside the prospect’s head!
If a company produces a fantastic product or offering, but their service is average with poor or erratic communication, they’ll lose sales. On the other hand, a company with a middle-of-the-road offering can still skyrocket their sales through outstanding service, fast responses, and clear communication.
In essence, it’s about trust.
And this is where a virtual assistant for executives offers you the most value. Your prospects are being looked after and encouraged to buy from you – not because of copy-and-paste sales tactics, but because of a growing personal relationship with your brand. And it is this kind of interaction that vastly increases trust – and leads to a far higher customer lifetime value.
Do I Need a Virtual Assistant?
Many business owners view a virtual assistant as an offsite employee that incurs fewer overheads and no human resource liabilities. And that’s absolutely correct – which in itself makes a virtual assistant a very viable addition to any business.
But a virtual assistant for executives offers much more than that. A skilled VA enables you to leverage your time, which carries inestimable value. In fact, the profit-generating value of a good virtual assistant far outweighs the modest cost of hiring one.
Book a Virtual Assistant Today
Book a free trial today and discover how a virtual assistant for executives can help you nurture leads and stimulate sales – and accelerate your business potential.
