Text messaging is arguably the most powerful sales tool for businesses. Customers engage with texts faster than any other channel. With 98 percent open rates, text messaging isn’t something to be slept on.
But it’s not just about getting messages read. It’s about getting customers to reply and take action.
Text messaging helps you build relationships at every step of the sales process to keep prospects and customers engaged.
So for those who haven’t already started leveraging text messaging in selling, now’s the time to start.
Here are five ways to utilize text messaging in 2024 to increase your engagement with prospects and ultimately your sales.
Automate Your Immediate Outreach
Anytime someone requests information from your company, which generally happens via your website, start the conversation as soon as possible. Automatically reach out to new leads with a text message to save time and maximize your efforts.
When you prioritize talking with leads, they feel valued and usually have more incentive to keep any commitments you set. Sending personalized automated texts cuts out busywork in the moment and later on. You reach out fast and keep following up until you get a reply.
Automated outreach also includes sending appointment reminders, meeting confirmations, between-meeting follow-ups, requests for reviews, customer onboarding messages, and more. The possibilities for automated sales text messages are almost endless.
Combine immediate text message outreach with sending emails and making phone calls. It’s just one of multiple ways to trigger messages and yet another touchpoint of engagement so you can reach more leads and customers. So when someone fills out a form on your site, send a text, a related email, and follow it up with a call.
Texts are great for short and urgent messages or real-time communications that require a back and forth. Emails work great for long-form messages like newsletters and meeting summaries, contracts, and non-urgent sales communication. The combination of emails and texts is a powerful way to engage your audience in an efficient and personal way.
When used to nurture relationships with leads, Skipio’s automations help you convert more customers and keep them longer. With the right strategy and messaging, you sell faster and in a more personable way.
Schedule Appointments
Use texting to speed up your appointment setting, especially with new leads. Because you already reached out via text, it’s faster and more convenient to get people to schedule through a text conversation than it is to go back and forth over email.
Book demos, consultations, and meetings easily by sharing your calendar in the text thread. (Skipio integrates with popular calendar softwares you likely already use so you confirm meetings with texts and send convenient reminders.) Just like you made it easy to schedule by texting a link to your calendar, texts make it just as easy to reschedule if needed.
By scheduling appointments via text message, sales reps instead spend their time engaged in conversations with customers, preparing demos and contracts, and actually selling instead of repeatedly chasing down leads and playing phone tag.
Follow Up Quickly and Consistently
Follow-up with leads can last weeks and months, depending on your sales cycle. Combine texting with emails, calls, and potentially even social media interactions to make the biggest impact.
The team at Gong explored the correlation between seller response time and win rates. They found that when sellers respond within 5-10 hours they see the highest success rate.
Quickly and consistently follow up to get closed deals. Don’t let your customers or potential customers go unanswered.
Follow up with text reminders to eliminate no-shows and cancellations to your meetings. Nothing’s more convenient than a text message reminder. If more information is needed, such as an address, video link, or meeting agenda, add it to the reminder or confirmation text.
Then, keep people engaged after demos or meetings end by keeping the conversations going. Always send follow-up messages that relate to your discussion and clearly outline the next steps. It takes almost no effort to add multiple post-meeting messages directly within your reminder messaging campaigns in Skipio.
Re-engage Old Leads
With texting, you re-engage cold leads way faster and more conveniently. Instead of letting contacts pile up in your database, create a system to automatically restart conversations with cold leads who ghosted, no-showed, or simply never responded. Skipio’s campaign integrations enable you to trigger messages that keep going out until those old leads reply.
These text messages also help capture people who aren’t ready to purchase yet but will be in the future. A quick text message may be all it takes to reconnect with a potential customer and get them interested again.
Krista Mashore Coaching is the perfect example of the impact of contacting old leads. In just one month of contacting no-shows with Skipio, the appointments that Krista’s sales team rescheduled resulted in almost $50,000 in additional revenue. Revenue that otherwise would have been completely lost.
By re-engaging old leads, you basically create a whole new revenue stream. Just make sure you’re only texting those who opted in to receive your text messages.
Build Relationships That Lead to Upsells and Upgrades
Use text messages to stay connected to customers and build relationships that result in long-term trust and cross-selling opportunities. Texts make it simple to engage customers in genuine conversations, which in turn makes it easier to talk about potential upgrade options.
Check in regularly with customers to stay aware of their needs and receive direct feedback, which ultimately makes you uniquely positioned to suggest new solutions. When it comes to new products, features, or releases, coordinate with your marketing team so that you send personalized messages to customers you helped close.
Salespeople do this most effectively by syncing Skipio and their CRM to send text messages based on customer activity or product usage. That way, you create ongoing opportunities to discuss their needs and goals and position your products as the solution without as much manual work.
Prioritize Text Messaging in Sales
Text messaging in sales continues to evolve, but it’s not going away. Start prioritizing text messaging in your sales cycle now so you can stay ahead of the game (and your competition).
Whether you leverage text messaging to send personalized 1-on-1 messages, offer promotional deals, or welcome new leads, it’s a powerful tool to establish connections, build relationships, and drive sales.
Sign up for Skipio to take full advantage of sales text messaging in 2024.
