Inductive Automation Blog

00:08 Lauren: Hi, welcome back to our sales and marketing training videos. I'm Lauren.

00:12 Shay: And I'm Shay. Today is all about one of the most crucial parts of any marketing effort, creating leads.

00:17 Lauren: We'll talk about how to get more sales leads by working with your existing customer base, growing your local network, leveraging your website and expanding awareness with great content.

00:28 Shay: We're back talking with Doug Dudley our Director of Marketing. Thanks for being here again, Doug.

00:32 Doug: Yeah, no problem, excited to be here.

00:34 Lauren: So, today's topic is about creating leads...

00:37 Doug: Yeah.

00:38 Lauren: And building your lead base. And normally when we think about creating leads, we think about new people, making new connections. But you actually argue the best way to find leads is to start with your existing customers.

00:54 Doug: Yeah, and the biggest reason for that is there is no easier sale than the person who's already been sold. Your existing customers already like your product, they already trust your company, your marketing has already worked on them. So they're gonna much more likely to give you an additional sale, maybe it's growing their use of Ignition inside their facility from one machine to another, or from one plant to another. Maybe they're setting up a chain trying to make it an enterprise-wide architecture. Or maybe they have friends or colleagues in other companies that would also be interested in Ignition. If you can win the trust of that customer instead of focusing on just making one more Ignition sale, actually try to win the trust of that customer and build a relationship there, you could potentially have a whole flood of new leads from inside that company or beyond from that relationship with that customer. So that's a way of looking at your existing customer base to find new potential leads for yourself.

01:57 Shay: So we had a tip on that, on maintaining these existing customers and being able to grow a business based off of that, that lead that you've already nurtured and been able to make a sale to, which is to make sure that you are performing magic tricks a little bit. Yeah?

02:11 Doug: Yeah, yeah. So this is actually something that Steve Heckman was talking to me about, and he said, that one of the best ways, especially with Ignition, one of the best ways that you can go in and make another sale is to go in to an existing customer who's had a problem, they've been hitting their head up against a wall because there's something they can't solve, and if you can go in there with Ignition and work a miracle for them, “be an Ignition magician” was the term he coined, you will just blow them away and win them over because you'll solve this problem that just seemed unsolvable and you'll do it with very little effort.

02:46 Doug: If you're able to do that... And Ignition gives you the tools to be able to turn those ideas into reality so quickly, if you can turn a proof of concept into a solution on your customer site when they think you're just coming out there to do an evaluation, you can totally blow them away. You can be that Ignition magician and they're gonna want you to come back and do more and more magic tricks for them, to solve more and more of their problems. So that's another example of what we kind of talked about before about doing more for the customer, kind of going above and beyond, and that can really help solidify that relationship so that they're gonna give you more and more, and more leads to help you have more, and more sales of Ignition. Yeah.

03:22 Lauren: I know another thing you've mentioned before that Steve and Wendy have talked about is looking for jobs while you're on the job. Can you say a little more about that?

03:31 Doug: Yeah, Steve told me that as an integrator, the best marketers he had were his technicians that would go on the job site, because they're there, they're building relationships, and they also have an opportunity to see opportunities on the plant floor. So if you go there with just the intention of solving that one problem, you might solve that problem, but if you're so laser-focused on that, you're very well gonna miss a lot of other opportunities for problem solving that your customers have.

04:00 Doug: They might not even know that they're opportunities. You might have ideas from things you've done in another customer's site. If you see those opportunities and just kinda share them with your customers, it's another example of doing more for them, being like, "Hey, I just saw this thing over here. I could use Ignition to solve this for you really quick, maybe we can take a look at it." It's just another example of doing more for your customers, being that initial magician, and finding opportunities. 'Cause if you're able to find them on the job, I mean you're getting paid, and you're finding more opportunities to get paid down the road. It's another example of being able to create those leads from existing customers. So those are just all some different techniques that can really help turn your existing customer base into even more and more, and more work for you.

04:40 Shay: Another piece of creating leads is figuring out where you want to look for those leads, where do you want your future customers to be. And oftentimes we tend to want to look big because if we're looking at a big area, that's going to equate to lots of customers, is kind of the mindset. Can you speak to maybe why that's not always the case, and what the better way to go about that is?

05:02 Doug: In so many things, it's better to focus in on what you're really, really good at and really be amazing at that, to do a good job. So in this case, instead of focusing on a big geographical area, especially when you're smaller, it's better to focus on a smaller geographical area and it's usually better to focus on your local area. There's a couple reasons for this. It helps you have focus so you can really do a good job of what you're doing, but also it helps you build a good local network. And as we've talked about before, word of mouth is a very powerful way to spread your brand. It's also a very powerful way to find new leads. If you do a really good job for someone in your area and they're just amazed with the work you do, they're gonna talk to other people about it. Very likely the people they're gonna talk to are other people at work, other people that are local. They're gonna have local connections too.

05:52 Doug: That word of mouth is gonna spread much quicker in a local area, and then the people they will talk to will likely also be in the local area or close by. So the word of mouth can spread faster and you'll be able to kind of build up a good reputation in that area. Once you have that good reputation, then it's easier to expand to a larger and larger, and larger area, but it's great to start with a good local network as kind of a base of operations, and really just kinda own that territory before you expand out too much further.