A website is often thought of as a marketing asset, rather than a resource for sales reps. However, a website can be a sales representative’s best friend. Linkedin research showed that a full 87% of sales and marketing leaders agree that coordination between sales and marketing enables crucial business growth.
A website that is fully-equipped with helpful customer-facing features and marketing content can become a constant source of new leads for sales professionals to follow up on.
The website can even play a “sales enablement” role by warming up leads in the first place. Prospects who come to a building supply manufacturer’s website and find helpful content will be more prepared for conversations that lead to a purchase.
The key is to make sure the website is optimized with the best tools and strategies for lead generation and nurturing. Below, we’ll talk about four important features that sales professionals should ask for when their company is creating or updating the website.
1. A Dealer Locator That Generates Leads
The best resource for sales professionals is a steady pipeline of high-quality leads. For that reason, a dealer locator built to generate leads is perhaps the most important website feature for sales reps to ask for.
Dealer locator pages are known for simply directing customers to the closest dealer to buy a manufacturer’s products from. However, locators can go a lot further by actually capturing users’ contact info as they submit inquiries to dealers.
Those users are clearly demonstrating purchase intent, and this is where the value lies for sales professionals. Once the locator captures a lead, you can follow up with them over the next few days and weeks to explain product benefits and persuade them to buy.
The Bullseye locator software facilitates this with ease. It creates locator pages that bring in high-intent prospects through inviting lead capture forms. Building material companies can also use it to feature useful content about dealers, show off attractive local promotions, and much more, making a salesperson’s job even easier when it’s time to follow up with leads.
2. Chatbots
Marketing is thought of as “one-to-many” messaging, while sales is very much a one-on-one proposition. A building material company’s website should start that personal conversation with leads, warming them up to speak to a live sales representative.
What technology can help you achieve this? Chatbots.
In a survey by Drift, 55% of businesses found chatbot usage to generate high-quality leads. Since chatbots pop up as helpful assistants to web users and offer helpful advice — while allowing the user to type a natural response, as if chatting with a person — a sales rep can easily follow up on the chat log and take over the conversation later on.
A chatbot is one of the easiest elements to add to a corporate website. This is especially true when an automated chatbot is combined with a live chat feature, which is offered by platforms like ChatBot with Live Chat and Drift. With enough website traffic, the chatbot can quickly become a steady source of leads and data for the sales team.
This can play out in two important ways:
- Live chats during business hours allow for real conversations with leads to get underway.
- Automated chats at all other times are an important source of data for what kinds of questions and concerns customers have, based on what they type into the chatbot or what suggested links they follow.
Sales professionals can use the information coming in through chatbots to qualify leads and have more effective, and ultimately more profitable, conversations.
3. Downloadable Sales Materials
It’s not only a face-to-face (or phone, or live video) conversation that produces a sale. Other things help.
Specifically, materials that help consumers make a decision.
Sales teams should ask their companies to use more landing pages with downloadable content, also known as lead magnets. Downloads should be prompted by strong calls to action (CTAs) that get leads to share contact info and voluntarily enter the sales funnel.
There’s a reason lead magnets play a crucial role in the sales process: up to 50% of marketers report higher conversions from using them. As leads move from awareness of a brand to the consideration of different competing products, downloadable material that actually helps them can make the brand stand out.
A friendly sales representative can then come into the picture to elaborate on the content, personalizing the info and helping the prospect make a buying decision.
What kind of content works best to promote building material sales? There’s a wide range, including:
- Content upgrades that elaborate on blog posts, and that dive deeper into the best use cases for certain products
- Product brochures that clearly show the benefits of your brand’s product over others
- Checklists that help homeowners, business owners, contractors, and other prospects ensure they’re fully ready to take on a project
- Calculators or spreadsheets that help your leads estimate the costs of your project. (Bonus: it’s great if you can show that your product reduces typical project costs.)
- Videos of customer success stories, usage instructions, or project walkthroughs
The call to action (CTA) should be compelling as well, whether it takes the form of a link or a clickable button. CTAs that say “Download Your Roofing Shingles Guide” or “Get Your Lighting Solution” might have more impact than bland suggestions like “Learn More.”
Since they immediately drive action and directly affect lead count, downloadable content and strong CTAs are website elements that sales professionals should insist on.
Salespeople can also offer valuable advice on what lead magnets to use, based on their knowledge of what leads need and want. The key is using the right content to appeal to the right customer!
4. Exit Intent Popups
Imagine you’re about to leave a website.
You move your mouse up to the top of the screen (or on mobile, you slightly scroll up to go to a different website), and suddenly you’re presented with a surprising popup that offers you a compelling discount or freebie.
Has this happened to you? If so, you’ve experienced an exit intent popup.
It’s an effective tactic for winning back leads that your brand might otherwise have lost. According to OptinMonster, up to 2-4% of additional website visitors are converted to customers via exit popups.
Sales professionals can use exit popups to great effect in winning more customers for your building material brand. Whether it’s a special discount, a physical product sample, or another incentive, an exit intent popup is a valuable way to hold on to prospects you would otherwise have lost contact with.
If the prospect has zero interest, they’ll ignore the popup. If they act on it, that means they have just enough interest to engage with your brand a little longer. That’s ripe for opportunity!
An exit popup form should ask leads for their email addresses at a minimum, in order to deliver the content or sale voucher. This allows you, the salesperson, to follow up with them just like any other lead — with a second shot at closing the deal.
For Building Material Sales Professionals, Website Tools For Lead Generation Are a Must
Improving your sales numbers is a challenging job all by itself. It often comes with the challenge of generating your own leads, “warming” them up through careful nurturing and follow-up, and ultimately closing the deal.
Why not have your company’s website help you out at every stage of the process? As a sales rep, you should approach the leadership of your building material brand with ideas for several website enhancements that help generate qualified leads.
Exit intent popups, chatbots, and downloadable sales materials are three crucial parts of the picture for conversing with users who will eventually buy…if they get a chance to speak to you.
The most powerful web tool in this equation might be your brand’s store or dealer locator. It is the bridge between a hot prospect’s desire to buy and the actual point of sale.
You’ll want to point your company leaders towards the Bullseye Dealer Locator platform. Bullseye is built to generate leads, and it implements the best practices of digital marketing and sales to ensure the most ready-to-buy customers are tracked by your company.
Bullseye is an essential digital partner for your building material brand. If you and your company leaders are interested in boosting sales, schedule a free assessment today of your brand’s current dealer locator.
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