Top Tools to Automate Your Event Sales Process

Okay everybody, let's just get cracking. Welcome to our webinar series sharing with.

You all tips and tricks to ensure.

That you are well equipped to deal with all the aspects that are all facing at this point in time. So let's just get cracking. So this session is about the hot secrets to accelerate and automate your event sales process. This session is about me sharing with you tips on what I've seen throughout our career or within our engagement with some clients, how salespeople are using automation and how they're using all these tools that they have available at their fingertips to accelerate the process. At this day and age. It's just so extremely important to automate whatever you're doing, especially now, you might have a lot of prospects. Your sales team is going to have to call a lot of individuals or have to get in touch with a lot of individuals. They're going to have to be doing a lot of email follow ups. We all know that it's now difficult to to start selling as we normally would our events and our sessions. So the idea with this is so that you have the tips that you understand why that is important and I am going to share with you for each of those tips, tools and tech that is going to allow you to do precisely what I'm just talking about. This is not a presentation about tools predominantly, although I am sharing tools. So and then I'll provide you, you know, with the names and with the.

Links of other people that can help.

With all these things. But you, you will make sure that you check yourselves. The other element is I recognize that many of you guys already use tools like HubSpot there. You guys use tools like Pardo, Salesforce, etc, etc and that's kind of what we. I just want to make sure that if you're using the marketing automation tool, very likely you can do many of.

The things that I'm talking about.

I've seen many familiar faces. I'm not going to talk about who we are. Many of you guys I hope and I expect already know us. But generally so that to let you guys a little bit about background about my track record. I've been working in this industry for the last 20 years. We've marketed all sorts of events, big and small and then we work with all sorts of individuals and companies and.

Event organizers, both big and small.

Let's just get cracking. So the tool number one that everyone's using or that sales individuals should be using and if you're a marketeer you should be encouraging your sales guys to use it. Is the email scheduling tool. What is this tool? This is a tool that just simply is going to allow you to save time and focus on key sales tasks. What I think is important is this. The email scheduling tool just prevents you from sending emails at 3am in the morning or 10pm in different time zones. And it is kind of probably the simplest tool that you can ever do. Probably many of you guys know already how to use it, but, but if you don't, here it is. This is just basically when you're trying to send an email, you do not send an email as soon as you press send, you send an email at the time when you want the prospect to receive that email. So this is kind of the way it would look in Outlook and there's a little tool called delay Delivery and then when you press that delay delivery, you're able to choose that. And if you're using tool like Gmail, then this is kind of the way.

That you would generally do. You will go in and type in your name and at the bottom on your send, when you press the send on the send button, then you have the ability to do what you call schedule send.

So many of you would have already kind of know how to do that.

So is the schedule send button. That way you're able to select a specific time that you want to send your emails.

It's a very simple thing. One tip that I'm recommending you guys to do, make sure that you send your emails. And that goes for prospecting emails or email markets. And emails send it either 5 minutes, 7 or 10 minutes before the hour.

Or 5, 10 minutes after the hour.

The reason why you do that is because you would understand meetings will happen generally at around 9 o', clock, 10 o', clock, whatever time. They just happen just at a specific time. So what is your potential prospect doing before the meeting? They'll probably check in their emails. What is the prospect doing after a meeting's finished? They're probably going to want to check the email.

So a little tip that I have for you.

If by any chance guys I'm going really fast, please do let me know. I have 13 tools to share and if I'm going too fast, please shout.

And stop me now.

Email scheduling tools Sorry, Using scheduling tools and this is when you are trying to get someone to speak to you and you normally say to the individual what is the best time? So then about a back and forth sort of sequence of emails starts taking place and it is the biggest time waster exists. So using a scheduling tool would Allow you just to simply share your calendar to the other with the other individuals.

So that they are able just to.

Pick a time that suits them most and best. And then that way you do it in one touch point, you will just.

Get back into that.

And so whether you're booking a call.

Or whether you booking a time to do a demo or a time to do whatever it is.

So generally this is kind of what it looks like.

So you share your timeline and then you will share your calendar and people are able to choose the slots that are suitable for you.

I use two tools and this one in particular.

So that one, what you've seen before is kind of a really cool one which shows all your calendar.

This one in particular is kind of quite cool because it just gives the prospect the possibility just to pick between a range of three days. One tip that I also wanted to recommend, if you're using an email scheduling tool where they can see your calendar, just make sure that you do not allow yourself to be booked all the time.

Right?

Because if someone's going to try to check what is the best time to speak with you with your sales individuals, then they're going to be able to realize that if you haven't got anything in your diary, then that gives the.

Appearance that you're not busy.

So just make sure that you only.

Allocate certain time frames where people are able to speak to you. Again, these scheduling tools are very good when you're working in different time zones or when you're pitching or when your sales guys are working with individuals in different countries.

This one is also good. But the best thing about this one in particular which is called assistant to, works very well because it just only gives the prospect three options and also it just gives the individual the possibility to pick it within the email itself.

Right.

One, you have to go into a website.

This one is within the email itself.

All the links to this will be on the slides which we're going to.

Send after the session starts.

Right now these are the tools that you can use.

And let's get cracking.

Now the other aspect which I think is the most important one for sales individuals is using pre built email or message templates. Absolutely critical because at the end of the day when you work within events, you at the end of the day are sending email marketing messages, sales teams. The line of communication is asking the prospect to do one of the following things is either register the interest to attend the event, download a brochure, request a delegate list, download a sponsorship, or.

Speak to a member of the team.

So it is very samey. And if you start to have generally the same type of conversations or the same type of pitch, then it makes.

Sense for you to create a template.

Or to what we call it, standardize the process. How does that look like? That looks like one of the use cases, the most popular one is to send like a thank you email. So when someone engages on your website to download something, you would then send what you call a thank you email. And that goes something like this.

I'll let you guys kind of read and to see how it all works.

And whatever you see, brackets is what would allow you to customize and to personalize. So when you use in your database.

Or elements within the personalization aspect within your email system or within your automation.

System, you can simply replace the element. So whether your downloads are being followed up by a sales team, or whether it's being followed up by a marketing member or by a subsequent email, you.

Can then start automating that.

By the way, the intention of this sample here is just to show you, just to give you some context.

It doesn't necessarily mean I'm right or wrong or that, but just it's just for the purposes of illustrating the process.

This is another template which it's been used kind of out there, pretty cool. And I really wanted to share that because a lot of sales individuals here use LinkedIn to do outreach. And this is one that was sent to me via LinkedIn, which I think it's pretty cool because it's just short.

To the point and doesn't kind of beat the bat bush.

So I like that one. So just make sure that whenever you're using anything on LinkedIn, you can also use templates. Right now there are tools that would integrate with LinkedIn so that you can do all that stuff or you can use the old Simply Word document with.

Your template that you simply copy and paste and personalize us as you wish.

So this one's on LinkedIn. This one's one which you can use to do your marks in outreach or sales individuals can use that to do their cold outreach too. And again, it goes something like this.

You know, we're bringing together select of.

Industry because you want to really personalize.

Aspects and you want to explore topic one, two and three, and you just like to get them to join and then you just specifically talk about all those elements.

Yeah, that works pretty cool when sales guys literally are doing an outreach for 10, 20, 100 specific individuals that they've spotted somewhere. And so you can just literally use.

Those templates to personalize accordingly. That's fine.

These are some tools that would allow you to do that. Some of these tools are free. Some of these tools are paid for. But the point that I really want to highlight is that you don't really for templates for you to use templates, you do not need tools.

You can use the old Word Doc.

Or Google Doc template or a notepad that you, before you start your outreach or before your sales guys start the.

Outreach, they can just basically have all those templates readily available to you.

It is great if you can do it from within Outlook. It is great if you can do it within from within Gmail. But again, this is not a tools session. This is just a tactic session.

The tools is just more as an add on that I'm kind of sharing with you guys.

Okay, Using the pre built snippets. The difference between an email template and a snippet is that in some cases a pre built email template is the whole thing. A snippet is just a piece of information that you will place within a piece of email or a response that you're doing. And this is kind of more like you guys all been in this situation where the prospect either sends you can you send me the details about the brochure? Can you tell me how much does it cost, what are the deadlines and all that sort of stuff which is like pretty standardized and it doesn't matter.

What is the context of the email that you're writing about.

You might just really need to pull a snippet of prices or you might.

Want to pull the snippet of the.

Event brochure with a link to the.

Landing page or stuff like that.

And snippets are pretty useful just to again to get accelerated process. Again, as I'm saying, the tools that you can use are like, you know.

The good old word docs, ngdocs or hubsvrm. Salesloft also does it really well as well.

Now this is kind of when we start getting a little bit more advanced and if a sales individual, you know, generally what tends to happen is that if you're doing some outreach, whether it.

Is from marketing point of view, whether it is from the sales point of.

View, they say please contact Mr. Super Prospect. You go build an email, whether it is on LinkedIn, whether it is on email, that you sent that email out, very likely the person does not respond. And if the person does not respond, then you're going to have to then do another follow up email. So that means that you need to build. When you're doing cold outreach to your.

Prospects, you need to build a sequence, right?

A sequence of emails that would allow.

The individual to respond.

Because we have to acknowledge and respect.

The fact, especially in this day at.

This situation where we're right now, when people are not going to respond, people are busy, right? And it might not be that they're not intent, they might really like what you've got, they might really want to engage with you, but they just, it just doesn't happen. So sending a follow up email and having a cadence of 3, 4, 5.

Touch points is recommended when you're doing the outreach.

So in this instance, creating your sequences.

Is absolutely fundamental because a sequence will just literally take care of doing that outreach as and when you think is important.

I just really wanted to clarify something because I think this is very, very.

Very hot at the moment.

How many times should you as a.

Sales or marketing individual reach out to someone about an event that you are promoting?

And we're talking about touch points. An individual needs certain amount of touch.

Points and a touch point means a.

Phone call, an email or even a.

Live conversation before the individual engages, right? It might also involve an email call or even, and I'm referring, email, I'm referring to LinkedIn as well.

So when it comes to the number of touch points that a prospect will be required to respond to you, that's down to every business, to every individual and depending on your industry and depending on your process. But the important aspect is that in order for you to guarantee success, you.

Need to be consistent, right? And.

Whenever you are doing outreach to a group of 10, 20 individuals, you.

Need to make sure that your sequence is exactly the same so that you're able to assess.

One statistic that I really wanted to suggest with you guys and then can I share with you, is that across the broad spectrum and data, the ideal and right number of touch points that.

You will be required to have with an individual is eight, right?

And again, email, call, whatever it is.

That you're going to reach with that.

Individual, it is statistically been kind of proven that more than eight touch points, then the law of diminishing returns comes into play. So I have done a poll among sales individuals within the events industry and.

They give up at four attempts, right?

So if you're a sales individual in this call, just make sure that you can probably define that yourself, what makes you feel comfortable.

But I just really want to put this into perspective.

If you're a marketeer, then try to understand, I think marketeers Generally will do more because whenever you're promoting an investor, you will send probably between six, seven or eight emails to some individuals and.

Some prospects and some individuals around the lifecycle of the event.

What it is not necessarily understood is how many touch points because very likely you're passing the click throughs to your sales guys. So you've done probably 1, 2, 3, whatever number of touch points and then.

You pass it on to the sales teams so that they can do their own thing.

So it might well be that if your sales guys are doing four touch.

Points before they disengage or basically they put that guy into the forget about it pots, they would have received previous touch points.

So marketeers, you need to be very, very clear and understand how many touch.

Points a prospect would be required to before they engage with you. And then obviously we're talking about selling, talking about selling tickets at this point in time, joining webinars or joining virtual events or you know, whatever you guys are doing at this point in time. Very important.

Now I already kind of covered this, but what I really wanted to kind of to highlight with you, whenever eight touch points, it is extremely, or nine or four. It is extremely important that at every stage of the way you are adding value, whether it's marketing or sales, you need to be adding value. You might be asking the person to take the next desired action, but if they choose not to take the next desired action, you need to give something back. Either a statistic, a blog, an article, a thought leadership piece. It doesn't have to be yours, it can be from your sponsor or it can be from anything else that you.

Find among the industry. Yeah.

So yeah, this is kind of.

Where the cadence and the sequence will work pretty well.

So this is kind of something that I just really wanted kind of to share. This is a very simple three touch point sequence and I'm just talking about the hot lead sequence.

Right.

So what is a hot lead in our events, in our field? A hot lead. Many of you will think that a hot lead would be a click through. For me, a hot lead is a download. For me, a hot lead is someone that actually sends an inquiry. For me, a hot lead is someone that's downloaded a brochure or someone that's.

A hot lead is someone that just come to your website more than five times in a period of a week that is a hot lead.

So this is just an example which I call it first touch point day one when either your automation pings you.

Back the lead or whatever rocks your boat. And how you determine a hot lid.

First touch point, you send them an email and you say you've shown some interest. Hello, Mr. Prospect, you've shown some interest in our event. Was there anything that resonated with you? Is there anything I can help you with as a value connection? If you register today, blah blah, blah, then the second touch point, then you will do two days after the first touch point. And in a way you say are you coming?

Yes or no. And it might well be that you.

Keep short to the point. So hello, Mr. Prospect, are you planning on attending our.

Event in whatever day or in whatever city?

If you are, you can process your registration here and reply to this email.

And process the registration for you.

You will notice that this one is very soft.

This one is now more trying to go for the queue, so to speak.

And the third touch point can be done either one or two days after the last touch point. And generally we'll recommend doing a phone call, right?

And just simply asking the question, are you coming?

In essence is a 2.1 version of are you coming? That you've done via email.

But this is just the phone call that you will do with the individual, right?

The way that we normally advise are.

The sales teams that we work with that you just do it short to.

The point because they already have heard.

About the event, they would have already engaged with you. So you just basically could just simply go straight and remove any type of pitching that you're doing. You just want to make sure that you a receive and read the previous.

Messages and B, if they're gonna come or not, and if they're not gonna.

Come, then you're gonna have to put that into okay, you respect that and.

Then you just take all those individual.

That individual from the sequence that you got.

I think one important point to remember, the whole sequence for hot leads in.

This case needs to end within one week.

This activity will entice people to respond.

Directly to you and make sure that you acknowledge that that's how they respond accordingly.

And anyone that says that they can.

Come, as I said, you just put them out of the, out of the list.

This is a sequence that's generally in between passing that over to the sales teams or in some cases marketing departments will deal with directly whatever you do it. You can build an automation sequence that's.

Going to do precisely this.

This is just another call it template or illustration on how you would then go about it. I think marketing teams and sales teams need to understand you don't really need to know exactly how the email is going to look like. But these is the way in which you need to understand the sequence in your head or within your team, so.

That then whoever needs to kind of to create emails, then write it up. But generally, this will be a sequence that we recommend all our clients to use, and it will generally be different as you adapt. And this is like mostly like an email marketing sequence to promote an event.

At least 7 emails you need to.

Send within the lifecycle of your event. But yeah, good.

Now when you need to automate this. Yeah, marketing people do this manually every week. Every other week you start preparing all that the way. The real big difference is that if you are able to understand how the whole sequence of.