Customers today are not only informed, they are actively engagedwith brands at multiple levels; making it critical for companies tomanage highly engaged consumers effectively.

One of the most important factors is timing of marketing andsales outreach. Stay quiet too long and a customer will forget.Send an e-mail when a customer spends more decision-making time onsocial media and the message is lost. Provide testimonials,third-party research and product information upfront; the customermay be overwhelmed.

Here are eight tips to improve the timing of sales outreach toboost results.

1. Develop a calendar including all events that wouldimpact a customer’s buying process. Critical dates such asholidays, seasonal buying spikes and lulls, and national eventslike tax season or earnings announcements should be included.

2. Analyze current sales outreach timing. Isthere a strategy behind e-mails and flyers going out or is ashotgun approached used each time more sales are needed? Look backat old campaigns and rank which campaigns were the most effective.Identify core commonalities.

3. Organize sales collateral. Not knowing whatis available to send to potential customers greatly inhibits abusiness’ ability to time outgoing messaging properly. Createcategories for sales messaging and assign each piece of collaterala category. These should include general sales/product messages,special offers, customer testimonials, case studies, third-partyresearch and newsletters.

4. Once sales collateral is categorized, it needs to beassigned timing. Developing a standard operating procedurefor when each piece of messaging is appropriate to send to a lead,based on that lead meeting certain criteria, will help take theguesswork out of the sales process.

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5. Next, review past sales to identify the averagebuying process timeline for customers. By reviewing howlong it took for past leads to make a purchasing decision, a salesteam can better align current outreach efforts to match typicalresponse times and interest levels of leads that are now in thepipeline.

6. Begin building the master sales calendar.Once a business has identified key dates that will impact its salescycle, organized and categorized sales collateral, and reviewedpast successes, it is time to merge the information together. Putevents and past sales wins on parallel timelines. If successes inthe sales cycle are not aligning with key dates as they should be,further research needs to be done on why a campaign was a success(or failure).

7. Map out on a third parallel timeline the buyingprocess of the average customer. Create buying stages forthe sales funnel. For example, name Stage One, “Awareness.” This iswhen the lead is first learning about a business and evaluating itsofferings and benefits. Stage Two is “Consideration.” This stage iswhen a lead is reviewing and contemplating a business’ offeringsversus competitors and seeing what options are out there. StageThree is “Short Listing.” The lead knows what it wants and whatbusinesses best fit that need. Now it’s time to make adecision.

8. On the timeline for the average customer’s buyingprocess, overlay the collateral materials available to send to thecustomer in each stage. It is crucial to create a campaignthat builds and leaves no doubt about the superiority of yourcompany’s products or services. Use past sales data to determinethe average length of each stage for a typical lead.

In “Awareness,” leads should be interacting with news stories,banner ads, white papers, social media communities and receiving anewsletter. In this stage leads are being made aware of a business’capabilities and are being alerted of their need.

Once a lead has entered the sales cycle and is made aware of acompany’s offerings, the pressure is on. During the “Consideration”stage, leads need to be consistently reminded of the superiority ofa business’ product or service through third-party verifications.At this stage, sales messaging should focus heavily on analystreports, case studies, references, testimonials, third-partyresearch reports on the industry as a whole and media coverage,balanced with selective messaging about product/service benefitsand competitive advantages.

Only at the point when a lead lapses into the “Short List” stageshould a business begin to deliver special offer sales messaging toa lead. During this final stage of decision-making, a lead shouldbe well enough known to a sales team to identify any additionalcollateral materials that need to be sent to push the sale over theedge.

As the president of OptifiNow, John McGee leads thecompany’s vision, strategy and growth. He founded the company tosolve a common problem of enterprise customers – the sharedstruggle of managing national and global sales teams with brand andlegal compliant messaging.