Top 10 Cold Calling Tips (Part 1 of 2 eBook download)

5 Tips for Improving Performance in Small Sales Teams (eBook Download )

It makes sense to use the web to market your tech company. People can visit your site to look up your products or services, contact your sales team, and convert into paying customers all in one space online.

The challenge is finding a way to bring those visitors to your site in the first place.

Fortunately, pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is a good place to start, contact a software companies ppc. Unlike traditional advertising, PPC for tech companies advertises your brand to targeted audiences who will probably become new sales leads. It makes sense to use the web to market your tech company. People can visit your site to look up your products or services, contact your sales team, and convert into paying customers all in one space online.

The challenge is finding a way to bring those visitors to your site in the first place. Fortunately, pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is a good place to start.

Unlike traditional advertising, PPC for tech companies advertises your brand to targeted audiences who will probably become new sales leads.

Top 10 Cold Calling Tips (part 2)

"Closing is asking to go to the next step in the sales process, nothing more. So in a cold call, you might close for a follow up meeting. In the second meeting you close for a demonstration. After the demonstration, you close for a product trial/proof of concept or pilot program. At the end of the pilot, you close for the sale. We used to say you close when the prospect is ready. How do you know? Well the reality is that there are sometimes signs but sometimes not. So the answer is ABC, “Always Be Closing”."

6. Manage Your Intent

People are very good at reading other people. Studies have shown that two of the most prominent members of the natural world that share this talent are human beings and dogs. Humans are so good at it that they can do it over the phone! So try to manage your intent before making calls. If you are thinking “I’ve got to make a sale at any cost” or “I’ve got to schedule a demo today no matter what”, the prospect will hear that and they will recognize that you are putting your interests before your own. They won’t trust you and they will not buy or advance. Try thinking “I’m reaching out to prospects today to help them and if I can’t it’s okay. I’ll be direct and tell them so.”

It also has the secondary benefit of pulling back slightly from the prospect, allowing them to feel in control. Some of the best cold callers liberally sprinkle “I’m not really sure if we can help you” or “Now that you’ve heard why I’m calling, do you think there’s a fit?”

7. Best Day/Time to Call

Below is an overview of a study done by MIT. Download the entire study (15 pages) by clicking below.

INSIDESALES.COM/M.I.T LEAD RESPONSE MANAGEMENT STUDY

"Overview

The behavioral study revealed when sales representatives had success around calling web-generated leads. To find these facts, we looked at leads that were captured through a web form, and attempted or called at least one time. Summarized below are some of the more interesting findings related to speed and timing when responding to web-generated leads:

1. Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to call in order to contact (by 49.7% over the worst day) and qualify (by 24.9% over the worst day) leads. Thursday is the best day to contact a lead in order to qualify that lead (by 19.1% better than the worst day).

2. 4–6pm is the best time to call to make contact with a lead (by 114% over the worst time block). 8–9am and 4–5pm are the best times to call to qualify a lead (by 164% better 1–2pm, the worst time of the day). 4–5pm is the best time to contact a lead to qualify over 11–12am by 109%).

3. The odds of calling to contact a lead decrease by over 10 times in the 1st hour. The odds of calling to qualify a lead decrease by over 6 times in the 1st hour. After 20 hours every additional dial your salespeople make actually hurts your ability to make contact to qualify a lead.

4. The odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times. The odds of qualifying a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times."

This study refers to web leads but I think its major points are relevant. Your business may certainly be different but these were the findings after millions of calls over a broad range of businesses were analyzed. One important take away from this study is that even more important than day of week or time of day is how quickly leads are called back (which is technically not a cold call but there it is).

8. Close

When I first started my career in professional selling, I was like most people, reading books on sales and trying to learn the “art of the close”. After being in sales for a small number of decades, here are a few valuable lessons I’ve learned about closing:

Closing is asking to go to the next step in the sales process, nothing more. So in a cold call, you might close for a follow up meeting. In the second meeting you close for a demonstration. After the demonstration, you close for a product trial/proof of concept or pilot program. At the end of the pilot, you close for the sale. We used to say you close when the prospect is ready. How do you know? Well the reality is that there are sometimes signs but sometimes not. So the answer is ABC, “Always Be Closing”. Here are some simple examples I like:

“Now that you’ve heard what we do it sounds like there might be some interest in taking a closer look. (no pause) When would you have to time to see a demonstration of our capabilities?”

“Now that you’ve seen a demonstration of our capabilities, are you ready to move forward with a pilot program or do you need more information?”

In a cold call, you may be closing for different things and everyone has their own style. You should feel comfortable with whatever you’re saying. Be aware of the situation, be alert and don’t be afraid to try to close multiple times.

When training phone agents, I like to use the following analogy. When we were kids we had birds, either parakeets or canaries, which would occasionally escape from their cage. The younger kids would start screaming, my parents would start yelling and the escapee would be fluttering and flapping all over the house. Exciting times! The challenge was to catch the bird without hurting it and put it back in its cage before it found an open window and flew away for good. Let me tell you, my family was rarely that focused, determined or CAREFUL! Amazingly, 9 times out of 10 the bird was back in the cage unharmed within a fairly short time (which felt like an hour).

I like the analogy because good salespeople want to help their prospects but must overcome similar challenges. So close gently, matter-of-factly and warmly. Anyone can frighten off a prospect by being overly aggressive or rude so don’t do it. The skill is moving the sales process along with the prospect hardly feeling it. And once you ask a closing question, for goodness sake be quiet. You know that right?

9. Manage Objections

Every business hears different objections so your preparation might need to vary from what I’m outlining here. The operative word is preparation, as in to “prepare”. You should prepare your responses to common objections and have them ready when you start calling. Here’s a good example. Let’s say you make your call, get to the point, be a human, have control of your intent and they say “We’re all set.”

Here’s how our agents respond “John, are you all set because you’re not really the right person for me to speak with, do you already have a supplier or is the timing not right?”

Here’s how we respond to their answers:

Not correct person - "Who handles this in your company? Would you have their phone number handy? How about their e-mail address?"

Timing - "When would be a good time to speak again? Can we pencil in some time to talk then? (no pause) What works better for you, mornings or afternoons?"

Supplier - "How do you get involved with selecting suppliers in this area? Would you be interested in receiving a quote from us so that you could compare our pricing, value and customer service with your current supplier? Great, when would you have some time to…..[close for appointment]."

10. Thank Them and Get a Referral

Whether the call concludes the way you wanted it to or not, thank them for their time and smoothly ask for a referral. Try to help them focus on a particular source to make it easier for them to think of one. Here’s an example: “Mary, thank you for speaking with me. I’m looking forward to demonstrating our capabilities next week as discussed. By the way, are you aware of any other department or division within your organization that might be interested in our services?” Jot down the name and let Mary go.

Bonus Tip: Confirm the Sale or Advance

Please confirm all appointments when you make them, via email. People forget things all the time and you don’t want to work this hard to get an appointment and have the prospect forget about it as soon as you hang up. On the day before the appointment, email or call them as a reminder. Oh, and write it down in your book so you don’t forget it either!

7 Free Social Media Tools for Promoting Your Business

earning how to market on social media can help you increase sales while promoting your brand. Social media marketing is an inexpensive yet effective way to reach more people across different platforms. You can attract a wider audience through social media by developing quality content.

Having a social media presence is necessary. Not only do your customers expect it, but it’s a great tool for learning more about your target audience and connecting with individuals online. With the use of organic social media marketing, you can get to know your followers and find better ways to promote your products and services.

However, you can also learn how to advertise a small business on social media with a limited budget to help your content reach more potential customers. Social media platforms have many options for reaching more customers; it’s just up to you to create engaging content that makes prospective customers want to learn more about your business and brand.

What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing involves using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok to effectively reach a wider audience and communicate with customers. Social media marketing is necessary for any small business marketing strategy and requires a robust plan. Your customers expect engaging content and the ability to communicate with you through direct messaging and comments.

Effective social media marketing for small businesses gives you the unique opportunity to humanize your brand and drive traffic back to your website. With social media advertising, you can also generate leads and sales while increasing brand awareness. Many small businesses even use social media for customer service, allowing customers to message them directly to have issues resolved and questions answered.

How to market your business on social media
Social media is integral to any marketing strategy, but it may seem daunting for small business owners who don’t know how to use different platforms. Luckily, social media marketing is fairly easy to learn and doesn’t require too much time or money. Any budget can support a robust social media marketing strategy as long as you get to know your customers and can create engaging content regularly. Here’s how to promote your business on social media.

1. Identify your audience
Many businesses make the mistake of trying to reach everyone. But understanding and organizing your audience can help you send the right message to the right people and more effectively meet your marketing goals.

This begins with identifying your target audience. The details about who these people are should be based on the audience data you already have, as well as your market research.

To find your target audience:

Compile data. In order to reach your target market, you need to know what they’re like. It’s important to know things like your audience members’ ages, locations, and engagement patterns to market effectively to them. While it may seem daunting to gather this information, customer relationship management software stores and sorts this data and makes it easy to put into action.
Use social media analytics. Many platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, have built-in analytics that can tell you about your followers, including when they post, where they post, and other interests. Plus, these tools are free to use with business accounts.
Check the competition. Understanding your competition will give you insights about how to talk to your audience. You can look at what your competitors are doing wrong to fill any gaps in your current strategy.
Once you’ve identified your target audience, it’s important to keep up to date with their interests and to implement a social listening strategy to understand their wants and needs.

2. Define your goals and KPIs
To excel in social media marketing, it’s important to create goals that guide your efforts. The SMART goal strategy provides a helpful framework to create foundational goals and meet your overall objectives.

SMART stands for:

Specific: In order to measure and meet goals, it’s important to be clear about precisely what you hope to achieve. This is especially important for getting your team onboard as you work collectively towards the goal. A specific social media goal, for example, might be to increase your Twitter followers by 20% this quarter.
Measurable: You need to know definitively whether you’ve reached your goal or not. Measurement makes that possible. By using metrics to track your progress, you can also pivot your goals if need be. For instance, if you find that likes and follows don’t lead to website traffic, you can change the metric to something that will help you achieve your goal.
Achievable: All goals should be within reach of your business. If you set goals that are unreasonable, you risk discouraging your employees and creating friction in your business plan. As you set specific, measurable goals, make sure to adjust if it seems like you aren’t reaching them.
Relevant: Your social media marketing goals should ladder up to your larger business objectives. For example, if it’s your objective to build brand awareness, you could set a goal to get 100 social media followers to click through a post to a landing page that describes your offerings.
Timely: To keep yourself accountable, goals should have a time limit. Instead of creating a goal for some undefined time in the near future, make sure to set a specific cadence to check in and ensure you’re staying on track.
Though social media marketing has many moving parts, SMART goals give you a starting point, as well as a means to check in and make changes as needed.

3. Allocate your resources wisely
For small businesses strapped for money and time, sometimes social media tasks get arbitrarily offloaded onto whoever is available. But social media management requires unique skills, like:

Strategic thinking
Organizational skills
Branding expertise
If you have the means, hiring an expert to handle social media can pay off. But if you don’t have the budget for an on-staff social media manager, you can still invest in advertisements on social platforms, which can boost brand awareness and expand reach.

4. Use multiple platforms
Consider the multiple social media platforms your customers use daily. Ultimately, your strategy should allow you to reach as many people through social media as possible, and you can’t do that by focusing on only one platform.

Depending on your audience, many of them may use Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok throughout the day, giving you three opportunities to get your content in front of them. Social media apps to know include Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Twitter. However, investing in a strategy for all of these platforms isn’t necessary. Instead, consider the apps your customers are most likely to use.

5. Post relevant content regularly
Success on social media is a matter of posting compelling, engaging content consistently. Not only will this help make your business look dependable, but it also shows that you have timely knowledge to share and that you care to be in conversation with your audience.

Social media platforms change their algorithms over time, but the rule of posting regularly holds true: This practice helps your content show up in newsfeeds. By focusing on consistent, relevant content, you show the algorithms that your posts are worthy of showing up in various newsfeeds and ultimately, will attract followers to your page.

6. Interact with followers
Social media users enjoy interacting with brands, and as a result brands experience benefits like:

Social proof of your business
Expanded market reach
Boosted brand awareness
Cost-efficiency
The opportunity for a high return on investment (ROI) is huge—83% of customers value customer experience, and that includes social media interactions in which businesses make their audience feel seen, heard, and understood. Social media allows you to monitor conversations in real-time and answer questions or concerns from your audience promptly.

This can take many forms, like:

Asking questions relevant to your offerings
Creating a Facebook Group for your audience
Using GIFs, videos, and emojis to spice up messages
Utilizing platform tools, like Instagram Live to start discussions
A good strategy is to allow 1 hour a day to communicate with your audience on social media. However, if there are pressing concerns, you should always take the time to respond promptly.

7. Always maintain professionalism
It’s important to remember that as you post on social media, you are always representing your business. Posts are taken out of context all too often, which can lead to conflict and upset followers. If your social media responsibilities are allocated to other staff members, consider creating a social media policy to guide their posts and conversations.

Typically, a standard social media policy will include:

Clear expectations about what to post
Instructions on how to respond to negative posts
Platform laws and rules to follow
Brand considerations
Security protocols
By investing in a social media policy, your business can be ready for any scenario. It’s important to remember that at the core of social media, you are implementing your customer service philosophy.

8. Reflect your brand identity
Brand identity is what helps people connect to your business and sets you apart from your competitors. This means that all marketing, including print, digital, and social media, should be consistent.

Brand consistency can be challenging for businesses, especially when you’re just getting started. But it’s important across channels, and that certainly includes social media. As you are posting, you’ll want to think about:

How you talk to your customers, otherwise known as a brand voice
Posting similar visuals across the various platforms
Focusing on your unique selling point.
Not only will a consistent brand identity make it easier to know what to post, but it can also help increase brand loyalty.

9. Prioritize quality over quantity
Instead of posting multiple times a day on as many platforms as possible, you should focus on delivering consistent, quality posts. In fact, some social media sites may penalize your account and mark you as spam for too many low-quality posts. Additionally, posting could become overwhelming and problematic whoever handles your social media, whether that’s you or a teammate, and that could wind up hurting your strategy rather than helping.

To mitigate these risks, consider implementing a social media calendar. These calendars can help you plan posts in advance while ensuring you stay organized. Categories including when to post, post caption, post visual, and which platforms to post on can help marketers keep track of the various moving parts of social media.

Another way to prioritize quality posts is to ask yourself the following questions:

Does this content help my followers?
Is this original?
Is this actionable, inspiring, or entertaining?
Does the content have cited sources, if needed?
All of these questions can help you create quality content that will engage and attract followers. Learning about the top social media content to create for each platform is key to helping you reach more people online.

10. Measure your results
There are many factors that affect social media marketing, and that’s why it’s important to analyze and measure results. Analytics come in handy because they can help:

Optimize campaigns
Create new goals
Assess tracking metrics

Before you start tracking, though, you should identify which metrics are most important to your marketing goals. The most common metrics are:

Reach
Engagement
Impressions
Mentions
Post clicks
Video views
11. Develop a unique strategy
You might have the impulse to post on as many platforms as possible, but this could actually derail your social media marketing strategy.

When creating a social media strategy, focus on:
Where your audience is
Where your competitors post
What your metrics tell you

Additionally, you’ll want to think about how to best use each platform, based on what it was created for and the content that does best there:

Facebook offers quality video streaming, like live video, as well as a high-functioning messaging platform that allows brands to interact with their followers one-on-one.
Instagram supports more visually compelling posts and creative short videos.
YouTube is best for longer informational or entertaining video content.
Twitter allows for real-time conversations, news updates, and alerts.
LinkedIn works well for long-form written content, like blog posts.
Pinterest lets users discover content and relies on visuals to catch their attention.
Depending on your social media strategy, you may realize that you don’t have to use YouTube if your users are primarily on Facebook. Or if you find that you can say more with pictures than you can with words, Instagram might be more useful. Make sure to research the best strategy for each platform you use to get the most out of your marketing efforts. While there are many tips to grow your small business, social media can help you discover and retain new customers.

12. Partner with influencers and industry leaders
Partnering with influencers can help you take your social media marketing to the next level by leveraging their talents to help you grow your business. Influencers have their own personal branding and followers that trust their expertise. Working with influencers in your industry can help you build brand awareness and increase sales. Since influencers are real people, they’re more easily trusted by customers, allowing you to use that to your advantage.

13. Livestream occasionally
Live streaming can help boost your organic reach on social media. Because live streaming taps into your followers’ fear of missing out (FOMO), you can reach more people at a time. Live streaming also allows you to be more personal with your audience and give them insight into your business and its products to build trust.

14. Post at the best times
Creating quality content can ensure you reach more people and engage your audience. However, if your customers aren’t active on social media when you post, they likely won’t ever see your content. You can find the times when your audience is online by looking at your social media analytics. Many social media management tools also give you insight into the best times to post based on when your followers are typically online. You can also experiment by posting at different times of day to determine how it affects engagement and reach.

Benefits of marketing on social media

Every small business should invest in social media marketing to promote their business and boost online visibility. A few benefits of social media marketing include:

Cost-effective. Social media marketing and advertising is cost-effective. If you want to post content organically, it may only cost you your time. However, advertising your business on social media is one of the most cost-effective advertising solutions available for small businesses. You can set a budget for as low as $1.00/day on Facebook.
More exposure. Marketing your business on social media allows you to reach more people. Engaging content will likely be shared, helping you increase your online visibility.
Boost brand awareness. Social media is a great tool for increasing brand awareness by boosting online visibility. However, if you want to take advantage of social media to raise brand awareness, consider creating advertisements that expand your reach.
Drive traffic to business websites. Your social media marketing should drive traffic back to your website, where customers can complete actions like filling out forms or making purchases.
Support customers quickly. Social media allows you to handle online customer service requests quickly and easily. When someone messages you directly on social media, you can answer their questions in real-time, giving them a fast response that improves their experience with your business.
Increased credibility. Posting engaging and educational content can increase your credibility, helping new customers learn that you’re a thought leader they can trust.
Effectively market your business on social media with Mailchimp
Social media marketing is necessary for any business that wants to stand out. Your competition is using social media to reach new customers, so it’s time for you to enhance your efforts. Mailchimp makes it easy to market on social media by offering content creation tools to help you build targeted ads. You can also use our social media management tools to schedule posts and publish at the right time.

The Best Customer Success Story Ever!

There is no doubt that the best source of new business is existing business. This is not an original notion - but one that I feel is often overlooked and under valued in popular sales methodologies and effectiveness courses. As a corporate sales coach, I often find that most good sales representatives can speak fluently about published case studies and the most popular marquee accounts in the client base. If your company serves it’s customers well - there should be endless anecdotal information that can be shared across an enterprise. I encourage sales professionals to seek out and share the stories of how their solutions and financial management truly help their customers day to day. We spend so much time talking about selling benefits and business value. What better way to truly sell value than to leverage the passion of your happy customers? Make a commitment to immerse yourself in the success of your satisfied customers. Here are some ways you and your organization can profit: Gain powerful anecdotal evidence. One of the most effective ways to internalize value and map solutions to your prospects, is to thoroughly understand what your existing customers have gained by working with you. Focus on what your customers are saying about you and commit their exact words to memory. Why are they so happy? What positive results have they experienced by using your solutions? What was by far the greatest advantage that they found by using your products or services? What did that really mean to the top and bottom line? Get the knowledge that you need to turn around and tell powerful, anecdotal stories to your target accounts. We spend a lot of time trying to memorize sales and marketing spiels when the most powerful words are the ones spoken by our own customers. Become a great story teller and use real life anecdotes to paint the picture of success for your prospects. This is an effective method to get your prospects to visualize your solutions and the positive business outcomes of working with you. Renew your passion. If you looked at the most successful, elite sales people across any organization, you will always see a passion for what they sell. This is not something that can be taught or something that is easily faked. The belief that your products and services will undoubtedly help your customers is one of the most powerful sales tools that you have at your disposal. Over time, work issues can dilute our belief that what we do is for the greater good of the customer. There is no better way to renew your energy and passion for the job than speaking with happy customers. A sales person with passion truly wants to understand their customer’s needs and how an offering fits into that picture. When a sales person is fully invested in "The Best Customer Success Stories Ever", that passion will translate into success for customers and prospects. Turn referrals into new customers. As you are having these great conversations with your customers (and they are telling you exactly why they are so satisfied) this is an opportune time to ask for referrals. They just told you how and why you have helped them, and there is no better time to remind them that you would greatly appreciate any referrals or introductions. Asking for those important introductions is a crucial piece of the sales life cycle, yet only 30% of sales people ask for referrals on a regular basis. Those sales people who actively seek and exploit referrals earn four to five times more than sales people who don’t. Studies show that referral business allows close ratios as high as 60% to 80%. Referral business also reduces your sales expense and the length of your sales cycle. When a prospect is introduced to your organization through someone that he trusts, you are more likely to close a larger sale as a result. Put a plan in place to get referrals. Provide a clear picture of the type of referral you are looking for and do your homework on the front end of these meetings to identify contacts that you would like to meet. This exercise also helps you get informal testimonials that you can use in your sales cycle. Make it easy for your customers to say yes by offering to do the work for them. Write the introductions that they can send on your behalf and offer to write your own testimonials if they would be willing to send them back to you with any changes or edits. Create Repeat Customers. When you meet with your customers and ask them to share success stories, this will remind those customers why they bought from you in the first place. Your customers will begin to resell themselves on you and your solutions and it will encourage them repeat the cycle. Existing customers are five times more likely to buy from you than brand new prospects. Happy customers may be ten times more likely to buy! Success, happiness and passion are contagious. Catch it! 🙂 A Sample Training Exercise. Produce and share short audio segments titled “The Best Customer Success Story I Ever Heard”. Archive and share these stories across an organization. The task is to find a customer, interview them and produce a great customer success story. Some customers will naturally be more forthcoming with relevant information and some will need more prodding with good questions and leads like “tell me more about that…” The segment should only be a few minutes long (as long as it takes to tell a good story) but you will need to think about relevant questions to ask ahead of time. The success story should focus on the results that the customer has realized. The story should not focus on sales process…fast forward to the point where they are an existing, happy customer. Why are they so happy? What positive results have they experienced? The success story should always be from the customer’s perspective. The ultimate goal of the story should focus on the results. You can record the audio by using a Webex meeting or an audio recording via phone or tablet. If you are looking for ideas, I have listed some interview questions that would allow you to build onto a great story: “Tell me as much as you can about how we helped you.” Hopefully you will get several benefits as examples. Are there any questions that you should ask to quantify those benefits and get more specific information like numbers, ratios, percentages etc? Any questions that you could ask to make it a more compelling story? “How did this customer describe the experience of working with us? What did they say about how we helped them? Do you remember any words or phrases specifically that paint the picture of a really happy customer?” “Is there anything else that you think I should know?” Have fun with this exercise!

5 Tips for Trade Show Success

I’ve attended and worked many trade shows over the years, as a business owner, a general manager and as a division manager. Just about every show can be productive if your expectations are in line with reality, you plan a bit in advance and you have a solid approach. Below are some techniques to get the best return on your investment no matter what trade show you attend.

Driving Traffic to Your Booth

Driving traffic to your booth before the show is a simple technique but often under-valued. The idea is that you want maximize the number of prospects you talk to, to create excitement that will draw in other prospects to your booth and give your sales team a chance to close any business that has been “dangling”. Having current happy clients mingling with future clients can also be very productive.

So start by inviting all of your clients, anyone you have ever presented to, leads, prospects, friends of your firm and colleagues in related businesses, to stop by your booth (provide the booth number). Explain that you will have the latest information on your product or service and will be offering some element of your service for free (I prefer this as you will get people who want your service but want a deal, rather than people who just want a free iPad). If your company will be presenting in a break-out session, panel discussion or keynote address, make sure you include that information as well.

If you have or can get last year’s attendee list there’s a good chance most of them will attend again this year. It's the same with exhibitor lists (if they can be prospects for your business). If the list does not have contact information, the names and contact information can be found using an online company database like Data.com or one of the free ones (try your local library). This takes a bit of time and energy but it’s well worth it, since the list can be updated every year and used again and again. When we provide this service, if we don't have a specific name to search for, we try to match on the most appropriate title. Remember to take out competitors and other non-buying names.

Email everyone on your list, providing your booth number, inviting them to stop by and providing information on what you are giving away and your breakout session (time, location, title, speaker). Provide the same information to your social media connections on LinkedIn and Facebook.

When we’re promoting an event for a client, we go a step further. We try to reach individual attendees by phone, requesting that they meet with our client on a specific date and time at the booth. Since trade shows often have uncertain schedules, we ask for the person’s cell phone number so that our client can reach them during the show to firm up the time and location. Those who provide their cell phone number are generally serious prospects.

Making Meals Productive

Trade shows offer terrific networking opportunities. You’ll want to try to meet several prospects at every meal. At the same time, you don’t want to appear overly aggressive or desperate. Remember, anyone can make everyone around them feel uncomfortable. The skill is in meeting people in a smooth and transparent manner.

First, attend all the meals, especially breakfast. Even people who skip meals like to have coffee (or something) so make sure you’re there on time. I like get there early and sit at a table that’s empty. As people approach or sit, I immediately say “Good morning, I’m Jerry” and offer to shake hands in a low key, friendly manner. After they shake I slide them my business card. If they don’t offer one back, I don’t immediately force the issue. There’s no sense in pushing if he or she is not a prospect.

So have a little small talk ready (the weather, sports, current events) that anyone would be able to relate to. It’s always useful to know where someone’s from and what company they work for, so ask them. It’s also a qualifying step but more on that later. Since I’m now having a friendly conversation with the person at my table, more people will usually approach. I’ll briefly interrupt my conversation to say good morning, offer my hand, slide them my card. Usually at least one person will offer their card in return and that can trigger a general exchange of cards, even with the people who were reticent.

When the table is mostly full, in your mind you should start to separate the individuals into categories. Are they a prospect, referrer or an information source?

If they are in the right role, in the right kind company, in the right geography, they are a prospect. You’ll want to engage in a meaningful way with all prospects at the table. Open ended questions are a good way to do this, for example “How are you involved in (product/service) for your company?” You can also ask if they’re familiar with your firm and then take the opportunity to tell them a little. Don’t take too much of their time and try to get them to accept an "advance", for example have them agree to speak by phone in the weeks after the show. Make sure you connect with all prospects (if you can) before moving on to referrers and information sources.

If they are the right kind of company but not the right role or geography, they are a referrer. You’ll want to give them enough information about your offering to help them understand who the best contact would be. Then ask for a name. One of the advantages is they may only know the name of the person in charge of your area of interest so you will be getting a high level contact. You'll also have the name of the referrer to help you get their attention.

If they are not a potential buyer but they are in a related business that also calls on prospects in your space, they could be referrer but more importantly, they can be an information source (this is especially helpful if you are new in the space). They may know the best industry groups, trade shows and have many contacts that could prove useful. As a referrer, they will need to be cultivated over time since they will be protective of their clients. You’ll want to get them to agree to talk after the show to discuss how you might help each other moving forward.

Once you've done what you can with that table, excuse yourself and make your way to another table unobtrusively. Then start the whole process again.

Prospecting Booth to Booth

If your product or service is likely to be purchased by people working in the exhibitor booths (business owners, CEO/President, VP Sales, VP Marketing of small and medium sized businesses), then it makes sense to visit each booth, dropping a card off and taking the card of the potential buyer. Some of them will contact you after the show but that's fine. Be sensitive to the fact that they are trying to make sales for their own company so don't tie them up talking about your offerings when their booth is busy. During a lull, it's fine to take a moment to introduce yourself and tell them you'll follow up after the show.

Break-out Sessions

Break out sessions are terrific for meeting top executives in large enterprises. They're good for meeting people in other top roles too. Here’s how to go about it.

When you get to a trade show, the first thing you should do is sit down with the show program and a pen. Review all of the break-out sessions, panel discussions, seminars and keynote addresses looking for speakers who are potential buyers of your products or services. These could be people who are the CIO, VP HR, VP Marketing or CFO in companies like Fidelity, Bank of America or Exxon (prospects who have tremendous authority but are virtually inaccessible).

Go to their session. Sit in the audience and listen to them describe their strategy, what products and services they use and in what direction their enterprise is moving. Learn what trends are happening in their industry and how they plan on responding. It can be amazing. You'll never learn more about what’s happening in an enterprise than you will in these sessions.

At the end of the session, when everyone else is walking to the rear, walk to the front of the room. The speaker will be in a good mood since their presentation is finished and presumably went well. Introduce yourself and tell them that you really enjoyed their presentation. Hand them your card and ask if they would mind sending you a copy of the slides. Often they’ll look at your card and ask what you do, giving you the opportunity to engage for a moment. If they don’t offer a card, politely ask them for one so that you can email them about the presentation. If necessary, jot down their email address on the back of one of your cards. After the show, wait a week then email them, restating that you enjoyed their presentation and asking for a copy of the slides. Once you have them, wait another 3 weeks and email them asking if they would be interested in taking a closer look at your products and services. Be prepared to receive a referral since the the evaluation may actually begin at a lower level in the organization. With the top executive's endorsement, you should be able to parlay that into a meeting.

After the Show

There a few schools of thought on the best way to handle post show follow-up. Cherry picking the top handful of prospects and putting the rest in a drawer are not among them. But that's what many companies do. So, to quote a good friend of mine, "Do something, even if it's wrong!" This is another way of saying doing something is better than doing nothing, even if it's not perfect. So do something!

The challenge is that within 4-5 days of the end of the show, everyone who has a plan for following up will do so. All at once. The prospects will be inundated and it will be difficult to get their attention. So ideally, try to come up with a way to get the leads into your system during the show. That way you can start contacting them via email immediately, while they're still at the show. If you are getting the leads electronically, it's pretty simple but there are other ways. We use a little Cardscan device to scan business cards as we get them. This will give you a jump of the rest of the exhibitors.

You can also use social media to connect with prospects and that has the benefit of being almost immediate. For example, if you meet someone and exchange cards, using a smartphone, as you walk away, you can invite them to connect using LinkedIn.

Finally, any leads collected need to be contacted at least 6-12 times over the next year, in a sort of email drip marketing campaign. When they start clicking through your links and completing forms on your website requesting more information, they're ready to be contacted by your sales team.

What is Lead Generation 2.0?

I think about lead generation and sales prospecting all the time. I’m always trying to find better, cheaper, faster ways to generate leads for our clients. We look at lots of different things and try to select the best tools and practices and bake them into our campaigns.

I also think about this topic because all businesses need sales and most small and medium sized businesses are subject to the feast/famine paradigm. When they’re busy, the first thing that gets pushed to the side is prospecting for new business. Until business slows down. Then there’s a flurry of sales activity and soon business is back where it should be. For a while. I’m very aware of this so we try to be very disciplined about ensuring we have consistent lead generation, no matter how busy we are. I have some specific thoughts on this topic and decided to write this article on what I consider to be Lead Generation 2.0. But first a short review of the 1.0 iteration.

Lead Generation 1.0

This approach is characterized by the phrase “pound the phone” or "dialing for dollars". It involves making scads of calls to all kinds of companies, which mainly occurs once business has begun to slow. Maybe a little emailing is mixed in but without a plan or consistent execution. Working very hard is emphasized. It's completely "push" selling since all the leads are by definition cold. There is no capability to understand which leads are more interested than others unless the sales team connects with the person live. Finally, there's no ability to spread to other contacts (perhaps the right contact) since people will rarely forward voice mail messages as they forward emails.

Many old school sales managers and business owners cherish this approach because they have seen it work in the past. That’s the scary thing about it (and why it won’t die). It will work if you absolutely commit to it and do it consistently for long enough. We occasionally take on campaign that fall into this category if there is a good reason (perhaps our client's list is only found in a print format). We call them “brute force campaigns” and make them work but they can be tough sledding.

Lead Generation 2.0

Highly Targeted

Anyone who has ever done any kind of lead generation knows that the most important variable is the list. You can do everything else perfectly but if your list is no good, you are in trouble. If a client or prospect has a list, I always ask to see it (or a sample of it) before I commit to a particular performance level. We’ve learned there are many ways lists can be bad and people who don’t work with lists regularly really don’t have a good grasp of the details. Here are some scary things our clients say about lists.

“We bought a great list 4 years ago but never did anything with it.” (Half the people on the list will be gone)

“We know the data is good because we’ve been emailing it every month for the last 2 years.” (Most everyone who would have bought will have already done so)

“This list is great but it has no contact info or names.” (It’s hard to call them without a phone number or name)

All of the above can be addressed or remedied. The point is that you don’t want to throw good money after bad by using a questionable list. In the big picture, the list is normally towards the lower half of the cost totem pole. So try to get the best list you can buy or build, with the exact right kind of target company, in the right geography, of the right size, selecting the exact title (or as close as you can get) with the direct dial phone and email address. And it should be as fresh as possible.

Utilize Technology

It’s hard to know where to begin with this one because there are so many choices. There are terrific CRM systems, mass emailing tools, dialers, social media portals. All are available at a variety of price points, some practically free. These are tools to help you reach out to larger numbers of potential prospects and figure out which are more interested than the others. Then you can isolate the more interested group for extra calling and emailing.

If you have these tools, learn how to use them or find someone who can run them for you while you learn. If you are a manager or business owner, make sure your sales team is trained and that they are using what you are providing. I understand it’s a little harder in the beginning to do things the new way but definitely worth it in the long run.

Follow a Proven Process

I love sports and sports analogies because they tend to be visual and easily grasped. Athletes who want to play their game at a high level follow a routine. They try to do the same things that help their performances in the same way consistently, varying only when there seems to be an issue that won’t go away. Then extra effort is applied and things are tweaked. Think David Ortiz taking extra swings in the batting cage to remedy a slump.

You can run your business, your sales team or your marketing department the same way. Some kind of sales and marketing needs to happen consistently every week (every day is even better). On occasion, extra effort can be brought to bear to address a short term opportunity, requirement or deficiency. I’ll outline a simple but effective process for your sales team below.

Load a list into your CRM system (we use Salesforce.com). Begin calling. With anyone you reach live, you can discuss your product or service, striving to ask open ended questions to keep them engaged and closing for a sale or advance at the end. Depending on your business and target, you may reach voice mail 80-90% of the time. Leave a message, telling them you will be sending an email with a link and explaining briefly why they might want to review what you're sending them. For the leads that click on the link to view your information, use your technology to pinpoint and isolate those “warmer” leads. Then call them repeatedly but gently until you reach them live. Repeat this process every week, adding fresh leads and making adjustments as needed to hit your goals. And don’t forget to respond immediately to any email or phone responses that you receive.

Multi-channel Communication

I like to use multiple tools when communicating with potential prospects. Obviously the phone has value as does email but why stop there? With so many tools available why not use them? Here are some simple ways to communicate across multiple channels.

Social Media

First, get some social media accounts if you don't have them. LinkedIn is a good choice if you’re a B2B company. I like Twitter too. Some industries are better served by Facebook. Make sure they look good and are complete. Remember, you will be displaying your personal brand so you want it to be professional and polished. Make sure you have a good quality photo (if you don’t your brand projects “I’m lazy” or “I’m not tech savvy”).

When anyone who is interested in your product or service contacts you in any way, invite them to connect on LinkedIn. Why? First, they are at their highest point of interest and more likely to accept your request. Second, if you have an attractive, well completed profile, it will burnish your identity in the prospect’s mind. Third, as you work through your sales cycle, they will see your activities and posts, further establishing that you’re a “go to” person in your space. Fourth, if the sale gets delayed, postponed or the sales cycle gets extended (or they decide not to move forward now), the prospect will see your posts and update as the months roll onward as a consistent, low key reminder that you are still there.

Try to post periodically. I like to post new original content every week (articles, top 5 lists, other "how to" pieces). If you don't have the time or inclination to write your own articles, you can certainly post links to articles written by others that you think your prospect base would be interested in that relate to your business. In fact, I think it's a good way to get started. Either way, whatever you post can also be posted on your blog.

Blogging

I think small and medium sized business should have a Blog as part of the online presence. This allows people who are interested in the topics relating to your company to follow your blog and be notified when you post a new article. Anything you post on your blog can also be posted on Social Media. You can also email everyone on your email list whenever you post a new entry, which is a good, low impact way to keep in touch. Track who's reading your articles using your technology and follow-up with any prospects by phone.

Our Lead Generation Model

People have asked me from time to time about our lead generation model. Here it is below:

Get the best list we can buy or build, with the exact right kind of target company, selecting the exact title (or as close as we can get) with the direct dial phone and email address.
Have a well-trained, professional agent call and email the prospect list, following a tight, proven process.
Use technology (Salesforce.com, email tracking systems and telephone dialers*) to enhance agent productivity and track the most interested prospects and isolate them for additional attention and calling.
Work the warmest leads repeatedly (but gently) to eventually reach them live and schedule a telephone sales appointment.
Repeat the process monthly, adding fresh leads and making adjustments as needed to hit the campaign goal.
Successful campaigns are really about execution, making the calls and sending the emails consistently every week and following up on any warm leads.

That's it in a nutshell. It's predictable, works great and has the benefit of generating results immediately.

* Not a predictive dialer like telemarketers use when calling people at home. Those dialers don’t work for us since we must navigate voice mail systems for 99% of our campaigns.

Inc.com Article: How to Bulk Up Your B2B Sales

Category Archives: Lead Generation