Anything related to sales tips, strategies, best practices and more will go here.

Lead Liaison

How your Company is Missing Valuable Sales Opportunities

/0 Comments/in , , /by

How Your Company is Missing Valuable Sales OpportunitiesIn today’s uncertain economy, every company has to recognize and actively pursue every possible lead that crosses their path.  Every prospect that comes in contact with a company has the potential to be converted into a sale. The problem is many companies miss the connection or they don’t realize that the lead is part of their target market. In those cases, marketing automation and lead qualifying are essential for revenue generation.

These are the four most common reasons for missing valuable sales opportunities.

1. Not recognizing quality leads

If a company is not evaluating a potential lead’s online activity, then there is no way for them to know whether or not they would be interested in purchasing their product or services. It‘s impossible for one human being to monitor everyone’s activity. Marketing automation is necessary in modern business practices as it provides real-time B2B visitor lead tracking in addition to lead qualification. Every company needs a proven method for qualifying leads via lead scoring in order to establish which ones may benefit from a lead nurturing process or get passed directly to sales.

2. Not taking the time to understand your leads

Once you have qualified a lead the next step is to properly segment your database by analysing demographics and  interests.  First group them into categories and then rank them by their potential for conversion. A company can develop a specific approach for each segment.  By not taking the time to break leads into predetermined groups, it will be impossible to connect with each one directly and therefore many will end up slipping through the cracks. Tip: use dynamic database segmentation techniques such as Lead Liaisons Dynamic Target Lists to segment contacts using a “set-it and forget-it” methodology.

3. Not nurturing leads effectively

A lead will be persuaded by compelling and informative literature. If the information a company sends is irrelevant or uninteresting it simply won’t be read. A potential customer can also be turned off if they are being bombarded with articles, newsletters or obvious attempts at self-marketing.  There needs to be a reasonable flow that is not obtrusive or offensive in order to gain their trust and respect.  In the early stages of lead nurturing, focus on educating the prospect. Think like the buyer, not the seller.

4. Not monitoring the lead nurturing process

It is essential for a business to analyze and evaluate which campaigns elicited an immediate response and which ones did not. There is no point in repeating a plan that does not have a solid conversion rate.  The only effective way to plan future campaigns is by understanding which techniques created the greatest number of responses and how they can be adjusted to generate more revenue.

Missed sales opportunities are the greatest frustration facing companies today and it doesn’t need to be that way.  Through well planned marketing automation and lead nurturing, a company can increase their chances of turning leads into revenue.  The key to success comes from understanding why valuable opportunities are being overlooked and then learning how to prevent it from happening in the future.

Lead Liaison

Top 5 Socially Driven Sales Prospecting Sites

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Top 5 Socially Driven Sales Prospecting SitesTop 5 socially driven sales prospecting sites. With social media interaction in full force, businesses are afforded the opportunity to harness leads targeted specifically to their needs.  Properly prospecting to collect potential sales, however, takes more than sleight of hand and quick email responses: it requires understanding what the socialites actually ‘like’ while matching their ‘likes’ with your product offerings.  While it would appear Facebook is predominantly the go-to source for sales prospecting, you’d be surprised where more specific leads can be found.  We disseminate socially driven internet sales prospecting using communities which are more specific for businesses that need something more intuitive or in-depth which Facebook may not have the proper facilities to offer them.  Upon completion of this article, find out the leading platform to handle everything your sales team needs to close the deals – no matter where they’re found online.

Last.fm

With over 30 million audiophiles tuning in, downloading skins and enjoying occasional streaming advertisements, utilizing this social music channel would allow your business to reach millions of targeted business prospects interested in music, guitars, rock memorabilia and other products related to music.  Since this is a specific niche, the prospecting possibilities are endless.

Hi5

Those who wish to incorporate advertisement into gaming could benefit from the third largest monthly volume of visitors in social media today by putting your message in front of millions of gamers.  Inside every gamer is somebody that still runs a business or works; prospecting leads from this niche should be easily accomplished with an aggressive marketing angle.

Biznik

Another social media gem which could help create lucrative business connections and potential sales leads is Biznik, one of few that moderates individual profiles made so reputation management companies and excessive spammers cannot create automated profiles.  This beefs the potential for legitimate prospecting opportunities for all businesses while keeping things fair for all.

Manta

Business to business merchants can find loads of useful information using Manta, the authority in finding businesses to cold call or contact via email.  You can find local or national businesses using keyword searches and skim the results for suitable prospects.  Although you shouldn’t directly shill your products or services on Manta itself, you can definitely prospect potential customers quite easily.

LinkedIn

The epitome of sales prospecting is LinkedIn, perhaps the only site where finding contact cards to download has been perfected.  By joining specific groups related to your business, you can begin interaction with individual business entrepreneurs or large companies which can then be contacted to pitch your idea or sale to.  It would definitely be worth your while to pay the monthly premium cost as this allows deeper insights and contact information to be revealed.  Of all social networking platforms, LinkedIn takes the cake in terms of providing industry-specific individuals to cater to.

Before You Start

While jumping in head first seems viable, sales prospecting takes prior planning and some form of centralized lead software to handle nurturing, prospect contacting and sales campaign delivery.  Since Lead Liaison specializes in all-in-one lead solvency from finding the lead to closing the sale, let the professionals handle your social media lead prospecting quest.  The web-based software platform unveiled by Lead Liaison offers unparalleled support for your lead capture and segmentation needs.  This, of course, includes your quest to hunt down sales prospects within the social media world.

Lead Liaison

How Your Sales Department Drives Marketing Strategy

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

How Your Sales Department Drives Marketing Strategy

Learn how your sales department drives marketing strategy. Marketing and sales departments provide essential functions for company success. Marketing creates awareness and sales creates revenue. Each department has a distinct role, but in order to maximize effectiveness the two must operate in tandem.

So how can your sales force support your marketing people?

Through feedback from customers and prospects.

Certainly the marketing department can obtain feedback through focus groups, A/B testing, and other market research techniques. However, the feedback received by your sales force is invaluable, and should be used to shape your marketing strategy.

The marketing strategy primes the sales pump through the delivery of value-based messaging to your markets. The sales department operates under the umbrella of that messaging, but has a closer relationship with your customers and prospects, and has access to the real-world application of your products.

A reciprocal relationship exists that shouldn’t be overlooked. The reciprocal nature of the relationship provides opportunities for the sales department to support the marketing department. After all, without sales there is no product to market.

Your sales group can provide evidence of the success or failure of those messages. But what feedback provided by your sales staff can help the marketing department develop effective campaigns? There are five critical questions for marketing to ask sales that will help build a successful marketing campaign:

5 Questions Marketers Can Ask Sales

1. Is exposure adequate within each territory? – Ideally, the selected channels should reach targets frequently through effective channels in order to support the sales effort. “How did you hear about our company or product?” sheds light on whether the appropriate channels are being used effectively.

2. Do the markets understand the product clearly? – Messaging should express benefits, image, offer, and value. “Which features or benefits of our product are important to you?” can allow your marketers to understand if the messaging is clear.

3. What are the obstacles to closing sales? – Sales people receive valuable feedback from prospects about buying decisions during sales calls. “What can I do to make your buying decision easier?” often exposes overlooked objections that can be categorized for analysis by the marketing department.

4. How is the competition being received by your markets? – Your sales staff has the ability to determine how effective your competitors’ marketing activities have been. “Who else has a product like ours?” provides feedback about the competitive environment your company is working in. The marketing department can use this information to develop messaging that positions your product within the marketplace.

5. Are customers receiving the benefits they’ve been promised? – By checking customer satisfaction, your sales people can share with marketing whether the messaging is appropriate. “Is our product providing the solutions you need?” reveals how the product is being received in the marketplace. Sharing responses with marketing provides real-world feedback that will support or contradict your messaging.

By training your sales staff to generate feedback that will improve marketing, your company can develop messaging that is responsive, timely, and effective.

Lead Liaison

Post Sales Follow Up

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Post Sales Follow Up ProcessAre you searching for a post sales follow up process to implement at your company? This article provides suggestions. Don’t forget to use marketing automation technology to pre-configure a post sales process like this that automatically schedules tasks for your sales people in your CRM such as Salesforce.com. You’ll be well on your way to a systematic approach for post sales follow up.

This document covers a proposed process companies could follow with a new customer after making the sale. Being proactive about your customer relationships is not only beneficial for cultivating referrals, it’s preventative medicine when it comes to client defection. Most clients defect to a competitor due to perceived indifference on the part of their current solution provider or vendor. Experts estimate defection rates are over 70 percent. Defection due to price or finding superior product generally occurs at a much lower rate.

Create a Referral Kit

To support your post sales follow up process we suggest creating a Referral Kit. Shall a customer agree to your Referral Program send them a Referral Kit. The Referral Kit includes essential documents and links they can pass on to other companies.

Benefits of a Post Sales Follow Up Process

Following this process provides your company with the following benefits:

1) Up-sell and cross-sell opportunity
– New products
– Edition upgrades
2) Stronger relationships
3) Referral opportunities
– Customer’s partner network
– Customer’s competitors
– Individual’s personal network
4) Public Relations (PR) opportunities
– Press releases
– Testimonials/quotes for our website
– Displaying logo on our website
– Video testimonials
– Reference letter (which we can include in our standard Proposal)

Incentives for Client Referrals

If a customer is interested in a Referral Agreement you should provide some incentive to them. Every use case will be different and may require a different offer. An offer should only be valid for an opportunity that closes as a result of a referral. Here’s a list of possible offers to consider extending (primarily for subscription-based businesses):

1) Reduction in annual subscription for the next Contract Year (5% or 10%) for every referral that closes.
2) 5% to 10% commission on a sales resulting from a referral.
3) Free upgrade for every two (2) referrals that close.
4) AMEX gift card for $500 for every deal that closes.
5) Discount on first year subscription license for referred customer (5% up to 20%).

Example Post Sales Follow Up Process

An example post sales follow up process that spans a period of 12 months is below.

Day 1

Thank them for being a customer.

Send standard Thank You email that is already created using Lead Liaison’s platform.

1 Month

Assess the overall experience.

1) How was the On-Boarding experience?
2) By the way, when is your birthday? Note, get birthdays for the key folks
3) Send Thank You note
4) How are things going?
5) What are you unhappy with?
6) How can we do a better job?
7) Does anyone need personal training?

3 Months

Elicit product feedback. Ask them to be a reference.

Feedback Questions
1) What improvements in our product/service would you like to see?
2) What feature(s) are you using the most?
3) What feature(s) are you not using at all?
4) What new feature(s) would you like to see and how would you prioritize those?
5) What’s different now compared to your expectations going in?
6) Is there anything that you don’t understand or anything that doesn’t make sense to you and/or your team?

Reference Questions
1) Would you be willing to act as a reference for us?
2) If yes, could we also add you to our Referral List which we hand out to prospects who request it?
3) What’s the best way to work with your company on PR opportunities (see #4 above under “Benefits”)?

6 Months

Secure referrals. Invite them to share experiences on blog.

1) Who do you know that might appreciate knowing about our company’s products/services?
2) After you get the first name, say, “Who else do you know?” Repeat the process until your client runs out of names.
3) Would you be interested in establishing a formal Referral Partnership with us?
4) Would you be interested in ghost blogging on our blogging platform (asked to head marketer)?

9 Months

Express gratitude. Warm them up for renewal.

Send key employees a company a T-Shirt.

11 Months

Secure critical feedback to prepare for renewal.

Send customer survey (using Lead Liaison’s software). Update of any contact info – new people, phones, email, office location.

Repeat Cycle Every 3 Months

Keep the relationship warm.

Schedule phone calls every 3 months after the first year. Look for referral, reference and up-sell/cross-sell opportunity

Need a copy of a Referral Agreement? Want to take a look at our Referral Kit? Ping us.

To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.

Lead Liaison

Prospecting Lists

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Prospecting ListsA few times a week I get calls from businesses asking if I can provide a contact or prospecting lists for them to buy. They usually want the list to include specific criteria based on demographic, industry, title, revenue and email. I don’t sell lists, but I love this question because it gives me an opportunity to ask: “If you have a list of 1000, what do you do with it?” Most tell me that they split the list up based on state or territory then hand it over to their sales people. Some tell me that marketing will load them into their CRM and then they send out an email blast. These types of answers allow me to ask the most important question: “After that first step, what do you do with the ones that didn’t respond to your outreach?”

Just last week I had this exact conversation with a Director of Marketing. She was honest enough to tell me that most of them fall into a black hole. As much as we hate to admit it, this is not uncommon. It doesn’t matter if you purchase a prospecting lists, obtain lists from tradeshows and conferences, the most important thing is to make sure that you get the best results out of this investment and turn as many of those leads into revenue as soon as possible.

A CRM system alone cannot manage your leads and contacts effectively. It’s important that you have complimentary technology that can do what your CRM cannot do for sales and marketing. Lead Liaison’s Revenue Generation Software™ is a cost effective solution that will compliment your CRM and help you shorten time to revenue with key features such as; sales prospecting tools, real time lead capture, lead qualification, lead nurture and much more.

It doesn’t matter where your data comes from – cold calling prospecting lists, conference lists, email lists, or working from referrals – it matters most how you manage the information for maximum results. Lead Liaison is the solution to improve revenue generation and bring together sales and marketing synergy which you need for increased revenue.

To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.

Lead Liaison

How to Get More Sales

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Identifying how to get more sales is often a struggle for many companies. Whether you’re an early stage start-up trying to meet the pressing demands of your board and/or venture capitalists or a seasoned company stuck in a rut; every business could gain from more sales. Too many businesses put the cart in front of the horse. To get more sales, you’ve got to drive revenue by converting more leads. Our mission at Lead Liaison is to help your company focus on better lead conversion and get your business generating 4X more qualified leads. In the graphic below we highlight five main activities (vertical sections across the bottom row) that identify how to get more sales by nurturing leads, capturing more leads, having better lead follow up, personalizing communications and improving sales effectiveness. The horizontal sections layered on top of the main activities are supportive activities. How to Get More Sales Let’s dig deeper into the main activities. Here’s a short summary of how Lead Liaison’s Revenue Generation Software technology can help your business get more sales by focusing on five key areas: 5 Principles to Get More Sales

Nurture Leads

Nurture Leads to Get More Sales How many times has your sales staff disregarded a potential lead or an inbound inquiry? Go ahead, be honest. Experts estimate 70% to 80% of all inquiries are latent demand that will buy within a few years but are lost, ignored or discarded by sales. What’s worse is that 73% of all companies have no process for revisiting leads. That’s a lot of lost revenue and a goldmine of more sales for your business. By using smart technology to intelligently nurture leads via relevant, personalized communications businesses can keep prospects top of mind and accelerate time-to-revenue.  

Capture Leads

Capture More Leads to Get More SalesIt doesn’t take a wiz-kid to know that more leads results in more sales. Use several landing pages across your business and embed forms with a minimal (no more than four) amount of fields. Use progressive profiling technology to intelligently identify what information you’ve already collected from a prospect and either hide the field or replace it with a new field that will help your business build a richer prospect profile. Also, use pre-filled form data to keep your database clean. For example, have a “job role” field that only had C-level, VP-level, Director, Manager and Assistant/Coordinator as the choices. When you need to profile your database (how to do database profiling) you’ll be happy you pre-filled forms. Do the same with company names and locations. Lead Liaison can help with that.

Lead Follow Up

Better Lead Follow Up to Get More Sales It’s imperative companies quickly distribute leads and respond to leads within five minutes to increase lead conversion rates. Research shows that responding within the first five minutes greatly improves the chances of getting the sale. Use automated technology to send email responses from a lead owner. See our article on automatically distributing leads for more information.

Personalize Conversations

Personalize Communication to Get More Sales Use marketing automation technology to deliver marketing messages that match a prospect’s interests. Furthermore, make sure to create a marketing content map that maps marketing content to industries and buyer personas. Send them material they care about. Don’t generalize your audience. Read our article on email automation to learn more about personalizing communication. Make sure you also close the loop on your nurturing. Traditional email marketing systems do not have the ability to tie in past and future online body language with email activity. Tracking email opens are metrics of the past.

Sales Effectiveness

Improve Sales Effectiveness to Get More Sales Sales definitely wants to know how to get more sales. They can do it, they just need to be more effective. Traditionally, sales people would have to keep constant reminders or wade through prospect upon prospect in a flat database. Use lead scoring, lead activities and lead grading technology to help prioritize leads for sales. Build richer prospect profiles by collecting a prospect’s buying behavior (keywords searched, pages visited, multi-visits, etc.). Use alerts to signal your favorite leads or notify lead owners of key buying signals. Help sales do their job by adding technology that takes the guess work out of sales. If you are interested to learn how Lead Liaison can help your company get more sales using the aforementioned approaches and a host of other innovative technologies let us know. We’re happy to give you a demonstration of our Revenue Generation Software platform. To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.

Lead Liaison

Automating Business – The Buick Way

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

Automating BusinessOne of our founders recently bought a Buick Enclave. Most of the folks on our team are not car experts. Needless to say, we knew little about Buick Enclaves. When we heard she bought a Buick, we thought – “that’s an old man’s car”. Buick Regal, Roadmaster, Park Avenue, LeSabre – the list of old school Buick’s goes on. Why wouldn’t we formulate that opinion? Several of us got to take a spin in her new Enclave. Let’s just say this; it was a real eye opener. It reminds me how one can be so ignorant about new things. After all, you only know what you know. It got us thinking, if Buicks have evolved like this how has business evolved?

Business, in particular sales and marketing, has evolved considerably. Similar to what technology has done for Buicks, technology has given business a boost. For example, consider our founders Buick Enclave. The vehicle is OnStar equipped. Our co-founder showed us the OnStar iPhone app. We were amazed she could remotely unlock, lock and start her vehicle with the press of a button. And check this out – she remotely started the vehicle and it adjusted the climate control inside the vehicle based on the temperature outside. Wouldn’t it be nice if one could automate business with the press of a button?

Guess what, we can! Sales and marketing is no longer the old school Buick. Marketers have an opportunity to “OnStar-their-business”. Businesses can take advantage of software that automates common marketing processes. For example, with a few button clicks marketers can automate lead nurturing, or drip campaigns, lead qualification, lead distribution and alerts that highly benefit sales. Let’s draw from another analogy in the spirit of Buick/OnStar. While having the iPhone OnStar app up, our co-founder showed us how to find a place using Bing, say the closest Indian restaurant, and push that destination to the in-car navigation or turn-by-turn system. When she jumped in the vehicle her Buick asked her if she wants to go to the Indian restaurant.

That’s similar to configuring an automated marketing campaign and pushing it out to your business. With marketing automation software marketers can configure their prospects route, navigating them through your business and driving them forward along the revenue cycle. Marketer can send automated emails and other actions as part of an automated program and either run/activate the program or schedule it to start at any time in the future.

It’s time to harness technology and start automating business.

For a demo of OnStar and Lead Liaison ping us!

To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Campaign Messaging

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Marketing Campaign MessagingMarketing campaign messaging is important, but it’s more important to think about who you’re messaging to. When building a campaign, it doesn’t make sense to make a one-size fits all message. Sales and marketing people need to tailor messaging around the recipient. Similar to giving a presentation, before you present you’ve got to know your audience. You must know who you’re presenting to. Are they engineers or marketers, technical or business savvy? If you don’t know the exact title or role of your recipients then try categorizing them into organization levels. We suggest using three levels; C-level, Director/VP-level and everyone else (rank and file). Here are some tips on how to focus your marketing campaign messaging around these organizational levels:

C-level

Focus campaign messaging on outcome and results.

Director and VP-level

Focus campaign messaging on process and improvement results.

Rank and File

Focus campaign messaging on features and benefits.

To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.

Lead Liaison

Automatically Distribute Leads to Sales

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Automatically Distribute Leads to SalesMany businesses are able to generate leads and inquiries but have no way to automatically distribute leads to sales in a systematic manner. Companies make huge investments to generate leads from the internet, which warrants responses at internet-like speeds. An interesting article from Harvard Business Review highlighted the benefit of responding to leads quickly in a study of 2,241 U.S. firms. According to the report:

– James B. Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran, and David Elkington / Harvard Business Review

The article suggests three root causes of slow lead follow up:

Three Root Causes of Slow Lead Follow Up

1. Retrieving leads from CRM systems’ databases at one time throughout the day vs. continuously, in real-time, without a way to automatically distribute leads to sales
2. sales teams are focused on generating their own leads rather than reacting quickly to customer’s online behavior and inquiries, and
3. rules for distributing leads among based on geography and “fairness.”

Lead Liaison’s software platform solves the aforementioned issues with a simple solution that can automatically distribute leads to sales. Here’s a short summary of how we help our clients quickly respond to high priority leads:

Use Technology and Alerts to Automatically Distribute Leads to Sales

• Qualify leads using various lead qualification metrics including common buy signals, lead score and a measure of the prospect’s total activity.
• Distribute leads in real-time based on sophisticated lead distribution rules based on region, company name, number of employees and annual revenue. Distribute leads in round-robin or directly to a sales person and add leads to a “hopper” (a queue) if no rules match.
• Send real-time email and text message alerts to sales to urge response.
• In depth lead tracking and lead capture solutions to build complete profiles of visitor’s online behavior, a key indicator of a prospect’s interests.

What advantages or disadvantages do you see by automatically distributing leads to sales?

To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.

Lead Liaison

Pass Only the Best Leads to Sales

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Pass Only the Best Leads to SalesIf you’re a sales person then you’re likely one of the highest paid people in your company – no shame to that. However, if you’re in management then you know sales people are one of the highest costs in your company. Unfortunately, high costs are magnified especially when sales doesn’t produce results. One way to increase return on investment (ROI) in your sales people is to pass only the best leads to sales.

We queried fifteen top sales people across five different industries and asked them one question, “If marketing could pass only the best leads to sales, what would you like to see?” We compiled the top six replies and mapped them to Lead Liaison’s technology.  to help you better understand how we can improve your sales and marketing processes by passing only the best leads to sales.

What Makes the Best LeadsHow Technology Delivers
Highly qualified contactsLead scoring technology to numerically assign custom scores to leads as they engage with your company. Each event carries a score, or weight, defined by your company.  The higher the score the more qualified the lead will be.
Recently expressed interestBy using lead tracking to track the very first time a lead interfaces with your website even before they submit a web form or click a link in an email. Using a date/time stamp on the lead we’re able to determine how recent their engagement was.
Expresses behavior characteristic of someone ready to buyBuy signal technology that automatically looks for the most common buy signal patterns and alerts sales via text or email messages.
If the individual has the right roleBuy syncing titles with CRMs to map a lead’s online behavior with their profile and qualify them further using lead scoring.
Highly active leads who touch many marketing assetsTotal activities, a measurement of inbound and outbound activity.
Someone ready to buy in the short termLead nurturing to add leads not ready to buy into a nurturing process that builds relationships with the lead until they’re ready to buy.

To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.