Why Should You Use Social Media in New Business Development?

In the traditional sales model, we identify our prospects and then use several tactics to get in front of them, qualify them and ultimately sell them. But, what about all the other potential users of your product or service that you don’t know about? Yes, some of them may find you through a referral or make their way to your website, but there are many more that may not ever know that you exist.

In most cases, especially for manufacturers who are selling more complicated products, there is a sales funnel you need to take prospects through before they are ready to buy. That’s great, but that only works if you’ve identified the potential sale.

Think of social media as your silent salesman. It’s out there bird dogging for you and taking a potential customer through some of the initial stages of the selling cycle.

Social media is a great way to connect with prospective buyers because they will find you based on what they are searching for (what kind of problem they are looking for a solution for) on the web. It allows you not only to connect, but to start a conversation. It allows them to get a better feeling for the company and how you go about helping people. In other words, you start building the “know, like and trust” model that comes with any sale, especially to new potentials.

Social media is a great way to educate prospective buyers because of all the tools you have available: Blogs, Forums, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. All are platforms for you to add value to the conversations by giving them great content, and it starts establishing you as an expert they can count on.

Social media is a great way to collaborate with potential buyers because of the tools like GoToMeeting, WebEx, Zoom and join.me or other technologies that allow you to connect almost immediately to help answer a question or show how to fix a problem. There are even listening platforms, like HooteSuite, Sprout Social and others that will help you monitor conversations around the areas you want to be in, and you can contribute at the appropriate time.

So, don’t just fall into business as usual. Think outside the box and give social media a try in your new business development efforts. You might be surprised as you may eventually identify a potential new customer that was never on your radar screen.

 

Share this:

B-to-B Marketers: Why it takes more than three calls to make a sale

By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter

We’re all focused on generating more leads these days, but I find it ironic that most companies don’t do much with them once they get them. Simply fulfilling a request is not the answer, but yet many companies do just that. According to a survey of people who have requested info suggests that 80% of all sales are made on or after the third contact. The survey polled over 700 respondents with only 8% buying after the first call.

David Frey, the senior content editor and author of several marketing books advises, “An educated prospect is your best prospect, and if they haven’t become a customer, it’s because you haven’t fully educated them on the value of your product and developed a relationship of trust.” Why do many businesses have a problem following up with their prospective customers? Mr. Frey explained, “The problem is not that small businesses don’t have the capacity to follow-up with prospects, it’s that they don’t have the systems in place to do it well.”

In his recent newsletter, “Follow-Up Marketing: How To Win More Sales With Less Effort,” Mr. Frey advised, “A good follow-up marketing system should have three attributes:

  1. It should be systematic.
  2. It should generate consistent, predictable results.
  3. It should require minimal physical interaction to make it run.

This leads to a more pressing issue and that is, what is the difference between sales lead management and a CRM tool? According to Russ Hill, President of Ultimate Lead Systems: Sales lead management is a sub-function within an overall CRM strategy. Traditional CRM programs like Salesforce.com, SalesLogix, ACT, Goldmine, Maximizer and others focus on the sales person entering and managing his own data and pushing it “up” to management.

Sales lead management starts with management generating and capturing leads from all sources, fulfilling information requests and delivering them to the sales channel and tracking follow-up and sales results to measure marketing return-on-investment.

Here are some other interesting facts:

INQUIRIES MEAN NEW BUSINESS!

  • 67% of all inquiries are from legitimate prospects with real needs.
  • 34% have current needs that must be satisfied within 6 months!
  • 70% did not know the company made the product before seeing their ad … making them NEW PROSPECTS!

A six-year study* of nearly 60,000 inquiries conducted by Penton Media Company also found that:

  • 43% of inquirers receive literature and information too late to be of use.
  • 72% of inquirers are NEVER CONTACTED by a salesman.
  • 25% of sales contacts are made at the inquirer’s request.
  • 40% of inquirers purchase the advertised product, a competitive product or change their suppliers.
    * NED Reader Action Reports

The key is to get a lead management system in place that can help your CRM convert those leads into sales.

Share this:

How Does Your Marketing Department Hand Off Sales Leads?

I’ve been around this crazy business for over 35 years, and one of the biggest issues still today is handing off leads from marketing to sales. You would think that with all the technology today it would be easy, right? Not the case!

Several years ago, marketing would generate leads for various sources and pass them onto sales for follow-up. Then one day someone from the C suite asked how much new business are we getting from our promotional efforts? Marketing said we developed X amount of leads and Sales would say they were all crap. Obviously the finger-pointing wasn’t going to solve the question of how much new business are we getting.

Thus started the process of lead management, qualification, nurturing and at some point turning it over to sales with a little more history behind the leads than there were several years ago. Russ Hill from Ultimate Leads calls it the “Transition Zone.” It is the place in time where marketing hands off the lead they so carefully nurtured to sales to close the loop. But in order to do it successfully, you must have a process  that everyone is in tune with, and sales needs to make sure to keep info on that lead current in your lead database so we know when a new customer has arrived, from where and what they bought.

A good follow-up marketing system should have three attributes:
1. It should be systematic.
2. It should generate consistent, predictable results.
3. It should require minimal physical interaction to make it run.

What are you doing to ensure you’re getting the most out of your leads?

If you like this post, you might want to read:

Where Are Your New Business Prospects in the Selling Cycle?

How Many Calls Does it Take to Make a Sale?

Share this:

How Are You Integrating Email and Social Media?

In today’s market, everyone seems to be focusing on social media as the thing to do. Both social and traditional tactics have a place in your marketing plan. Inbound and outbound marketing must work together to get the most bang for your buck today. Social media or email can’t be isolated tactics, but should be used together.

I recently read an article by Kipp Bodnar in Social Media B2B, 7 Awesome Email and B2B Social Media Integrations that I thought hit the nail right on the head. Here are some highlights:

  • Use social media links in your emails – pretty simple but you’d be surprised how many folks miss this opportunity.
  • Use social media to grow your email list – you have a better chance of getting a lead if you can convince them to sign up, for example, for your monthly newsletter.
  • Test email efforts on social – before sending out a communication to your list, test it on social to see what kind of reaction you’ll get.
  • Use social media for future email content – follow and listen to what the hot issues are on social and craft future messages around those issues.
  • Source leads correctly – use tracking URLs to better understand where your interest is coming from.

Those are some highlights; what are you doing to integrate social into your traditional marketing efforts?

Share this:

Where Are Your New Business Prospects in the Selling Cycle?

When generating leads from various sources, how do you qualify them to see if they’re ready to buy? Not all leads are ready to buy, and it’s important to have a process in place to sort them out. According to Russ Hill from Ultimate Lead Systems:

  • 67% of all leads are legitimate prospects.
  • 34% have a need that must be satisfied in the next 6 months.
  • 70% of those prospects didn’t know you made that product.
  • It takes on average 5-6 sales calls to close a sale.
  • 80% give up after the first call and 90% plus give up after the second call.

Doesn’t it make sense to have a process in place to monitor and track?

Most capital equipment purchases, for example, have a buying team in place to make recommendations. You need to identify them through your initial contact (or at least the job functions) so you know what areas you need to cover. We’ve found that a quick survey along with what they asked for can help you find out if they are in the information-gathering stage or the PO stage and you can act accordingly. If you know what other type of information they may want to see, or if a demonstration would be in order to better show them the product, that would help you prioritize your salesmen’s efforts.

As you can see in the following chart, people at different stages in the buying cycle need different things. Once you understand where they are in the process, then you can start asking the appropriate questions about budgets, timelines, etc.

What kind of process do you have in place to qualify leads?

Share this: