Fri, 1 November 2019
The Main Things Generating The Most Leads Right Now!
As salespeople, we often ask ourselves about the main things generating the most leads right now because we always want to be in on everything that works. Consumers’ purchasing decisions are affected by their experiences and we want to know what affects them in order to appeal to those emotions and convince them to buy our products or services. Sales professionals that we are, we love leads and we like getting new prospects. Vlad Calus is the founder at Planable, a content collaboration plan for freelancers and marketing teams. It is the most visual platform that helps you preview your social media content before publishing it. Planable helps you check and review your content before publishing it. It makes collaboration and asking for feedback from your teammates easier as well as asking for clients’ feedback before finalizing the content and scheduling the posts through social media. Generating the most leads right now There are three things that helped Vlad to get leads. The first one was writing a book. He wrote a book called Marketing Themes of the Future which gained them over 2,000 leads in just a couple of weeks. They also published the Content Academy and it generated them more than 500 people in just a couple of hours. Publishing is one way to generate leads and that’s what Vlad and his team did. They also did a content calibration report where they reported on the state of content marketing and how content marketing teams are working. For them, their team wasn’t able to generate many people by just a sudden initiative. They did the planning on how to create their content and spent a lot of time in it. They called their content marketing as special initiatives. They worked on it for about 12 months and all of the people involved were on the same page. They then had press releases for client launches and they constantly repurposed their content. Content calibration Vlad’s team looked for the problem in their industry and wanted to address it. Based on their research, they found out that there have been no content calibration reports done for the last nine years. They wanted to understand the state of the market but there are only old data available. In marketing, data are key players to a business’s success. They then understood the need to generate a lot of data and started the project with their customers, connections on the net, and the people they met. They generated leads by using the data of the report they collated. One of the data they have is on how to repurpose content for their followers. There’s also the part where you need multiple stakeholders as part of your content strategy. They also discovered in their research that broken collaboration is wasted time and communicating with your stakeholders vie spreadsheets and emails is one of the most broken workflows there is. They use all these data and share their marketing reports to their clients and potential clients to motivate them to jump on a call with them and start using their Planable. This can be applied to other industries as well regardless of the size of the company. You can make reports using the data from the audience that you are working on. You may start by sending your audience Facebook polls or sending them a simple type form they can fill out. You can collate the data and use it for your marketing strategies. Publishing a book to get more leads works especially if you promote it yourself. Put your email signature in the book and see the number of people who click on it every single day. From readers to lead generators People who have read Vlad’s book started recommending it to other people they know. The book presented the benefits of collaborating on the content and using many different platforms to create a more collaborative market. The ebook also presented solutions that you can use for your content marketing collaboration as a marketing team. Every email we get, we put them into an email marketing flow and we ask them to jump on a call with us for them to find out more about Planable. We send people case studies on how Planable has been helping companies. The other thing that helped them in generating the most leads right now is their Content Academy. They interviewed over 30 experts in content marketing from different industries. These people are the front line in creating content, from the ideation, editing, writing, publishing, and generating leads. The Content Academy includes seven-step videos with topics like ideation strategy, content editing, content publishing, promoting, and so on. Vlad’s team presents it to potential clients and we give them sneak peeks of the things they can learn in the Content Academy. He makes snippets and minute-long videos showing how it would help businesses and publishes the videos on his LinkedIn and other social media. In content marketing, don’t be afraid to try creating content and putting yourself on camera. Get yourself out there and just start creating content. Listen to the feedback of the community and write again until you are able to make quality content. Success doesn’t come from just sitting around. It comes when you truly start to give creating and writing a try. #ContentMarketing “The Main Things Generating The Most Leads Right Now! " episode resources Reach out to Vlad Calus via his LinkedIn. Go ahead and hit me up for concerns and questions about sales. You can also reach out to me via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Use these practical sales tips and let me know how it works for you. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can also call us at (561) 570-5077. Our next semester starts on November 8 and we would love to have you. The episode is also brought to you by Sales Live Miami. It’s an event put on by a group of friends and it’s designed to help sellers and sales leaders improve their sales game. It’s going to be this November 4-5, 2019 in Miami, Florida. Come and join us. You can find more about this event on The Sales Evangelist website. We want you to join us for our next episodes so tune in to our podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings to every episode you listen to. Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks at Audible as well and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial. |
Tue, 5 March 2019
When you're scaling an organization, it's important that you're able to measure the quality of your leads, pipeline, and sales talent. It important for business owners as well as sales reps, because simply adding people to the organization won't necessarily result in more sales. Today Rob Kall talks about the numbers that we might not be measuring and the importance of that data in helping your organization grow and improve. Although they aren't commonly measured, these data are the true drivers of your organization's success. Soft thingsMany sales leaders believe that the solution to any sales struggle is to throw more bodies at it. Though that option may work sometimes, it comes at a cost. Eventually, you'll find that you aren't getting that much more out of the machine despite the added personnel. In response to that problem, Rob and his company spent a lot of time looking at how you can move to tangible measurements instead of making decisions based upon gut feelings. They have identified 5 metrics to improve your company's performance. 1. Lead qualityLeads are not created equal. If I have 1,000 leads and a 2 percent conversion to close, that's a super easy way to measure. But if I get a referral from my rich uncle, that's probably a much easier sale than calling someone who has never heard of my business or product. We fail to pay attention to these factors, but they are important. Unfortunately, they can also be difficult to determine. Begin by creating a baseline. If you find that of 1,000 leads you generated in the last period, you were able to generate 20 sales, you can measure a 2 percent conversion. [Tweet "Figure out where your leads come from. Once you've identified that, you may determine that the conversion rate for a particular lead source is higher than the others. #LeadSource"] You can also evaluate your leads by industry and location. Once you understand those conversions, you can identify the leads that are not likely to close and stop wasting your time on them. 2. Prospecting effectivenessProspecting results in a lot of "no" responses. The only thing that really matters is engagement. As a rep, you must get a certain amount of engagement every day. Some people do it with sheer numbers. Others send fewer contacts but they personalize the ones they do send. Whichever approach you use, make notes every single time an activity results in something. When you do, you'll begin to recognize patterns. Your numbers might look great, but if the outcomes aren't there, those numbers don't mean as much. 3. True pipelineRob points to a concept he calls a critical deal. Some companies do pipeline reviews on a weekly basis but others do it on a daily basis. It's a chance to see how well deals are progressing. Consider the following three factors:
If these three factors aren't there, you probably should focus on other deals. Move the critical deals forward and think about your deals in a structured way. 4. Product knowledgeOn the rep side of the issue, reps must have product and industry knowledge. When you're just starting out, you won't have as much knowledge as those who have been there for years. How well does this rep know the industry and the product? How does he compare to other reps? Those with the best product knowledge won't necessarily be the best performers. You can't possibly know every single factor of the industry. You simply must know enough to be credible. Those who haven't reached that minimum threshold will struggle until they do. Consider also closing ability or the ability to look at the last part of the deal. When you get to the last stage of a deal, what happens? How often do you win? You'll see patterns if you track this rate. Does one rep have more of a killer instinct? 5. Engagement abilityIf you are able to generate a lot of engagement, you're probably a good communicator. You're probably good at providing valuable information to the prospect. Instead of measuring how the prospect responds to it, measure how much engagement the rep is able to generate. TechnologyThe reality is that your sales team probably includes a few people who don't have the right product knowledge and a few people that don't have valuable leads. You may have a few areas where your marketing team is spinning its wheels. When you start addressing some of these shortcomings, you start to see amazing results. By fixing the one thing that's screwing you up, you unlock the potential for your sales organization. Team moodAs a sales leader, you probably have a gut feeling about your team's morale. You know whether they are optimistic or not. When negativity is present, it will affect your team's ability to sell. It will also affect your retention and your on-boarding. Though no product is perfect, there are frequently just one or two things that are causing grief.
You'll likely identify multiple areas of improvement that will help your team perform better. Limiting factorsMany limiting factors don't simply add up. They multiply. If you can improve it a little bit, even if you can't perfect it, you'll get results from that thing. If the rep doesn't know the product, train him. If the team doesn't feel good about the commission plan, explain it. If your product isn't ready for market, figure out what you can do to improve it. "Measure the Quality of your Leads, Pipeline and Sales Talent" episode resourcesConnect with Rob at cien.ai. It's a reference to doing things 100 times. You can also connect with him personally on LinkedIn @RobertKall. This episode is brought to you in part by our TSE Certified Sales Training Program, which teaches you to improve your sales skills, find more customers, build stronger value, and close more deals. The next semester begins in April. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss a single episode, and share with your friends! Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.
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Fri, 22 February 2019
One of the biggest challenges in business is keeping that constant flow of new customers in the pipeline. How you brand yourself and your company is imperative in producing growth and recurrent revenue. Johanne Wilson is co-founder of a Florida-based design agency called COOL Creative. COOL stands for Create Out of Love. Their branding comes from a creative and design standpoint. Challenges in salesEvery company experiences challenges when it comes to sales. Understanding those challenges and learning effective ways to overcome them can increase your sales. It can also clarify your target audience and reveal how to best go about reaching them. Find effective ways to pitch so you can have a healthy flow of clients and client work. When you do, you’ll create active, recurrent clients that return again and again. From a fashion standpoint, offer enough product and keep it updated and fresh. The customer will keep coming in to purchase product and will create recurrent revenue. Change product release times and inform the customer of new releases to keep him engaged.. Strive for constant communication with the customer in order to drive sales. Solutions to challengesMaintain consistent growth within your business. On the agency side, COOL Creative developed a growth plan that would move the sales needle. For example, making an investment in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program provides tools for creating an effective growth plan. Johanne realized that she was spending too much time on client work and not enough on the sales side of her business. As the business leader, she realized she was spending a lot of time on design because she was comfortable with it. She was not investing enough time in the sales side. She learned that in order to be a good business person, you have to become a good sales person as well. You must familiarize yourself with the aspects of business that you aren’t comfortable or familiar with. Prioritizing salesOn the fashion side, pushing more on advertising, marketing, social, communication, and partnerships with influential people like celebrities can all help drive sales. Right partnerships can lead to other agencies funneling clients your way. Work smarter, not harder. Identify the areas that need more attention and push toward making those a priority. As an entrepreneur, Donald neglected the sales facet. But once he made sales a priority, everything else fell into place. As a business leader, sales is a necessity. Nobody knows your business better than you. Nobody can sell it better than you. It can be hard to let go of the things that got you into business in the first place. Identify the areas of business that aren’t as strong. Invest more time and energy into those areas. Business will become healthier and you will be able to serve clients better. Understand your clients’ issues and the strategies you will use in solving them. Then attach a price tag to those solutions.
When you and the client see amazing results from something you helped him with, it’s rewarding. Bringing a client’s idea to life or bringing a business objective to life makes it all worthwhile. Create Out of Love (COOL) speaks for itself when these instances occur. Results of changesGrowth is always a good indicator for having made positive changes. You don’t have to do anything drastic: small changes can have big rewards. What are you focusing on? If your head is always down working on the deliverables, which is important, you must make sure there is a strong person on the sales side to keep the engine moving. Speaking to the creative entrepreneur, don’t forget why you are in business. While it is the creative piece that got you started, you have to get good at the business side, too. This includes sales, accurate bookkeeping, and meeting with other professionals to make sure that the business stays in good standing. "Constant Flow of New Customers" episode resourcesYou can reach Johanne Wilson online at www.coolcreativeinc.com. Here you can link to the online shop, Instagram @CoolCreativeinc, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. If you put in a lot of hard work in 2018 but weren't able to close many of your deals, we can help you fix that. We have a new semester beginning in April and it would be an honor to have you join. Visit thesalesevangelist.com/CST. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss a single episode. Share it with your friends who would benefit from learning more. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. |
Thu, 20 December 2018
On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we talk to Matt Hernandez about the changes in the marketplace, and how the ability to find local partners has helped him drive more revenue for the businesses he serves. In his work with small-to-medium businesses, Matt has worked to figure out new ways to deal with leads because people have become more resistant to cold calling. He believes that, although cold-calling can work, it must exist in the right circumstances. The key is better lead intelligence. Hire the right peopleMatt doesn't struggle with recruiting or interviewing salespeople. The key, he says, is to be very upfront about the challenges of the role and hire the right type of people. Hire open-minded people who aren't super particular about their activities and who often aren't as needy. [7:15] They'll be more coachable. Also be very honest about the type of role you're hiring for, the challenges it will present, but also the benefits of the role as well. Moving away from cold leadsIn the past, sellers would have a name and a phone number and they could attack each cold lead with different opens or different hooks. Now, he says, people are numb to that approach. Instead, his company looked to generate inbound leads and lukewarm leads. Matt's company uses a program called "Local Partners" that pays contractors to feed them warm or hot leads from local areas. He pointed out that using pure commission models doesn't change your cost structure. [9:14] He does acknowledge that you must make sure the payment is in line with the revenue goals. You must make sure your customer acquisition costs aren't too high. Big revenue increasesMatt's company has seen strong results from the move away from cold calling. He estimates that the effort now accounts for 5 to 15 percent of their deals. He predicts that this kind of effort would likely work in a variety of industries. Companies just have to be creative to figure out how to scale in a cost-effective way. Buying leads can be very expensive, but a pay-for-results model can work if the infrastructure is set up properly. [11:10] Partnerships modelBegin by listing as on Craigslist in the cities you're interested in. State what you're offering and decide ahead of time how much you can afford to pay. Decide how much you'd be willing to pay someone if they were to generate meetings or contracts. For longer sales cycles, you might have to pay per demo. [12:09] In shorter sales cycles, you pay based upon generating contracts. In your ad, provide a range of income that interested parties could generate per month. Then you could interview over the phone or in person or over video. The effort is super cheap, super easy and really scrappy. Be willing to pivotBe creative. Sales requires consistency and training and the right effort for the right amount of time. Without it, you'll never see meaningful results or data you can measure. [14:54] Seek objective advice and make sure you're giving your new ideas time to work. If things aren't going the way you want despite your effort, don't be afraid to pivot and try new approaches. Be willing to try something different. The marketplace changes rapidly, and technology does, too. You have to be willing to adapt. FivestarsLocal businesses are the best candidates to benefit from Fivestars because they are traditionally underserved in their marketing efforts. They often face huge competition from groups of businesses that pool their resources. [15:59] Think of a small coffee shop competing against Starbucks, who has millions of dollars to spend on advertising. Fivestars has created a software that costs pennies on the dollar because the cost is spread across 10,000 merchants. It's an incredible solution for anyone who owns a local business with a physical location. "Find Local Partners" episode resourcesConnect with Matt via email at matthew.hernandez@fivestars.com. If you need a way to get more customers in the door, Fivestars works with more than 40 million consumers who use the platform. This episode is brought to you in part by Maximizer CRM, a personalized and robust CRM with the capability to organize your company and effectively line up not only your sales but your client’s success. Go to TheSalesEvangelist.com/maximizer for a free demonstration. We are also brought to you by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. It has changed the way we prospect. Take advantage of the risk-free trial they offer specifically for the TSE community. First three months at half-price? You can’t beat that! To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher or wherever you enjoy fine podcasts. And be sure to subscribe to the podcast and share with your friends! |
Mon, 21 May 2018
Here at The Sales Evangelist, we’re in the middle of a social selling experiment to determine how effective social selling is when it’s part of your everyday sales cadence. I’ve selected a total of 80 companies that I’ve never had relationships with. I’ll use a traditional cadence of mail, email, and phone calls to build […] The post TSE 837: The Social Selling Experiment Part 2 appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Tue, 7 November 2017
Sometimes we go far and wide finding prospects when we have folks right in our own backyard. There is power in getting local leads. Today, you’re going to learn how to find them and get them. Our guest today is Mark Fortune and he’s going to teach us how to gain local leads. Mark owns […] The post TSE 698: Power of Local Leads & How To Get More appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Fri, 18 August 2017
Steve de Mamiel is a marketing and sales expert. He is a big proponent of utilizing technology to help your business to grow. Today, let’s talk about how AI systems can actually accurately determine online behaviors to find potential buyers. It takes the work out of it for us. We’re also going to touch on […] The post TSE 641: How AI Systems Can Accurately Help You Find New Leads appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Fri, 11 August 2017
Previously, I’ve talked about how podcast guesting could actually help you in your sales process. But you might have brushed this idea aside so it bears repeating. Who knows? It could be where magic can happen. So today I’m bringing in Nicole Holland and she’s giving us great insights into getting leads and business development […] The post TSE 636: A Powerful Lead Generation Strategy Your Company Hasn’t Considered Yet appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Tue, 7 February 2017
What if you could generate over $50 million in sales lead? Well, my guest today, Alex Berman, has done that. Hopefully you can apply the strategies he’s sharing with us today so you can see the same success that he’s had. Lead generation is one of the most important things in sales. You’ve got to […] The post TSE 503: How Alex Berman Did $50million+ In Leads Generation appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Fri, 23 December 2016
Do you find it difficult to connect through emails? In today’s episode, we’re showing you how using video in your emails can drastically increase your response rates. In this day and age where everybody’s going visual, it’s high time to take your selling to the next level. Our guest, Steve Pacinelli is the Chief Marketing […] The post TSE 471: The Psychology of Lead Conversion Through Videos appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Fri, 22 July 2016
How can you generate more leads? How can you generate more business opportunities? What can you do to get more clients in the door? Content is key as they say. But what if you can’t even make great content? Is there a way to still put out great content offers to your clients? We’re going […] The post TSE 361: Secret Strategies To Gain More Qualified Leads appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Mon, 25 April 2016
Today’s Sales from the Street episode is all about breaking that barrier of self-talk that prevents you from taking on major opportunities. It’s something a lot of us have faced at certain points in our career and which our guest today has also dealt with successfully. Hyrum now owns and runs a marketing company, Leads […] The post TSE 299: Sales From The Street-“Take Chances” appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |