Monday, October 27, 2014

Lead Generation Just Doing What’s Right Social Version

I hope to encourage you to get serious about going out and finding new sales leads. Socially, we can talk about traditional ways another time.

There really is no magic formula. Well there is a formula and I am in the middle of writing a book but NOTHING is 100% in the area of lead generation so get use to it.

1. It is a game of small bites. You need to lots of things right. You need to find, nurture and coddle every lead until they tell you to go away of become a client.

2. You will get very tired of your message before anyone else does. You will I can almost guarantee that you will get very tired of your message you are putting out before most of your target market even know you are saying anything. There is a desire to change your message but don’t! Stay on course and send the same message out over and over and over again and again.

3. Your prospect can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist or who you are. No one cares how fast you are, how cheap you are, how good you are. If the prospect has never heard of you they won’t really care. Keep your attention on this plain and simple truth, Make becoming know your first objective.

4. Pretend you’re a search algorithm. Yes pretend you’re Google. It really makes no difference what your business does or what it makes. The question is what do people type in to find you. What are the words or word strings. Be the search.

5. You need to be as social engaged as you possibly can. It is really not an option anymore. LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter. Those are the big 3 for starters then there is a plethora or others such as MerchantCircle , Storeboard, tsu.co, Solaborate, Scoop.it, APSense and Referral Key just to name a few.

6. You don’t need to go in big leaps. Some sites are easy, some take time. Take the time to work the sites to make them work for you. Go slow, go steady and you will get there.


Larson Notes & Satire:  This is the online side of lead gen but don’t forget to think about off line lead generation. Things like teleprospecting, direct mail (might want to throw in email marketing in here) trade shows, and the like. It’s not all online and you can get a good bang for your buck using traditional marketing channels. Or if you don’t or can’t find the time call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call and we work to hand over those leads to you to finish the job.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Cold Calling Builds Long Term Relationships

Even with the push of Social Media and Online Marketing, cold calling is and still remains the best way to go out and make contact with potential clients. It is the only proactive way to start a two way conversation with a prospect. Using every other way you need to sit back and hope the prospect actually picks up the phone, emails or sends back a business reply card. Do you have that kind of time? Now these are all great ways to marketing but if you add in a cold call follow-up in your marketing play your results will be 10% to 22% better.

In case you need more of an incentive to using the phone or picking it up and calling us here at Larson & Associates to do it for you, here are 5 successful ways to mix in cold calling into your sales and marketing attack.

1st. Clearly define your criteria. Get your program put together and aimed towards where you want to go. No brainer but how many times does it not happen. Sit down in a meeting with all your sales and marketing people and determine the base criteria for what is a qualified lead.

2nd Set an agenda to guide you through the steps to start a real conversation. A call without a direction is the path to a failed call. I am not saying use a script but know where you want to go to in the call.

3rd Be relevant to the person you are calling. Ask yourself these two questions. 1) What is the reason for the call? And 2) Is it relevant to THIS prospect? Don’t waste their time. Don’t waste your time.

4th Create a voice mail strategy. I believe in voice mail so much that if I take a project and the client says to NOT leave a voice mail, I might just not take the project. It is almost doomed to failure. A voice mail is a way to send out a mini advertisement right into the prospects ear. With a relative message you will warm up the prospect for your next try at speaking to them. And yes sometimes they call back and if they do 1 of 2 things are happening. Then need what you got or they are calling you to tell you to go away and don’t call back. Either way you win. In the first one you are one step further down the sales process. The other you can take them off your prospect list and you don’t have to waste your time on them anymore.

5th Integration of multimedia and multichannel marketing. Keep in mind the 3 legged stool. 3 channels work best. Cold calling can and will benefit from the use of multimedia, content marketing, social media marketing, direct mail and/or email marketing. You may go the Whitepaper and webinar route as well. It is about exposure and follow-up. You don’t follow up, don’t bother doing it.


Larson Notes & Satire:  Cold calling follow up is just the natural progression of the sales process.  Every product or service has a cycle and a natural progression.  A good well placed cold call only shortens the sales cycle because you get in and out quickly.  The key is to get in and get out without making the prospect angry. The fact that most of you reading this are B2B and the telephone is a natural way to do business it only makes sense to use it. Or if you don’t or can’t find the time or nerve to call prospects call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294. One call and we back the rest of those scary cold calls and hand over those leads to you to finish the job.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.