Maximizing Trade Show ROI

Are you a Powerball player? With Powerball, the odds of winning are approximately 1 / 175,000,000. You can go out and buy 1000 unique tickets, your odds of winning are about 1000 / 175,000,000. Nice odds, huh?  Just buying a ticket is no guarantee of success. So how does this apply to us and trade shows and Trade Show ROI? At Larson & Associates, we often hear Companies complain that after exhibiting at trade shows that the ROI was not worth the effort or investment. The first question I ask is, “How many appointments with prospects did you have set up before the show?” Usually, the answer is none. Yep, ZERO, zilch, nada. They pay for a booth, their salespeople, inventory etc. and sit, waiting for the clients to roll in, just hoping that all these wonderful prospects with a need will drop by the booth during the show. Betting that the old “Build it and they will come” principle can work magic, whether or not they are familiar with your company beforehand, is just plain stupid. You are spending thousands of dollars to get lucky. Just like shooting for that Powerball, you might improve your odds a little but if you’re not committed and truly engaged with a working strategy beforehand then dumb luck is all you have. Not sure what the odds of success are with that, but I will bet that they’re not good. When our skilled strategists at Larson & Associates ask these same  companies what sales goals have they set for themselves during the show, the response is a mixture of “What are we supposed to be measuring?” and “We were more focused on our booth design and collateral.” Again they spent thousands of dollars without a plan. What follows is an outline of a pre-trade show strategy that we here at Larson & Associates have designed and developed after many trade shows and demonstrations. Strategies which have resulted in our completely booking all open time slots for sales appointments (averaging 38 appointments over a 3 day show). These appointments are invaluable in the acquisition of highly qualified leads for both team members where they are able to sit down and discuss strategy.   The key to any strategy is being prepared, knowing what to expect and how to react, planning for outcomes and positioning yourself in the best possible place to benefit and succeed. Here is what we do…   1. Make a wish list (12 weeks before show) Go through the conference exhibitor list and highlight the companies that you would like to connect with at the show, regardless of whether you know someone there or not. Select companies that you think are a good fit to work with (yes power partners), that match your target audience, or that you simply want to understand better. 2. Research (10 weeks out) For each wish list company, identify a contact from that company to reach out to for an appointment. First look within your CRM to see if you have any existing contracts with that company. If not, an option may be to peruse professional sites such as LinkedIn, although they are making it so you might need to have the premium account to do any real research as prospecting tool. Find companies that match your target by searching the company name and looking for employees with the correct job titles. You’re probably thinking, great, but how do I get their email and phone number?   First, see if you have any mutual connections with the lead that you can ask to make an introduction. If there are no mutual connections, you can always find general phone numbers listed on the company website.  For email, you can look in a few places – the company’s contact page, career page, or news page/press releases – to uncover if not the contact’s exact email address, then the common email format used by the company. (For example, if marketing director Joe Smith’s email is listed as joe.smith@abccompanyinc.com, then you can pretty safely assume that product manager Mary Thomas’s email will bemary.thomas@abccompanyinc.com.) Research requires you to invest a bit of time (if you don’t have the time Larson & Associates have people dedicated to doing research just like this) for finding contact information. But it will pay off greatly. Fact is, 78% of salespeople using social media outsell their peers, while it is a tool to help, Social Media will never be a replacement for Salesmanship. It’s not (note to self, write a paper on what Social Media is good for) LinkedIn, specifically, is responsible for more than 80% of a business’ social media leads.   3. Email outreach (beginning 7 weeks out) Here is where we start to hit on the entire show attendance list. Today 80% of leads take 20-40 “touches” to close if started from scratch, less if at a targeted industry trade show. There is no guarantee that you will reach your lead with every email, so repetition and careful timing are important.  Here are a few tips for emailing leads pre-show: Timing: The best times to email are weekdays from 9:30-11:00 a.m. That lets them clean out the night time senders. Keep on track: and on target, for the upcoming show. Talk about your product or service, and why you should get together. This may require research beforehand about their strengths and areas of opportunity. Follow the data: Prioritize your follow-up emails using data from the previous email. With most emailing systems like the one we use, you can view open rates, click-through rates, and site revisits. This has made our sales process much more data-driven, strategic and very cost effective. Track your opens: Keep a record of how many times you reach out to a lead. Some leads may have more touches because of their responsiveness, so it’s important to manage multiple sales cycles as organized a manner as possible. 4. Cold calling (beginning 6 weeks out) Cold calling can be intimidating for salespeople. In 2007, it took 3.7 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8. Now there’s much more opportunity to practice this skill! Here are a few tips for cold calling leads pre-show: Refer to your emails: Beginning your sales outreach with email is a great tactic because you can use the email as a talking point in your call. The lead will have at least some awareness of your company or product ahead of time, which can help move the discussion forward. Say what you need to say: Be direct in telling the lead why you are calling. It’s important for them to know what you’d like to meet about. The last thing you want to do is waist any ones time. Have a plan B: You can’t win every time, but you don’t have to just throw your hands up and go. If they are not interested in having an appointment at the show, let them know you will be walking around and might just stop by their booth to say hello. If they are not attending the show at all, ask if there’s someone else from their company attending to meet with. 5. Setting appointments (ongoing as you reach leads) Depending on how long you will be at the show and how sales people are attending, you can determine how many appointments per day you can schedule Here are a few tips for pre-show appointment setting: Make scheduling easy: If you think a lead is interested in your company, whether they have responded to you or not, list three time slots to meet with them and suggest a location. This skips a few steps in the back-and-forth of scheduling. Consider time zones: Make sure to note the correct time zone (the one the show is in) on your calendar invitation to avoid double booking by mistake. 6. Send out postcard mailer 2 weeks out) You want to put something in their hands and have it with a coupon for a special show gift if they come in with the card. To get better booth traffic you need to give them an incentive. Send out a mailer.   There is no real magic in making a trade show successful. What it does take is hard work and planning, lots of planning, and commitment to strategy and the will to succeed. Without a doubt, the strategizing and the hard work can be very time-consuming. Time is not always an easy commodity to come by with business to run and obligations to meet you have to make the most and invest your resources wisely. Luck alone will always guarantee you a lousy ROI. Indeed planning and strategizing can be accomplished ‘in-house’ but for the times or projects when this is just simply not an option, remember Larson & Associates, we are here to help! Larson & Associates 847-991-1294 or just email me athoward@larsonassociates.ws

Creating A Multi-Channel Marketing Attack

In a time where content and information is expected to be available 24/7, prospects and customers want to interact with businesses in ways that works for them and their lifestyle, not yours. The fact is: using one, single channel is not enough.

Why is multi-channel marketing an effective strategy?

There are 5 reasons why I see companies using this approach:

• Build a brand experience – Prospects are on multiple channels – and to gain name familiarity you need to leverage each channel to connect with them or at least have them interact with your brand. By using a multi-channel attack you are allowing prospects to choose where, when, and how they want to engage with you.
• Drive consistent in your message that keeps prospects informed – With multiple channels, you can ensure that your prospects are making informed decisions each time they interact with your brand through a consistent message across a variety of touch points.
• Keep your prospects in control – “No one likes being sold but everyone likes to buy?” The choice to interact with your brand where it’s most convenient to the prospect puts them in the driver seat and begin the buying journey. It takes 7 to 9 contacts with a prospect before they buy and they see or hear only 1 out of 3 so that is 27 messages to get you to sales heaven. Multi-channel marketing makes it convenient for your prospects to learn about your company and gives them the right information on their favorite channels at their time.
• Personalize your efforts for each prospect – What works best for one person may not work with the next. If you go single channel, your message will only impact a small part of your potential market. By using multiple channels of attack you reach people at different digital touch points.
• Fine tune your marketing strategy by measuring each touch point –You need to have an understanding of how to leverage channels in the context of each prospect or customer. This ideal process requires you to be able to target the right people at the right time – delivering the right message and most value with an integrated, multi-channel approach. Then you to measure what works and what doesn’t work to refine this strategy.
  
  

So you may be wondering what you can do right now to implement this type of strategy? According to a 2015 study by Econsultancy and Adobe, only 14% of marketers said they were running coordinated marketing campaigns across multichannel.

To help address this challenge, I’ve highlighted three simple ways I’ve seen Radius customers engage their prospects across multiple channels.

3 examples of multi-channel marketing

It’s important to note here that these are just a few simple examples used by other leading businesses to leverage multi-channel marketing. While this is by no means a definitive list of campaign ideas, the goal here is to inspire you to rethink marketing strategy with multi-channel driving the change:

1) Combine digital with email into telemarketing

Our customers have seen an increase in appointments when they launch a social campaign in combination to an email before anyone starts making calls. Here’s an example – You’re a window cleaner and its winter the weather is bad, snow & sleet are blowing all over the place making windows dirtier than normal, no one really wants to go out and clean them, so try running a campaign to a Facebook custom audience promoting your company. Then, start an email campaign, have your reps follow up on that same list with phone calls. This not only gives your business multiple hits to your target, but the digital ads, the email and the phone help warm up the prospects for your sales team. Prospects tend to be more receptive to speak with companies that they are already familiar with. 7 times familiar.

2) Leverage Direct Mail with email campaign and a telemarketing call

There are multiple creative ways to integrate these 3 channels. One example is to monitor how prospects are hitting your digital ads by hits and then customize email campaigns based on level of engagement on different posts. Target the email to the areas that have the greatest interest to your target. Chances are, what is the greatest interest to the majority of your nitch is of interest to all your nitch. If someone is engaging with multiple ads on multiple platforms an email that offers a clear call to action that is opened and then followed up on will drive sales higher faster.

3) Bring all together

The strategy I have the most success with is when customers let me take and use all their channels that are available together in one seamless integrated single message effort. In fact multi-channel strategies generated up to 24% higher conversion rates. This should include leveraging social to build awareness, email and direct mail to drive sales, and then the all important follow up phone call to bring prospects deep into the sales process and the actual sale itself.

Wrapping up

It’s no longer enough for marketers to be using one, single marketing channel – you need to match the buyer’s journey, with the way they like to be approached and target prospects across multiple channels. The more broadly you get your message out, the easier it will be for prospects to know who you are, what you do, and why they can benefit from your product or service.

Experiment with your available channels, use historical data to guide your testing and try to find the optimal mix of channels that gets you in front of the right prospects at the right time in the right way, and don’t forget the telemarketing follow up call or you will waist 95% or your effort.

Larson Notes & Satire: 

It is hard work getting new clients. So I have to ask you why are you sitting back and only using 1 or 2 tools you could be working with when you have a complete tool box right at your fingertips (or keyboard)? People what to, need to, will make you talk to them like they want to weather you like it or not so you had better just start liking it.

Getting good sales results is a hard, process. If your sales are stalled out we have ways that can make it happen for you that are cost effective and will give you results!

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.

Class for becoming a professional Salesperson

Over the last 6 months I have seen a lack of sales professionalism.

From my companies lead generation work salespeople are handed qualified sales leads and are not able to close them. They are not even hitting a 5% (1 out of 20) closing ratio, and that is after going through an initial leads generation process where the really bad prospects (or do you say suspects) are already taken out. Then there are the sales people who call me up try to sell me something. Yes, I answer my own phone so be careful when calling. It is one of my ways to find new associates and interview them without their knowing. I will even tell them I have no interest in what they’re selling or just say no and yet they still PUSH. Sad, so sad.
 
To that end I am opening up what I have only done with interns at college level in their quest to become sales and marketing professionals and hit the ground running so they can pay off their student loans.
 
For the small investment of $30.00 per secession (free if you’re a Larson & Associates client) plus the cost of your meal at the designated restaurant (not free) where your groups is meeting we will be covering:

Course Syllabus:
1) Introduction and The all mighty 7 to 30 second introduction.
2) Identifying your service, product, market and territory.
3) Promote your company with different marketing channels.
4) Prospect and gathering information about your potential accounts.
5) Attracting your prospects attention and interest quickly.
6) Probing to learn important facts about your prospects.
7) Uncover problems or situations your prospect might need to move forward.
8) Solve your prospect’s pain and problems to everyone’s satisfaction.
9) Demonstrate your solution to solve a prospects pain or want of gain with facts, advantages and benefits you can uniquely give.
10) Create a climate of desire for your prospect to buy from you and you alone.
11) Asking for the order
12) Handling objections.
13) Closing the order and creating a customer for life.
14) Know your numbers for long term success.
15) Conclusion
 
Requirements:
1) You must have 5 to 10 hours a week minimum to put into working through the program to achieve sales results during a 30 week period We will be meeting fortnightly.
2) Morning breakfast and lunch times are available.
3) You must have some flexibility in your schedule to work with YOUR prospects and clients from your first meeting to closing of the sale. Prospects don’t work on your schedule but theirs. To be successful in any kind of sales you need to keep the customer’s needs at the forefront of your thought process.
4) You must have a love for people and working with them to find the best solution to their unique set of goals and problems.
5) You will be doing actual commission sales during the semester.
6) Must have a base understanding of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and craigslist to name a few programs and social sites we will utilize.
7) Must have own your own computer and have access to the internet
8) You will be required to write a weekly blog post with full name credit.
9) Phone telesales as well as some (possible) face to face
10) Plans are underway to find a suitable venue offer this course training online in a small group setting so those not in Chicagoland can participate.

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 teleprospecting for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Know Your Numbers And The Sales Funnel

A friend of mine, Aki Jackson is always asking the question, Do you know your numbers?

In my business, target marketing and telemarketing for lead generation, I deal with 2 kinds of numbers.

The 1^st are what I call the “Magic Numbers” These are the key figures that tell you ahead of time if your business is going to grow or shrink. These could be anything from how many inbound inquires you have, to how many new proposals you put up this week, to how much junk mail your company got. Ok that might be a stretch but some of these magic numbers can be that off the wall.

The other number I am going to talk about here are your ratio numbers. The numbers of sales in your industry and your company that it takes to convert to a sale. How many raw leads does it talk to get a prospect, how many prospects does it talk to get an inquiry, How many inquiries does it talk to get an appointment. How many appointments does it talk to get a quote or proposal and how many quotes does it take to get a sale or project. And last how long or short is your sales cycle?

This brings us to the sales funnel. A sales funnel reveals to you how many prospects you have in each part of your sales cycle, and also details the conversion rates for each stage. This will tell you whether you have enough deals in your funnel to meet your goals, and whether you need to give special attention to certain areas of the sales cycle.

This number differs with each kind of business and each business within a specific industry. So Do you know your ratios?  Do you know your industries base line ratio numbers?

If you had 100 raw leads and started contacting them how many prospects would you get? Figure it out.

If you got 1 out of 20 you would have 5%, 1 out of 15 6.66%. But you need to understand that each of us have different and unique ratio numbers. They are ours and ours alone.

You can only manage what you can measure. If you have just 12 deals in the first stage of the and you KNOW you need 20, then it’s a clear sign that you are in trouble and need to find and add at least 8 more new prospects in order to achieve your numbers

If not there are 4 different things you can do:

1) Get deals from stage one to stage two quicker. Moving projects though the funnel faster.

2) Increase the size of the projects

3) Increase the size of your projects by up-selling
4) Practice and learn the art of salesmanship

 The challenge for most companies is to generate enough good quality sales into the funnel and to keep adding enough leads on a steady basis into the sales pipeline. Telemarketing and teleprospecting, when used in conjunction with other forms of marketing such as Blog, Social Media Marketing (seo)Content, SEO, E-blasts, Website and Analytics can be an effective means of communicating with your target market.

It is essential that you are set-up for success with your telemarketing and teleprospecting activity, by having good quality content on your website (people often visit your website after they have been called), a dedicated landing page to measure the success of your campaign and follow-up materials that can send to people that are interested in receiving more information.

A good quality database is vital to the success of any telemarketing and teleprospecting campaign.  Once you know your ideal client you need to find the correct database based for your target market and decide on what qualifies as a qualification lead. Then carry out the telemarketing and teleprospecting campaign. If required, you need to be make adjustments on the fly in order to ensure the best possible results. These types of campaigns typically generate some sales ready leads but many are marketing qualified leads that are not yet ready to convert and nurturing. So starts the sales process

Larson Notes & Satire:  Easy and hard all in one. So do you know your numbers and ratios?

And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

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 teleprospecting for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Speeding Up The Sales Cycle with Telemarketing

Telemarketing and telemarketers are a rare breed. Telemarketing is not only a perfect marketing way for businesses selling products/services to their target market at a pretty low price but for B2B markets it can speed up the sales cycle for the more expensive sales representative regardless of its simplicity or complexity . Telemarketers are usually helpful at the initial stages of a sales cycle. After that, the sales representatives should take over to close the deal.

It Speeds up the Sales Cycle

Early in the sales cycle, it takes thousands upon thousands of calls made to a list of thousands and thousands of customers and prospects. Some end as leads and some don’t. Telemarketing and teleprospecting are perfect for making the kind of high volumes of cold calls necessary at this stage of the sales cycle. At the back end of the sales cycle, customers require more detailed information on the service/product. This is the time for sales representatives with a higher level of product skill and understanding to convert prospects into customers. It is just as unpractical to expect a telemarketer to close a sale as it is to expect a sales representative to make 1000s of cold calls.

Role Of Telemarketing Services

Telemarketing services assist in generating leads by handling the bulk of phone calls. This cuts down the sales cycle for the sales rep. A business can start telemarketing job in-house or can contract out to another company like Larson & Associates for a better Return on investment (ROI).

Creating a telemarketing team and having them called to thousands customers won’t get results unless of course they are trained well to increase the value of the sales cycle. Automated calls are usually end hang-ups. Therefore, in order to yield results it’s important to train telemarketers with business processes and on customer dealing to avoid such issues.

Benefits of Telemarketing To Businesses

Fixing Data:

Databases that are publically available have a lot of inaccurate or inadequate data. Telemarketing services can come in and correct the information so your sales representatives won’t have to. Its time better spent else ware. Come to think about it most in-house lists are messed up as well, sometimes even more so because no one is in charge of cares about keeping it up to date.

Accumulation of Proprietary Data:

Telemarketing services can also assist in adding proprietary data to the prospect’s records within the database. This includes company’s decision makers name, equipment replacement, etc. which is all helpful in the timing sales calls.

Aid in Building Brand Identity:

Telemarketing services also aid in brand building even when the calling doesn’t yield leads. Calling to the same prospect or customer again and again establishes a feeling of stability and visibility.

Timing Is Everything:

After collecting relevant information, telemarketing can set-up the sales representative’s call. When a customer tells the telemarketer that the equipment needs replacement at a particular time, or they have a project coming up to bid on, the sales representative can call at just the right time to focus on the sale.

Your business shouldn’t spend valuable time and resources in the early stages of the sales process. Use your skilled sales representatives to concentrate on the later phases of the sales cycle.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Use the right people at the right time.

For the telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads in your funnel.

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 teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Larson’s Business Expansion Checklist

How to expand your business? You have more ways than you might realize. Here is a quick checklist for you to plan out your expansion. Think of your existing markets, your customers, your produces and services and your distribution channels and try to generate new alternatives for your business in these approaches.

A. Teleprospecting.

B. Hire a new salesperson

C. Sell more of your existing products and services to existing customers

D. Develop new products for existing customers.

E. Open up new markets for existing products and services.

F. Penetrate new markets with new products and services.

G. Create new uses for existing products.

H, Segment existing markets by customer types

I. Change your markets perception of your products and services.

J. Change your approach to your existing market.

K. Develop new channels and outlets for existing products and services.

L. Reposition existing products and services.

M. Fragmenting existing products, services clients and markets

N. Creating add-ons to existing products and services.

O. Developing “downstream” sales and aftermarkets.

P. Introducing products as add-ons to products and services.

Q. Bringing new technology to existing products and services.

R. Create entrepreneurs to sell existing products and services.

S. Selling technology as well as products and services.

T. Sell “piggyback” products and services with other products and services.

U. Enter into alliances with other companies whose products, services, markets, clients, distribution channels and outlets complements yours.

V. Buy into markets, products, services, know-how and clients.

W. Offering a wider variety of products and brands

X. Target new pricing niches within your markets as well as specific pieces of your competitors businesses.

Y. Go to group meetings you have never been to before.

Z. Become an industry expert in your unique area or business.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Start here and then do some more brainstorming. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

If you need really help sign up for our “Pick My Brain Consulting”

http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Pick_My_Brain

When you need to talk to someone about growing your business do you know who to turn to about those hard problems? Larson & Associates gives you a way to tap into a vast resource of knowledge build upon years of experience, some good, and some bad so you can navigate the vast ocean of business life.

For the answer to your sales and lead generation problems call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes.

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 teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.