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Top 5 Ways To Generate Sales Leads

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

A business that hopes to expand cannot afford to be complacent and content with its existing customer base. By limiting customer outreach, businesses limit future potential income. To help with growth and sustain revenues, businesses should add to their prospect list every day. This can be achieved through effective marketing strategies that generate more qualified sales leads and conversions.

As a small business owner, you should explore several different options to expand your customer base. Businesses have successfully tried one or all of these strategies to generate leads.

1) Customer oriented marketing

There are way too many businesses out there offering products similar to yours. To make your marketing material – newspaper ad, brochure, newsletter, email, direct mail, internet ad – stand out from the crowd, you need a headline that grabs the customer’s attention instantly. How do you do this? You do this by addressing the customer’s need. A headline such as “No more bad debts” is more noticeable than “Collection Agency“. By focusing on the customer’s immediate problem, you stand a better chance of attracting attention.

2) Measure effectiveness and weed out wasteful efforts

A business usually employs more than one marketing effort to promote its products and services. But how do you know what works best? You know this by measuring the results of each marketing effort individually. Marketing involves money, time and effort, all of which are wasted for unproductive marketing tactics. For example, a web design company may find that 90% of qualified web design leads are generated through search engine optimization and pay per click advertising online. It makes sense to cutout other strategies and focus only on what delivers the best results.

3) Use your website to attract leads

Your business website is a great opportunity to influence customers. The appearance of the website should appeal to prospects and the content should convince them of your commitment to solve their problems. The web design quote should guide customers to enter the desired information in minimal number of clicks. Contact numbers, email addresses, fax numbers and inquiry forms should be clearly displayed. A user-friendly website wins customer’s favor and leads to repeat visits and recommendations.

4) Cross marketing for increased value to customers

Cross marketing is tying up with another business that sells products and services that complement what you sell. By doing this, you offer customers a complete set of services that meet all their needs and increase your own chances of making a sale. For example, website designers can build a relationship with copywriters. A green consulting firm can tie up with a company that sells energy-efficient equipment. These symbiotic relationships offer customers one-stop solutions and cost savings – an irresistible combination.

5) Address customer’s needs through questions

The goal of any marketing piece is to generate sales leads by getting customers interested in your products or services. One strategy that works well is to ask customers about their problem and provide a solution. A direct question that hits the nail on the head gets noticed immediately. For example, a question such as “Is loss of teeth making you lose your smile?” will have greater impact than “Do you need a dentist?”

Each of the above mentioned strategies work to increase sales leads. Analyze your marketing techniques and incorporate the suggestions to fill gaps. The effort will be worth the results.

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Posted in Telemarketing | 43 Comments »

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Social Networking | The Shockingly Powerful Business Tool You Thought You Knew All About

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

Your friends, family, clients, coworkers, and everyone else you’ve ever known all make up your social network. Thanks to Web 2.0, we now have powerful social networking tools readily available. These websites design are focused on allowing us to stay in touch, though. However, social networking on the Web is a powerful social media marketing solution that can spread the word about your business around the globe as well. Learn about how you can use social networking on the Web to start and grow your business by joining Tradeseam.

Enter Web 2.0: Web Design, E-commerce, and Social Networking

The social web refers to the collection of new, dynamic websites that have hit the scene in the past few years. Breaking away from traditional, static websites, these new sites are designed to allow users to interact with one another.

Wikipedia, for example, is a Web 2.0 encyclopedia of sorts. It’s got a ridiculous amount of information generated and edited by users of the site. Standard encyclopedias are static–unless you physically write on the pages. Wikipedia is designed to let anyone change or add an entry. It relies on crowd sourcing - the sheer volume of its users to sort out pesky issues like whether or not the entry is factual.

Social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, don’t claim to provide any information, but they are just as dynamic. Users make their own profile and then add friends, family, and acquaintances. Users then post updates about all sorts of things. Generation Y–essentially everyone born in the eighties–has a particular penchant for these sites. Businesses, at first flabbergasted by Gen Y’s constant, on-the-clock social networking, have begun to see just how useful these sites can be.

Say, for example, you start a small business. Who knows about it? Your friends and family know, so you talk to them about spreading the word. Imagine how much faster this process would go on the Web. If you’ve just started an e-commerce website business you can disseminate your link to hundreds of people very quickly. Thanks to the way these Web sites are designed, you can easily hit your target demographic, which means better sales leads and a higher return on Investment for your online marketing spend.

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Winter Olympians Do It For The Love Of The Sport

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

For many Winter Olympians, the road to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver has been paved with extra sweat. Their reward is a shot at a gold medal. They have no illusions about striking it rich in their chosen sports. After a few weeks of permanent vacation, some of us might feel the need to get back into the sports business. Other Winter Olympians, feeling the pinch of slumping economy, may simply want to generate some extra income. Either way, the small business market is ripe for Winter Olympians who want to launch new careers or simply convert their life experience into a lucrative, new business.

A thirty-year-old Winter Olympian usually doesn’t have the same tolerance for risk as the typical young founders of start-up companies. Even famous winter Olympians with substantial sponsorships should learn to bootstrap their companies with minimal investments, according to experienced small business advisers. An ideal small business for a Winter Olympian to launch should:

  • connect passion with profits by involving an activity you already love,
  • launch with under $10,000 of working capital,
  • operate from home or from flexible, short-term office space, and
  • either be a small business that you can run on your own or a larger business that can quickly begin operating without your daily presence.

Although these conditions might constrain typical entrepreneurs, you can leverage your fame, your connections, and your passion to build a small business with just a small amount of investment or time at risk. This way, if your small business fails, you can move on to a new one, take a part-time job or simply retire with no fears for the future. Small business experts highlight five success stories that represent the types of business that Winter Olympians can stat after retiring from the sport:

Skiing and Hobby Businesses

In a recent Miami Herald article, Shannon Bahrke, Michelle Roark and Noelle Pikus-Pace shared the story of how their individual passions evolved into a fully-fledged small business. Bahrke started her own coffee company called Silver Bean Coffee, which has six blends, including her signature D-Spin blend. The 2002 silver medalist employs other skiers in Salt Lake City and donates a portion of the sales revenues to U.S. Winter Olympic athletes. Pikus-Pace, a skeleton racer, is hopeful that her passion for hats will translate into more sales revenues. She designs the knit beanies lined with fleece and distinguished by the spiky “hair” growing out of them. She makes a red and blue USA model and summer hats. Roark’s perfume business has enabled her to stay in the sport through six knee surgeries. Michelle Roark owns a perfume shop in Denver called Voila where she sells her handmade perfume. She has six blends: For Real, For Ever, For Balance, For Focus, For Imagination and For Confidence. Roark no longer has any sponsors but wants to continue the lifestyle she loves. Many of them have taken their passion for the sport and launched sports training programs, apparel stores and equipment leasing outfits in snow resort towns such as Tahoe, Whistler, Aspen, Salt Lake, Denver, Breckenridge etc.

While websites such as Etsy offer online sales tools to beginners, more advanced e-commerce solutions can help hobbies businesses sell everything from finished goods to equipment rentals. Website design firms can help you post event schedules or showcase videos, while credit card processing systems remove the burden of accepting customer payments.

Real Estate Sales and Brokerages

Today’s economy might not seem ideal to launch a full-time real estate business. However, retirees such as Ed Judy have discovered that selling property part time can keep you active in the community while generating extra income. Although working full time as a real estate professional during a market slump can be challenging, a Winter Olympian retiree with less pressure for regular income can often provide higher quality customer service than the typical agent.

Recently profiled by his hometown newspaper, Judy combined the communication skills he developed as a law enforcement officer with the practical knowledge he learned during real estate training courses. As an independent sales executive, he can set his own schedule. Under the umbrella of a regional agency, he can trade a portion of his commission for sales leads.

Online Information Service

After more than three decades in the publishing industry, Ric Cox asked SCORE advisors for help combining his passion for real estate with his experience as a researcher. Instead of working as a broker, Cox decided to launch a subscription-based website for Chicago area real estate investors. An e-commerce solution deposits subscriber payments directly to Cox’s account, allowing him to pay staff members and freelancers that help generate high value content for the site.

While some writers test the waters with ad-supported blogs, Cox’s targeting of high-value information led to faster profits. Professional web design often means the difference between a site that looks like someone’s hobby and a strong online presence that generates income. Adding individual coaching, live webcasts, social networking capabilities to an online information portal can create more revenue streams for people that enjoy personal interactions.

Successful Athlete-Run Small Businesses Thrive on Low Overhead

Small business advisors often caution athletes to avoid franchises and other association programs that require hefty upfront fees. Free advice from other winter Olympian run businesses can prevent you from falling victim to investment schemes and fly-by-night operations. By limiting start-up business ideas to small businesses that can be launched with minimal training and low overhead, you can focus on the kinds of activities you enjoy doing without putting your entire savings at risk.

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Social Networking for Small Business

Friday, February 12th, 2010

With the emergence of  social networking as a heavy weight web 2.0 player, online marketing is going through a major face lift. Social networking sites like facebook, twitter, myspace and tradeseam are fast becoming the new past time for people of all age groups. And Social media marketing is allowing  small business owners and entrepreneurs to take advantage of the expansive reach and viral nature of these social networks to reach their target constituents and sell their products or services. However, social media marketing has its own set of challenges.

One of the biggest complaints from small business owners and entrepreneurs who would like to generate sales leads using social media marketing is that it requires a huge time commitment to build, engage, and create positive word of mouth. Social media marketing done right- requires frequent thought provoking posts, a critical mass of connections and timely interactions or follow-ups that can consume your entire day. For this to be an effective marketing strategy small businesses would need to hire a dedicated social media marketer to constantly stay on top of social networking sites that are mushrooming all over the world wide web.

Still one has to be very careful while marketing your products or services using social media  because the biggest assets that social networks provide small business owners – their expansive reach and viral nature – are also their biggest liability as its very easy for negative PR or word of mouth (WOM) to spread like wildfire on these social networking sites that can doom any business – large or small. The best way to promote your brand on social networking sites is by sharing information with users that have similar interests and converting them into brand advocates to spread your message.

Finally, social media marketing cannot be the only channel  for generating business leads or building your sales pipeline.  Every business needs to have a marketing mix that consists of more than one tactic so that your entire sales revenues are not dependent on the performance of this one media source. Online marketing channels such as pay per click, search engine optimization (SEO) and sales lead generation can be just as effective marketing channels and can help small business build a robust sales pipeline.

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Pay As You Go

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

The biggest advantage and the biggest pitfall of the internet is its expansive reach. While it is easy to take your business online, it takes a lot more to establish it as a viable online sales channel. Competition on the internet is fierce. It takes less than a minute for consumers to click through your website and bounce to the next. Lets be clear there is no such thing as barriers to entry when it comes to the internet.

If you don’t have the necessary expertise on your payroll, it is wiser to hire a professional web design firm and hand them the job. Internet marketing companies understand the complexities of online marketing and can help you navigate the fierce competitive landscape. They make sure you get the relevant web traffic by placing online advertising campaigns in the right place at the righ time. Social media marketing, pay-per-click, SEO, and content syndication are some of the strategies marketers use to drive targeted audiences to your website.

Apart from driving traffic to your website, you need to make the website convert the visitors into sales. Web design firms can make your website attractive to visitors not just by using pretty graphics and colors but also by making it easy to use and increasing sales conversions. No customer will wait around for a website that takes forever to load. Nor will they take the time to hunt for their needs. The website should be easy to navigate and well organized and converting sales leads should never be more than a click away.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms help get your website to rank high in organic search results on Google, Bing and Yahoo!. This is not a trivial task when you consider the thousands of websites that are competing fo the same real estate and audience.

If the price of hiring skilled professional seems too high, consider what you can lose with a mediocre website and average internet marketing – your customers, sales and reputation. What ambience, sales personnel and advertising do for your physical retail store is just what effective website design and internet marketing does for your online presence. If you do it right, the returns will make it worth every dollar you spend.

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How to Build a Successful B2B Lead Generation Pipeline

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

B2B spending on online lead generation is anticipated to grow at 17% through 2012. Though we have more b2b lead generation options today than ever before, online b2b media sites are not doing enough to take advantage of this projected growth in spending. There is not enough innovation in business lead generation products. The media channels are weak, measurement capabilities are frequently lacking and b2b companies do not have the resources to nurture, score and track the performance of the lead generation programs.

Here are the 3 keys to building a successful business lead generation pipeline:

  1. Objectives – When examining the lack of B2B lead generation success using online media, one of the core hurdles I have found is that B2B marketing executives are unsure how to measure, score and nurture their lead generation pipeline. Sure, b2b lead generation strategy is different for every industry and business, but I would argue that every B2B marketer needs to define the objective of their lead generation programs before spending a single dollar on them.
  2. Strategies – Once the overall objectives have been determined the marketer needs to identify the right media strategies and mix. Each industry and each niche will have a set of online media sources,types of programs and tools. You need to first identify the media sources and mix for your business even before allocating the marketing budget to them. Unless you spend the time to identify the media sources and mix that are required to achieve the overall objective, half the money you spend on the online media will be wasted; the trouble is, you won’t know which half…
  3. Measurability – Finally, B2B marketers need to track the performance of their lead generation campaigns based on the objectives. For example, if the marketing objective is to reduce cost of sales, the marketer needs to able to measure the sales conversions by media source to determine the return on investment (ROI). On the other hand, if the objective is to create product or brand awareness. Then, I would argue that there are more effective ways to achieve your marketing objective, including standing up a website, section or portal with videos, webcasts, relevant content etc. and driving traffic to it via pay per click or SEO.
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Professional Web Design – Is it Expensive?

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Are you considering designing your website because hiring professional web design firms  is not worth the expense? If you are, have you considered what a poor website design would cost your business?

Many people think professional web design services are expensive. This is primarily because most people don’t really understand why they are paying such high fees for just pretty website graphics and colors. When you pay less you get just what you pay for – less web traffic, less conversions and less profits.

Here’s what you get when you hire professional web designers.

  1. Web 2.0 Expertise: Professional Website designers understand what they’re dealing with – not just the web graphics but also the latest web 2.0 technologies including  ajax, flash, iframes, mysql, cms tools etc. and white hat SEO guidelines to create relevant meta tags such as titles and descriptions so that your website appears higher in search engine rankings for Google, Bing and Yahoo!
  2. Effective Website design: Website designers can not only use their creativity to develop an attractive looking website but also make sure it is functional so you can capture business leads and expect to see higher conversions resulting in more revenues and profits.
  3. Easy To Update and Maintain: While website designers will make the major changes and revisions, they provide you with access to open source content managment tools and publishing platforms such as joomla, drupal etc. so that you can keep your site fresh by making regular content changes keeping the Google search engine bots coming back to crawl more of your web pages and content. This gives your website more chances to appear in natural search resulting in more visitors to your website.
  4. Efficiency: The good web designers have the necessary tools to get the job done quickly. They also communicate with you regularly to keep you updated on progress and get feedback often during the design iterations phase to make sure your requirements are captured in the overall web site design.
  5. Add-ons: Many professional web developers offer comprehensive web services such as:

                  a. graphic design

                  b. e-commerce solutions

                  c.  online credit card processing capabilities

                  d. web hosting

                  e. domain name registration

                  f. content management tools

The design of your business website is critical as it provides potential customers with the first impression of your business. The customer’s first impression is very important in todays crowded business marketplace with customers having such limited time, a poorly designed website can turn them off instantly and you won’t even know as these customers were lost even before they picked up the phone or sent an email to inquire about your products and services.

More importantly, a creative website has the potential for viral marketing  in today’s social web where users, bloggers and journalists are likely to social bookmark and comment on social media sites such as blogger, wordpress, facebook, twitter, digg, stumble upon etc.  resulting in instant access to thousands of new potential customers.

In summary, the web has amplified the already crowded business marketplace by increasing competition tenfold as it has become easier to get access to new customers and serve remote markets via the web. Websites have become the new first impression of your business and developing a professional, robust and attractive website can help you stand out from the crowd.

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Telemarketing vs. Internet Marketing

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

Internet marketing has gained popularity in recent years, accelerated further by the current economic climate. Internet marketing is more targeted and measurable than traditional advertising. However, recent research data shows that telemarketers can convert almost 60% of calls into sales leads by using customized templates and scripts for specific customers. Additionally, telemarketing can qualify the customers before setting up the appointment by asking a few questions unlike internet advertising where it is not as easy  to qualify the user based on a click to your website.

The good news for online advertising is that the advertiser can choose to pay for performance where you can choose not to pay for the number of times that the ad appears on a particular site online but pay only when the user clicks on your ad and lands on your website.  This helps reduce the “marketing waste” and reminds us of  John Wannamaker’s quote which is so relevant today “I know half of my marketing dollars are wasted…I just don’t know which half!”.  On the other hand, the purpose of telemarketing is to make calls, qualify business leads and setup appointments for your sales team to close them into sales. Telemarketing companies get paid on number of calls made and not number of appointments setup. This has made it difficult for them to compete with internet marketing based on the “pay for performance” message that is so heavily used by internet marketing companies to shift more dollars online. But, if you are looking to target a specific customer such as the 14.6 million US small businesses or consumers with household incomes of $100K+ it may be more cost effective and easier to do so with telemarketing than online marketing.

Online marketing has gained more popularity because it is non intrusive compared to telemarketing that is often considered intrusive specifically when it comes to targeting individual consumers. The government has also passed several regulations including the “Do-Not-Call” lists so that consumers can register their phone numbers if they do not want to receive intrusive calls from telemarketers. However, telemarketing companies are still very much in demand when it comes to qualifying and targeting business leads and setting up appointments with business owners and decision makers.

Online marketing provides marketers with several options such as search engine marketing, search engine optimization, banner advertising and social media marketing. Each of them serves a different purpose depending on whether the marketer’s objective is to looking for a direct response or create an impression. It is important for every marketer and business owner to better understand the sophisticated internet marketing solutions and practices before allocating marketing budget to them or you will overspend and waste half of your marketing dollars on them. In comparison, telemarketing is very simple as its purpose is to make calls, qualify business leads, setup appointments and fill the sales pipeline so that the sales rep or account executive can  follow-up and close the sale.

To conclude, online marketing and telemarketing are both effective. But, its important for marketers and business owners to know their marketing objective, understand the various options and select the one that will best address their specific business needs.

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Posted in Telemarketing | 15 Comments »

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How To Make Your Business Lead Generation Efforts Pay Dividends

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

One of the greatest challenges faced by every business today is finding qualified business leads. You need to have a well thought out business strategy for generating leads to be successful today. There are a few critical steps you need to consider so that your lead generation efforts are successful.

The first step with lead generation is identifying your target market for your products and serices. You should consider hiring external market research companies to identify your target market – Is it the fortune 1000 companies, the 14.6 million US small businesses or the 300+ million US consumers? The market research should also be able to identify who is the decision maker, is it the CEO, CFO, CIO, individual consumer or the home maker. Market research is critical in determining the next steps in establishing a successful lead generation program for your business.

The next step is to use the market research data to analyze the online and offline behaviors of these decision makers so that you can determine where they spend their time while making purchasing decisions for your products and services. Why is it importnat to focus on both online and offline behaviors? Because users are spending 15% of their time online and the internet has made it very easy to do research before making a smart buying decision.

The third step is to identify these online destinations such as search engines, content sites, blogs, social and business networking sites or physical locations such as tradeshows, industry conferences and events that have become the CEO, CFO, CIO or indivdual consumer’s trustworthy resource for decision making. The media outlets and channels that these decision makers use may vary based on the type of business, industry, distribution channels and geographic locations. This is why a focused market research is important so that you can identify a few media channels to target your lead generation efforts as all of them may not work for your business. Also, it is not wise to reach your target customers through just one media outlet as you risk putting all your eggs in one basket for the most important aspect of any business – sales.

Once you have identified the media outlets where your target customers are seeking information while making these important business decisions you can start launching lead generation campaigns by creating different messages to draw the target customers as close to the point of sale as possible so you don’t have to qualify and nurture the sales leads before they convert into sales. This is an important step for you to get ahead of your competition as lead generation is a numbers game and by shortening the sales cycle time from when you generate the qualified business leads to closing them into sales you can leave your competition in the dust.

Finally, you need to constantly review and stay on top of your lead generation programs from identifying  the media sources, creating effective campaigns to sales conversions so that you can stay ahead of any shift in the market trends. Effective sales lead generation will require sinificant amount of your dedicated time and attention to help build a sustainable business. However, Tradeseam has just simplified the business lead generation process for every business owner, partner, CEO or President so that they can stop overspending on programs that don’t deliver an ROI for their business and can now focus their precious time on building the business by taking the higher profit margins fromleads gnerated by Tradeseam and re-investing it in the business for future growth.

To make sure your business lead generation efforts pays dividends, you need to focus on the media channels where your target customers are spending their time both online and offline, create messages to capture the potential customers as close to the point of buying as possible, qualify the leads to shorten the sales cycle time from the creation of the business leads to closing them into sales so that you can get a high ROI from your lead generation programs.

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Top 5 Return On Investments (ROI) For Your Business In 2010

Friday, January 15th, 2010

The recession is forcing small businesses to slash budgets and re-roganize for the new economy. Relentless focus on return on investment is the objectives for every business in 2010. Two trends that are gaining popularity are more outsourcing and a shift to online marketing and advertising. Five business ideas that will gain momentum in 2010 are:

Social media marketing

Social media has become increasingly popular with the young and the old. Social media marketing companies tap into this pool to market your business to a wide audience and create a buzz through forums and discussions. It is an explosive medium as word of mouth can spread about your business like wild fire. Vigilant businesses can enhance their customer relationships and build a customer-friendly image by monitoring and addressing any negative feedback that is posted on these websites so it does not result in bad PR.

Search engine optimization

Nothing can trump your website ranking on the first page in organic search results on Google, Bing and Yahoo!  for relevant search keywords. White Hat SEO companies  focus on building relevant traffic to your websites by researching on keywords that will convert into sales, effective link building to make sure your website is indexed by tier 1 search engines so your website can be found by users online, link baiting to attract visitors to engage with the content on your site and social bookmarkingof your website on the relevant social networking and media properties.

Pay-per-click marketing

PPC campaigns eliver results that are measurable and can provide a significant Return on Investment (ROI)  for your business if you can identify and bid on the keywords that result in conversion into qualified business leads or credit card merchant sales. Search Marketing companies make sure your ppc campaigns are more effective by placing the right bids so that you can meet your ROI objectives.

Call Centers

While businesses have been compelled to lay off staff to slash their expense budgets for 2010, work still needs to be done. By outsourcing call center services, businesses ensure trained l center professionals handle customer service calls, interact with suppliers, take orders, qualify sales leads, provide technical support and also act as an answering service, all at significantly lower overhead costs.

Medical Billing

Outsourcing Medical billing can alleviate the workload on healthcare practitioners and medical centers by solving the time consuming task of filing claims, keeping track of medical billing and code changes, collecting revenues on difficult claims so healthcare professionals can focus on their primary focus ie providing for healthcare to patients and consumers.

As more small businesses rely on outsourcing services and permanent temporary staffing to keep expenses low, we can expect the US economy to recover from the deepest recession since the great depression.

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