- Selling on LinkedIn
- Using Video for Demand Generation
- Selling through Podcasting
- Writing a book
Happy Selling
#salestrends #salesapproach #happyselling
Category: Lead Generation
Track your competition!
Those were the days I was hungry for leads.
I used to trouble my tech support guys for leads.
Not a good lead source, you say. Hang on.
One such day, my tech support guy said “go to xyz [name of a place]” unable to bear my pestering.
Not knowing where to go, I knocked on all doors & accidentally found a training institute & met few people. Left my cards with every other department where I couldn’t meet anyone.
Two days later, the unimaginable happened.
I got a call.
Rest is history.
That turned out to be a very big order for many software for multi location.
My colleague had been in touch with his ex-colleague & friend. He casually heard him say that he had been to that place but didn’t tell him the client name.
I found it out.
Later, I asked my colleague how did he get that lead. That’s when he told me about his conversation with his ex-colleague.
This story helps me work with optimism till date.
Takeaways:
- Follow your competitors, if you cannot be there before they do.
- Be optimistic.
- Ask your colleagues, if you are stuck somewhere.
- Be at the right place at the right time. If you cannot be early, that is.
- Highlight your strengths.
- Allow the buyer to contact you & help them make it their decision to choose you. This is very important.
#HappySelling
#b2b #changethegame #sales #marketing #leads #business #leadgeneration #competition
Dine with your customers!
There used to be light rain almost every day in the afternoons in Singapore. The already clean roads get washed up yet again. Smell of the earth would be evident all around. It makes you feel energetic and more productive.
One such afternoon, I was learning how to hold the chop sticks. From one of my customers. I was a Vegetarian then [Vegan now] but that was a Chinese restaurant that considers small fish as Vegetarian. I had to explain several times to the bearer both symbolically [in sign language] and verbally saying “no small fish”.
My guest taught me how to hold the chop sticks and I really learnt it. You won’t believe, I was picking up rice with the chop sticks. It surely helps to eat less quantity in one mouthful and chew it well. May be, a lesson in Sales as well: Take up only what you can chew. And chew it well.
What happens when you dine together? You get to know the person personally. You get to know their interests, likes, dislikes, passion, hobbies etc. You build a strong trust based relationship. You don’t go with an agenda. You go with the flow. Eventually, you build a great relationship.
That was not the first time or the last time I dined with Customers. Even in India, I have dined with Customers. That’s a secret recipe for a great relationship. Customers want to deal with someone who is as much human as themselves.
In the last few years, I have built a style that I follow, when I dine with customers & prospects. I narrate stories from my life and what I learnt from it. That sets up the conversation. I don’t intend to close or anything. But I have probably created a strong emotional buy-in in the minds of my customers.
I am sure you have stories like these as well from your Sales experience.
I think, majority of us in Sales, that includes me, do not stay in touch with customers with whom we had built a great relationship.
Take away: List down some of your old customers and get back in touch this week. You may be in for a surprise.
Happy Selling!!
Create Content else Curate Content!!
Today Customers are better informed than the Sales people themselves. They do all the homework before calling you for a discussion.
Content is King, as they say. And Marketing is the new Sales. Though it can never replace Sales, Digital Marketing & Inbound marketing is a given. And businesses need to invest in it.
So, how to create content?
- Make a list of what your customers are looking for. And write about them.
- Problems faced by your customers and probable solutions for those problems.
- Reference guides in your industry – trade them in return for email ids.
- Best Practices – will show your thought leadership on the subject.
- White Papers – can be completely unbiased on any topic. Need not narrow down to only what you sell.
- Approach Papers – what will be your approach for any given situation.
- Case Studies – what did Customer A do when faced with a certain issue and how did he become successful with your product or service.
- eBooks – helpful resources for various tasks or problems.
- What to do in any situation or what not to do – if you help your customers when they are stuck, there is a good chance that they will remember you when they are looking for what you are selling.
- Customer speak – not just testimonials but capture in depth customer experiences.
- Expert Views – collect views from experts in your area of operation on a particular subject and publish them.
- Events – Talk about the upcoming events in your Industry or your experience in a just happened event.
- Podcasts – nothing like a talk show and it will be interesting if you can invite industry experts for the show.
- Demos – You can have a YouTube channel to give a sneak peak in to your product.
- User guides – Let it be easy for your customers to locate them online.
- Last but not the least, Curate Content: it is not that you are the only expert in your industry. There are plenty of them out there. They are creating good quality content as well. Curate them. This should add to your credibility.
Happy Creating and Curating !!
Happy Selling!
For any help in Marketing, Sales, Startup Consulting or CRM Software, please contact me at:
kannan @ zignalytics dot com
#marketing #sales #crm #startupconsulting #digitalmarketing #inboundmarketing
Keep your Content Fresh!! Always!
Lead Generation Tips
Lead Generation and Prospecting are two very important activities for any Organization. These can make or break an Enterprise. In some Organizations, it is the Marketing team that does the lead generation and passes the Marketing Qualified Leads [MQL] over to the Sales team. And sales qualifies these leads before taking it further.
And Sales also does Prospecting. From making cold calls, running a survey, conducting a customer satisfaction audit, asking for customer references, engaging existing clients to warming up prospects who had expressed interest in the past, targeting named accounts, Sales does everything to generate prospects.
Let us take a look at some ways to generate leads:
- LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator: You should use it extensively to research, target and find prospects.
- Use your website to generate leads – by implementing SEO, Website optimization, Call to Action forms, giving free Ebooks, useful and educational blogs [like this one]. Just do everything under Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing.
- Webinar Attendees.
- Roadshow – visitors to your stall.
- Power Breakfast meeting attendees.
- Promotional campaign respondents.
- Customer referrals.
- Podcast Attendees.
- Customer Satisfaction Audits.
- Existing Clients.
Happy Selling!!