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Archive for the ‘Business Development’ Category

Increase Sales by Giving Your Sales Staff the Tools They Need to Sell

August 30th, 2011 by

According to an oft-quoted statistic by the American Marketing Association, B2B salespeople spend 30 hours a month searching for and creating their own selling materials. Even more astounding, 90% of marketing deliverables aren’t used by sales.

In a newsletter by the ITMSA, a researched-based organization that helps B2B companies market and sell more effectively, a member told the following story:

His company had developed a one-page PDF sales sheet but few salespeople used it. Why? The document contained an 800 number that didn’t allow sales reps to get quota credit. As soon as the company figured this out, they created dynamic PDFs that let salespeople customize the sheets with their own phone numbers and local information. Adoption went through the roof.

To increase sales, it pays to help salespeople do their jobs better — with collateral that helps them sell.

Ask Salespeople What They Need

According to IDC data, 30% of sales people say that the collateral they get from marketing requires customization. Likewise, Nigel Edelshain, in a guest post on The Pipeline blog, states that he created his own PowerPoint presentation customized for the industry he was targeting (banks) because his marketing department “produced some nice looking stuff [that had] mostly nothing to do with what [he] needed to close deals.”

You can solve this problem very easily by soliciting feedback from sales on how you, the marketer, can better serve them — simply send out an email asking:

  • What objections do you hear during sales calls?
  • What types of problems do you encounter during the sales process?
  • What messages do you need to communicate to prospects about our products?
  • What types of collateral would help make your job easier?

Simple Is Better

Developing marketing campaigns and producing beautifully designed collateral and online content is all good and necessary. When creating tools for salespeople, however, think simple. Salespeople love tools that get the point across fast. Consider the following:

Comparison sheets — Research how your products/services match up with the competition, and then give sales this information all on one page (it doesn’t have to be fancy to be effective). When a prospect says the competition is offering the same product at less cost, your sales rep can show that the products are actually quite different and why.

Objection-handling sheets — Often the same question or problem arises across many sales calls, e.g., the price is too high, installation is difficult, etc. You can help sales by crafting messages that overcome objections and that answer people’s questions.

Testimonials and case studies — Salespeople need these to show prospects that your company is solving challenges for other companies. Get in the habit of asking customers for testimonials as soon as a project or installation is complete. Case studies can be a little tricky because sometimes a company doesn’t want their name used. You can get around this by creating “mini” case studies in a problem — solution — result format without using any names.

To make things even easier, create an online portal just for sales where they can find this marketing collateral and quickly download it before sales calls.

Tell Sales How to Use Collateral

In the IDC article mentioned above, 41% of salespeople said they don’t know which collateral to use, how to use it or when. One way to overcome this objection is to tell salespeople how to use new and existing collateral. In her post for the Content Marketing Institute, Jennifer Watson recommends providing a user’s guide for each piece, which identifies:

  • The intended audience/buyer persona
  • The stage of the sales cycle it’s designed to influence
  • Key messages based on varying buyer personas and sales stages
  • The call to action to be reinforced by the rep

You can also send out “newsy” emails each month that alert sales to any new collateral and content created and where to find it on the website. Be sure to let sales know about any new campaigns you’re developing, industry research you’ve uncovered and messages you’ll be using.

Do all of the above and sales will love you!

What have you done to make your sales reps’ jobs easier? Post your stories below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category:  Business Development, Sales  |  Tags:   |  No Comments

LinkedIn: It’s Not Just for Résumés — 4 Online Networking Tips

April 19th, 2011 by

“LinkedIn is just for job seekers,” said a commentator on a blog I read a while ago. “What?!” I heard myself saying aloud. Of course job seekers use LinkedIn, but the site is also all about business — finding it, building it and nurturing it.

LinkedIn is one of my marketing tools of choice. I use it to connect with clients, prospects and vendors, and to conduct research “on the fly” while on conference calls. For example, if someone on the call chimes in with an astute observation, and I don’t know the person, I’ll look him or her up on LinkedIn that very instant.

As I wrote in my post, Three Ways to Jump into Social Media (Even If It’s Not in Your Job Description), social media fluency is an essential skill marketers must have, and one important way to show this fluency is by developing a LinkedIn profile and proactively maintaining it — even if you’re not looking for a job.

Can your peers find you?

In a March 22, 2011, blog post, 100 Million Members and Counting, LinkedIn posted some of its numbers:

  • The site is growing at roughly 1 million members a week
  • 44 million members are U.S.-based
  • 73 of the Fortune 100 are represented
  • The three largest sectors are Service (20%), Finance (9%) and High Tech (9%)

Google isn’t the only search engine in town. In 2010, people performed over 2 billion people searches on LinkedIn. Having an optimized and complete profile ensures your peers (and possibly recruiters) can easily find you.

Getting started: Develop or improve your LinkedIn profile

Despite the relative maturity of the site, I still meet people who say they haven’t taken the time to develop a profile. As the numbers above show, however, it’s vitally important that you do.

If you already have a LinkedIn profile and want to improve it, you can find lots of articles on how to do so. I especially like this one by executive job search coach Meg Guiseppi, 29 Biggest LinkedIn Mistakes.

If you’re really all thumbs and can’t figure how to get started, I recommend that you get a how-to book, such as Neal Shaffer’s Windmills or LinkedIn for Dummies, and then spend a weekend setting up your profile. Or, ask a well-connected peer whose profile you admire to help you.

The most important thing to remember is that you can’t “set and forget” your profile. To be effective, you need to continually manage and update it.

How to use LinkedIn to drive business

The best way to get maximum benefit from LinkedIn is to view it just as you would a face-to-face networking event. This means you can and should do the following on a regular basis:

1. Invite people you know to join your network

Invite your present and former co-workers, friends at other companies, people you meet at conferences or seminars, vendors and customers. Should you accept invites from people you don’t know? That’s your call — some people do, others don’t. The important thing is to connect!

2. Participate in group discussions

Look for and join one or two moderated groups (meaning, the owner or manager is actively removing spam posts and moderating discussions) and begin participating in the conversations. Why is this important? Because you learn new information as well as meet people (maybe your next customer!).

3. Regularly update your status with business-suitable news

You can post your achievements, links to articles or blog posts you find interesting, or a quick factoid from a business book you’re reading. Keeping your status updated ensures your name regularly appears in the news feeds of the people in your network.

4. Create and share non-promotional content

One of the nice things about LinkedIn is that you can customize your profile by using one or more of the many apps available.

These apps help you build non-promotional content that can spark discussions with people in your network, which is how new business is often generated. A few of the apps that business professionals may find useful include:

SlideShare Presentations: Do you speak or give presentations for your company? Are you an expert on a specific topic? SlideShare is an easy way to share your expertise as it allows you to upload presentations for others to view.

Reading List by Amazon: Being an avid reader, this app is near and dear to my heart; it lets me post the books I’ve read along with my opinion about each one. The nifty thing about this app is that people can follow your Reading List, further enhancing your personal brand and sparking discussions with people.

Polls: This easy-to-use app lets you quickly gather market research from your network — a mini focus group as it were. The poll appears on your profile; you can also post it to your various groups or in the Questions section and ask people to take part in the poll. Post the results to spark more discussion.

As you can see, LinkedIn is far from being a simple résumé site. To get the most from it, make sure your profile is up to date and then experiment with the various apps as well as participate in one or two groups. You’ll quickly see the benefits of using LinkedIn to help grow your business.

Have you generated new business from LinkedIn? Post your story below.

 

Category:  Business Development, Customer Acquisition / Retention, Lead Generation, Marketing Research, Social Media Marketing  |  Tags: , ,   |  4 Comments

Build Business with Face-to-Face Networking

February 24th, 2011 by

In this article:

  • The value of face-to-face networking as an important component of a marketing plan
  • Three pillars of networking that can support your business and lead generation efforts

Remember the days before Facebook and LinkedIn? Face-to-face networking connected people and businesses. And it’s still going strong. Despite the deserved trendiness of Facebook and LinkedIn, face-to-face networking remains an essential marketing touchpoint, a core discipline for communicating your brand message and generating leads.
Face-to-face networking provides three essential pillars that help you build your business and keep it strong.

#1 Not just leads, qualified leads.

The whole concept of face-to-face marketing begins with recruiting the support of your immediate sphere of contacts — business people who know you and trust the way you do business. This is your networking “salesforce” and the first circle of your customer base. With face-to-face networking, you capture their business and win their trust and support. This is called a first-tier referral.

Next, through their knowledge of and experience with you, you capture the business of the many people who populate their sphere of contacts. Clearly, the more members you have in your first circle of contacts, the greater the multiplier when you add in the second level of contacts they know. This is the underlying concept behind LinkedIn, except that here you are contacting potential clients through face-to-face contact.

Since you are coming to their contacts with a warm referral, the chances of a successful sale are greatly magnified. This process ideally generates high-quality leads that include the potential customer’s contact data, an introduction, and permission for you to reach out to them, as opposed to waiting for them to call you.

Face-to-face networking groups exist that utilize this marketing dynamic. For an insider’s view into what we feel is one of the best models out there, we talked to Nancy Ann Stubbs, president of the Boulder, Colorado Chapter of BNI (Business Network International). Last year alone, the global entity of BNI generated over 6.5 million referrals for its members, totaling $2.8 billion worth of business!

BNI adheres strongly to the networking philosophy of spheres of contacts as a mutually supportive “salesforce.” “It’s the key to what we’re about,” says Nancy Ann Stubbs. “I’m keeping you in the forefront of my mind while I’m out in the world, and hopefully you [fellow chapter members] are doing the same for me.”

Referrals by fellow members lay the foundation for the next point of contact. When someone refers you, they get the contact information you need to proactively follow up and start a dialogue. “It’s not just leads,” says Nancy. “It’s qualified referrals. And that makes the difference.”

#2 A concise, powerful brand message.

Face-to-face networking can appear somewhat casual and conversational (“let’s meet for drinks or coffee”), but it’s a bona fide business opportunity nonetheless, a chance to recruit the person you are meeting as a client and ultimately as a potential member of your dedicated “salesforce.”

Regardless of the formality of the context, you are always the face and voice of your brand. It’s essential to be ready with your message, and have a clear, articulate pitch about your business and its benefits. If you have not clearly defined what you have to offer, how can your contacts, your “salesforce” do it any better?

BNI believes in the value of a strong, concise pitch, and the members must practice what they preach. At each weekly meeting, every member stands up in front of the group and presents a 60-second commercial about their business, their unique value proposition. “It’s your story,” says Nancy, “it’s what you can offer, and what differentiates you.” BNI’s 60-second commercial is a version of the “elevator pitch.” Out in the real world, you have a minute or less to communicate to a potential client who you are, what you do, why what you offer is interesting, and what exactly you are asking the client to do in response. That’s not a lot of time to convey a large amount of information, so being able to practice and refine your pitch in the “safe” context of a mutually supportive group is very valuable.
A 60-second pitch typically includes:

  • your name and the name of your company
  • your unique value proposition (one characteristic of your company or service that sets your brand/business apart from others in the field)
  • recruiting — the type of referral you are looking for, and what you are asking the “pitchee” to do
  • a strong close to your pitch with a tagline that will help the “pitchee” remember you and your unique value proposition

We did it, and so can you! You can hear Heinrich Marketing’s 60-second commercial here:

Build your business

#3 A supportive environment.

Whether you choose BNI or another organization, make sure you’re getting the kind of support you need to succeed. The structure of your organization should encourage your professionalism, and help bring it to even higher levels.

Let’s look again at BNI. Because each chapter is run like a business, each member’s success is vital. As a result, you’re with a group of people who genuinely care about the health and wealth of your business. The weekly meetings start and end on time, just like a well-run business. Attendance is mandatory. Members arrive on time and stay for the entire meeting. The agenda is set out and adhered to, every week. Cell phones and Blackberrys are off. Each member is fully present, fully engaged in the presentations of their fellow members.
In such a group, the success of one member becomes the success of all. “Givers Gain” is the BNI motto. The more you give to others in the group, the more they will reciprocate, as all share a common goal. “This is my marketing team,” says Nancy Ann Stubbs of her fellow chapter members. “I’ve got 30 salespeople working for me all the time,” spreading the word about her business, and bringing her high-quality, qualified leads from their spheres of contacts.

Effective face-to-face networking not only brings in customers, but also creates advocates for your business — just like an online social media campaign does.

Make face-to-face networking a priority.

Social networking and face to-face networking share common goals and benefits. They are complimentary disciplines, not competing ones. A successful business will do both. Relative to social media networking, face-to-face networking has the added benefit of humanizing your brand, establishing trust and encouraging dialogue. Isn’t that what effective marketing is all about?

Category:  Business Development, Lead Generation  |  Tags:   |  No Comments

What We’re Reading: The Mirror Test, by Jeffrey W. Hayzlett

December 14th, 2010 by

When a Heinrich executive vice president recommends a book, we listen! This month’s great read came to us via Kathie Williams, a 30-year Heinrich veteran. She saw the author, Jeffrey W. Hayzlett, speak at a conference and says, “The anecdotes from his book really resonated with me because it got me asking: How can I use his lessons to help our clients?”

The Mirror Test draws on the author’s 25 years of marketing experience, including as CMO at Kodak, where he initiated an impressive turnaround. For us, the lesson at the core of the book was to keep asking questions about yourself as a leader and about the relevance of your company. Kathie explains, “It’s about being willing to adapt, diversify and keep pace with change as the industry evolves. I think it’s a big part of why our customers keep coming back.”

But Kathie’s favorite part — and ours, too — is “The 118.” According to Hayzlett, if you can’t pitch your business to someone in 118 seconds, you jeopardize your success. “The 118 seconds connects directly to the foundation of every business’s growth…It conveys to anyone what he or she will get from your business.” (18)
A 118-second pitch should:

  • convey who you are
  • explain what your business offers
  • speak to the promises you will deliver on

We like it! So we challenged ourselves: What’s Heinrich Marekting’s 118? Here’s what we came up with:

118 Second Pitch

What’s yours? Try this great exercise, and see where you stand. Or send us an email. We can help you refine your message — it’s at the heart of every successful marketing strategy!

Category:  Book Reviews, Business Development  |  No Comments

Rethinking Lead Generation

July 15th, 2010 by

Rethinking Lead Generation

Heinrich Marketing helps clients maximize lead generation results. One thing we’ve learned along the way: You can increase conversions and grow your business simply by applying new approaches to basic lead generation principles. 

 

Here are just a few ways to shift your perspectives and maximize the efficiency of your lead generation strategies.

Align your sales and marketing teams.

Successful lead generation must delicately balance brand, marketing and customer needs. So clarity is essential. Is the brand message concise? Does the marketing strategy support it? Most importantly, are both relevant to the customers? To find a shortcut to all of these answers, start on the front lines of the business. Take the time to listen to account reps or any customer-facing team, and make sure they and the marketing team are on the same page.

 

  • Communication is key. It sounds so simple, right? But days are long and departments are busy. Be sure to take the time to bring your teams together to catch up, share ideas and see the big picture.

 

Tailor your message to the consumer’s buying stage.

When a sale is a process, timing is everything. Talk to your future customer the right way, and at the right time. A communication can feel more meaningful and memorable if it comes at just the right moment. 

 

  • Consider CRM tools like print on demand as a way to maximize the effectiveness of your messaging.  It’s a cost-efficient way to both personalize a message to a moment in time and track the potential customer reading it, and it’s all in one tool. Learn more here.

 

Keep content fresh and relevant across communications.

Prospects across numerous categories spend time researching online before they purchase a product or service. So, search marketing might have already led your potential customers to your online or social media efforts. A website, a blog, a newsletter, Facebook — they’re all places to demonstrate your value, state your brand message and start (or continue) an engaging dialogue. Even better, an enthusiastic reader can forward these on to others, and generate even more leads.

 

  • Be honest and direct. Promotions and sales-speak can sound crass in a blog or newsletter. Talk straight to the potential customer at this level, to reinforce that you’re legitimate, relevant and worthy of an emotional connection. Learn more here.

 

Grow leads from your own garden.

Utilize your marketing database to look at current customers with fresh eyes. Through segmentation and targeting, you can evolve your relationship, and point them in the direction of other parts of your business. Your new perspective should also lead you to revisit potential customers who have expressed an interest in previous lead generation efforts, but didn’t act.

  •  Explore cloud-based CRM tools. Great for segmentation, reporting and managing the sales cycle, tools like SalesForce.com can simplify the path from lead generation to sale. Contact us to learn more.  

 

In all, these approaches to lead generation facilitate multitasking: You can cultivate the relationship in each stage and stay one step ahead of the consumers at all times during the sales cycle. That’s the key. When you always have a plan for the next step you want them to take, be it as small as watching a webinar or as big as the sale itself, you can more quickly guide consumers down the path that turns them into a customer.

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Category:  Business Development, Lead Generation, Segmentation  |  No Comments