Business Growth Blog

It’s the beginning of a new year and you’re probably thinking about what you want it to look like for you. You may have some challenges you want to overcome or things you want to improve upon. I know I do!

It got me thinking...what if we shared our goals with each other to see if we can collaborate in some way?

The problem is that, for me, asking for help is extremely hard. But I recently learned a lesson that is helping me get over it!

In my world, I focus heavily on creating content for publishing online to engage prospects and generate leads. However, to make a sale, you have to talk to someone voice to voice eventually. Before I switched from sales to marketing, I made a gazillion cold calls every day. I learned a handy trick that I still use.

When making phone calls, you'll have to leave a voice mail message a good percentage of the time. The words you say on the voicemail make the difference between a “delete” or a “save.” That is why it's so important to get it right.

The problem is, sometimes I'm not as prepared to leave a voicemail as I should be, and I completely botch the whole thing. Or, I stumble over my words or just sound plain dumb. Do you ever wish you could just start over?

Sales is tough - there are a gazillion components you need to master to be really good at it. Because it's driven by feelings and emotions more than anything else, you need to understand how to connect with people and guide them through the decision making process.

There aren't many "sales" college degrees out there, and most salespeople haven't had much specific training. But there are definitely strategies that work - and don't work. It takes a lot of time, effort and know-how to become a sales guru.

That's why sales training is critical for successful sales teams. However, most sales training focuses on what to do once a prospect is engaged. That's great, but I was in sales for over 12 years, cold calling and knocking on doors, and the biggest struggle I had was actually getting an appointment. And it's even harder to get appointments now than it was back then.

Knowing what to do once you get a meeting with a prospect is important, but it doesn't do you any good if you're spinning your wheels trying to get the appointment in the first place!

Our client, Jill Konrath, author of two best-selling sales books, Selling to Big Companies and SNAP Selling, started a LinkedIn group called Fresh Sales Strategies back in August of 2008.

Her goal was to develop a community for salespeople to come together to share fresh ideas about what works in today’s selling environment.

When Moon Marketing joined forces with Jill to implement social media strategies in August of 2012, she had about 2500 group members. Not too bad! As part of our strategy development, we evaluated the return on investment in spending time developing an even stronger LinkedIn group. Here is what we discovered:

After the launch of my new website in August, 2013, I knew the next step was to start blogging and get more involved in social media. I do it for my clients all the time and consistently bring in website traffic and contacts, so I know it works.

I struggle the same as everyone else though - I get so involved in client work that my own marketing gets pushed off until later. Now, here it is, Friday morning, and I'm finally writing a blog which should have been done much earlier in the week.

Web conversion rate refers to the rate at which website visitors convert into leads.

This metric is determined by how many people download special content offers from your website. The website visitor has to fill out a form on a special page called a landing page in order to get access to your ebook, guide, kit, webinar, etc.

This report shows that we create landing pages that have high web conversion rates.

These days social media is a critical marketing channel for attracting new customers. It’s the new reality. However, just having a social media account doesn’t help at all. It’s what you say on social media - and how frequently - that’s important.

You can have the best content offers in the world on your website, but if no one knows they're there, they won’t get you any leads.

That’s why promoting the content you create wide and far is critical for lead generation. Building a following gives you an opportunity to promote your content to an increasingly bigger audience.

Here’s an example of how we are consistently helping this client build a following.