Business Growth Blog

When it comes to all the functionality you need for lead generation, I came up with about 16 must-have marketing technologies- and that's just for starters. Truth be told, there are many others I wanted to include, but the list was getting too long.

Regardless, it's a LOT of stuff. Every technology costs money and they take time to learn. Worst of all, dorking around with technology can be a real barrier to actually doing marketing and generating leads.

Creating a marketing system that has all the functionality you need can be a challenge. You have 3 options for efficiently pulling all of these marketing technologies together.

There's no way around it: marketing requires that you have certain technological capabilities. Here's a list of the functionality you need in order to generate leads online (it's long, but there's an important reason for each component):

I was talking with an owner of an insurance agency the other day, and he was telling me one of his biggest challenges is getting his commercial insurance reps to clearly define their target audience. They’re struggling because they don’t really know who to start calling on.

It seems so simple: Who do you want to be your customers?

But when your service can span over multiple industries, it can be a real challenge. It’s still kind of a challenge for me and my marketing services! I could sell to a million different kinds of companies. Can’t I just sell to anyone who comes my way?

Sure I can. But the problem is that sales don’t normally "come your way." You have to actively go out and find people who could benefit from using your product or service and then convince them they would be better off working with you.

If you don’t clearly define your target audience and who you want to work with, sales is an uphill battle. Here’s why:

Many businesses are still foggy about how blogging can impact their revenue goals. Here is an example to help clarify:

Increase website traffic

Tactic: In your social media status update areas (like on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter) create a compelling short sentence that directs people to the blog article on your website.

Here is an example of a comment I would post on social media:

“Check out these three reasons why salespeople should start creating blog articles - https://www.ascendbusinessgrowth.com/blog/salespeople-should-start-creating-blog-articles.”

Once someone clicks the link, they are on my website. Okay, website visitors are great, but how does that affect revenue growth?

Most people have an aversion to blogging for 2 main reasons:

1. They think they can’t write or don’t have time.
2. They have no idea what to write about.

Regarding #2, you might not believe it, but coming up with blog ideas is easier than you would ever think.

Most companies are missing huge opportunities to use LinkedIn for business growth. Usually, employees are pretty much on their own. LinkedIn is technically a personal asset. As an employer, you can’t force your employees to update their LinkedIn account. The way they represent your company on their profile and to their network may – or may not – align with your corporate communication strategy. Companies can create a win-win by helping their employees develop strong LinkedIn profiles and habits.

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: