Business Growth Blog

I recently introduced you to my ideal monthly inbound marketing plan. If you want to get the fastest results with the maximum amount of help and support, it's definitely the way to go – hands down. If you do that plan, you'll have qualified sales leads, shorter sales cycles, and increased revenue in no time.

However, there is an issue with that plan that I'd like to address – it can be too much of an investment in time and money for a small company.

I was recently contacted by a company that needed some help fixing a problem they were having with their marketing. When I looked at their analytics, I was quite shocked. This is what I saw:

*Disclaimer:Ascend Business Growth was not involved in these results!

My contact (we’ll call her Sally) said that things were going pretty smoothly, but about a year-and-a-half ago they decided to take it up a notch. They hired a company to help them with their marketing strategies, including blogging and social media.

Sally was expecting things to increase at a faster rate, but unfortunately the scale tilted the wrong way. What the heck happened?

The main way to generate leads online is to put forms on your website. It goes beyond the "contact" form. Anytime you have a valuable content offer to share with your target audience, you can ask for information in order to download it.

The data you collect on the forms can be used to guide prospects through the buyer journey. You can use it to properly qualify leads to either send them to the appropriate sales rep or put them back in the bucket for more lead nurturing.

If you collect the right information about your prospects in the right way, you can use it to create targeted messaging that will keep the sales momentum going. However, I frequently see mistakes on website forms that make the data collected very difficult or impossible to use.

Salespeople are on the front lines interacting with prospects and customers all day long. They should be driving what content marketing creates for lead generation. I recently did and generated about 70 sales leads in one month. Here’s an example of how I did that:

Content Idea Generated Through Sales

One of my customers recently asked me if I had a blog template or some resources to help him start writing articles. I do have a solid process for that of course, but it wasn’t a resource I made available online. I have a ton of articles on my website about blogging as well, but none of them are the actual “process.”

The only way to sell is to communicate your message effectively to the right people.

Obviously, you wouldn't communicate with a toddler the same way you would with a teenager. In sales, you wouldn't (or shouldn't!) communicate the same message to all the various decision makers either.

For example, imagine you're selling technology to the HR department. The HR Director, CIO, and CEO may all be involved in the decision, and each one of those people has different agendas and priorities.

Salespeople are swamped. They usually have all kinds of required quotas so management can track their progress -- phone calls, meetings, presentations, proposals, etc. The response I hear from salespeople is that they seriously do not have time to learn and use social media for sales.

However, top sellers do use LinkedIn -- and very successfully. According to a survey of over 3000 salespeople done by Jill Konrath, top sellers spend over six hours on LinkedIn per week.

That same six hours could potentially be 50-100 phone calls if you’re dialing for dollars. But on the flip side, it can easily take 50 phone calls to secure one appointment. (On a side note -- what’s your phone call to appointment ratio? Check out the comments Fresh Sales Strategies LinkedIn group question I started to hear what other salespeople have to say.)

So here’s the main question: Where should you be spending your time for maximum impact? Hitting the phones or networking on LinkedIn?

These 2 sales prospecting tools can be very powerful in helping you secure meetings and close deals. Personally, I think they’re game-changing.

A couple of months ago, I decided I wanted to start actually communicating with my online network, and I thought LinkedIn groups would be a good place to do that.

It wasn’t long before, lo and behold, I started to get some sales leads from my efforts.

I don’t just go into Linkedin groups willy-nilly. I have a purpose, and truthfully, it’s not necessarily to sell. But the cool thing is, once you start putting yourself out there and getting to know people, sales start to happen. That’s what networking is about though, right?

Here are 4 really great reasons to start engaging in LinkedIn groups:

Here's the truth: If you aren't setting sales appointments, you're not going to get new customers!

Doesn't sound like brain surgery, I know. But getting appointments is, to me, the hardest part of sales. There are 3 types of new potential customers we're trying to reach:

1. Leads: Someone that knows they have a problem, has been researching solutions, and wants to learn more about how you can help them.
2. Referrals: Someone that received positive information about you from a mutual connection. They know they have a potential problem and are interested in learning more about how you can help them.
3. Prospects: Someone you think would be a good fit for your products or services, but they don't know anything about you.

Creating a website is hard enough, but the work doesn't end there. The truth is, the majority of people will probably find you on social media first.

For example, someone connected with me on LinkedIn today, and I read his company profile on LinkedIn to find out about what his company does. I got the info I was looking for and didn't even go to the website.

So, what does that mean? It means you have to treat your social profiles the same as you treat your website - not as an after thought, but as a strategic part of your marketing plan.

Your social profiles should have the same components as your website, including: