Business Growth Blog

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 won't get new customers!

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

1. Leads: Someone who knows they have a problem, has been researching solutions, and wants to learn more about how you can help them.
2. Referrals: Someone who received positive information about you from a mutual connection. They know they have a potential problem and want to learn 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:

Isn’t that the question of all questions - how do you get sales meetings with new prospects in your niche market? It’s strange being on the fence between a marketer and salesperson. (I’m a salesperson turned marketer).

On the one hand, as a marketer, I know that the best leads will come from the awesome content I create and promote. On the other hand, as a salesperson, I need business - today. I don’t have time to wait 6 months for my company’s brand new blog to start generating leads. I don’t have time to wait for my marketing team (if I have one) to start creating gated premium content. I’ll get fired - or go broke - if I don’t set meetings right away.

Read on to find out how to get sales meetings from a marketing perspective vs. sales.

If you don’t know what marketing activities are getting you the most leads and customers, you could be wasting money on campaigns that aren’t helping you at all.

There’s nothing worse than spending your hard earned money and not getting anything in return!

Here’s a quick video to show you how monitoring your website traffic sources can help you stay focused on marketing activities that get the best return on your investment.

If you've never done inbound marketing before, or have only dabbled, you're probably foggy about how much this all costs. What does an inbound marketing program look like?

Every company is different, so in order to get a true picture for your business you should talk to an inbound marketing consultant to help you create a plan that is reasonable for you. The examples I give below are very general just to give you a snap shot of what a plan might look like.

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.