To find and acquire self-educating, invisible buyers your company needs to set aside your traditional funnel based sales mentality and sales prospecting tools and augment your current approach with social selling. Instead of seeing your selling process as a funnel to be filled at the top with unqualified prospects, picture it instead as a radar …
What do you do when you’re not getting as many leads from your website as you think you should? Should you advertise more? Should you activate PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertising) or should you focus on creating outstanding content marketing to drive inbound marketing leads? It’s a classic chicken and egg discussion — one that I just …
How do you prove the ROI of your social media efforts? For most people, social ROI is proved by measuring likes, follows, tweets, retweets and clicks because they don’t think they can link social media activity to sales conversions. And truth be told, for most of the inexpensive social media management platform options available click/follow/tweet …
The first step in developing a Propinquity Marketing Strategy is defining your key Propinquity Points. The technique varies by category, industry and prospect but here is a repeatable four-step process that can serve as your starting point. It’s the same process I use with my clients and we find it to be an excellent jumping off …
According to a 2012 Edison Research Study on the Podcast Listener awareness of podcasting has grown 105% since 2006 and the percentage of people indicating they have listened to an audio podcast has grown 163%. But access to a growing audience isn’t the only reason to consider adding podcasting to your social selling toolkit. Here are three key …
I love how my funnel optimized website helps invisible buyers become visible sales leads. This site, which was created by Copyblogger Media is built on the Genesis WordPress platform using a customized Streamline child theme. To enhance the site’s ability to power my social selling efforts, and serve as a never need a vacation painless …
Every day I talk to sales and marketing executives that lament their inability to convince their company to adopt social selling, inbound marketing and content marketing strategies and tactics. In fact I’ve gotten this question so many times that today I want to share with you the advice I give each of them. It’s a …
Studies show that self-educating buyers regularly download white papers and eBooks as part of their pre-purchase research. They’ll gladly trade an email address for good information that helps them make a buying decision or just makes them smarter. But far too many companies today are making a huge mistake with their white papers and ebooks. …
I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally be able to tell everyone this incredible news — my first social selling book, The Invisible Sale is finally available on Amazon and B&N. A recent BtoB Magazine survey of US B2B marketers found that in 2013, 60% of respondents cited generating more leads remained their top challenge. And …
Lately I’ve been getting a lot more requests from to conduct LinkedIn Networking Workshops for B2B sales teams. It seems companies and organizations are finally waking up to the fact that LinkedIn is so much more than an online resume collection. At the same time I’m seeing an uptick in really bad LinkedIn networking attempts. …
Ever have a salesperson claim they don’t have time to play on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+? If you answer no, then you’re either a liar or not listening closely because it’s the most common thing social media consultants have been hearing from sales organizations for as long as social media has been around. And …
Hashtags were ‘invented’ as a way for a group of people to follow a single conversation on Twitter. If you’ve ever seen a tweet with # preceding a word, you’ve seen a Hashtag. Â One of the greatest uses of Hashtags is to create real-time, ad hoc chat rooms called Tweet Chats or Twitter Chats. These …
Can’t see the audio player? No problem, click here to download the entire interview with Tom Martin from SoloPR LIVE from Atlanta! After Tom’s exciting presentation on Painless Prospecting at the #SoloPR Summit in Atlanta, he sat down for a podcast chat with Marketing From The Street hosts, Todd Schnick and Todd Youngblood. The guys …
The single most important thing to think about when crafting your  website or blog — is not how beautiful it is but how well it functions as a lead generation machine. Probably the single biggest mistake companies and people make when crafting a website is that they focus entirely too much on the physical beauty …
If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me, “How do I sell on Twitter?” or “Can you really use Facebook for B2B sales prospecting?” or the big question lately, “How can my sales people prospect better with LinkedIn?” I’d spend a whole lot more time with my kids and my handicap would …
In sales organizations around the globe sales & marketing executives are debating the merits of inbound marketing versus outbound marketing B2B approaches. Unfortunately, many of the discussions are akin to hardcore democrats versus republicans with each side trying to paint the issue in black and white. While I wish it was that simple, it’s not. …
The single most important thing any professional service organization can do to ensure it’s long term existence is to create and maintain a systematic, ongoing business development and lead generation machine. New prospects are the lifeblood of every business and a steady flow of them will ensure your continued existence. To learn how you can do …
Research from Google shows that now more than ever, Woody Allen was right – Showing Up is 80% of social selling success. Today’s self educating B to B buyer is increasingly turning to sources other than salespeople for information. Number Of Sources Buyers Consult Google’s ZMOT Research, released in 2011 revealed that consumer shoppers consult …
Seduction isn’t about what you say, it’s about how you say it — and yes, that goes for B2B Sales Prospecting as well. Anyone can belly up to the bar and ask someone for their phone number just as any sales person can hand you a business card and suggest they have the perfect solution …
If your business to business strategy is based on positioning your product or service as best in class then I’ll bet you’re targeting the wrong audience with your marketing. That’s right, I’d like to make a little wager with you. I bet by the end of this post I can convince you that your current …
How often do you make presentations? Maybe they’re sales presentations, or maybe you speak at conferences, or maybe you create training courses for your company or clients. How much time do you spend creating those presentations? I’m guessing that if you added up all the time you spend writing, designing, practicing and then delivering a …
Somewhere in heaven there is a magical phone. Each time a salesperson picks it up to dial a prospect, the person on the other end answers and is actually highly qualified. In fact, she wants to talk about buying what the sales person is selling. What if that phone existed? What if instead of working your …
Earlier this week I had a chance to talk with a bunch of Realtors about how they might consider using Social Media and digital tools to sell more houses by leveraging social selling techniques. During the course of the talk I mentioned how social media helps them to painlessly prospect. A few seemed to take …
I’m learning to love LinkedIn more and more as a B2B sales prospecting tool. But the more I use it, the more I wish someone at LinkedIn would get off their ass and make the platform what it could be versus what it is. Right now LinkedIn is a great tool for networking but leaves …
Last night I received an email from a hotel chain asking me to review a recent stay. I’m a fan of this particular chain, like their properties, and the one I stayed at wasn’t one of their best, so I thought I’d be helpful and answer this survey. Problem is, I never finished. Like to …
Is there a right way to network in social media? I don’t know if there is only one right way, but I’m pretty sure there is at least one wrong way. Let me explain. Over the last week or so I’ve been following a little dust up over in a LinkedIn group I joined. It …
If you’re spending time in the social media space strictly for the joy of conversation, you can skip the rest of this post. BUT if you’re spending time on social networks with the goal of building a tribe of Social Agents that you can activate to grow your business, help a cause you care deeply …
Hiding Some Sort of ‘Proprietary’ Trade Secret? You’re a Fool Do you have a proprietary approach to strategic planning, media planning, brand development or anything else at your agency? Or maybe you have a trademarked, super top-secret-can-only-show-you-during-our-new-business-pitch-meeting process that is proven to make bland brands grow? If you do, you’re not alone. I too remember …
Over the last couple of years I’ve offered up a few thoughts on resolutions your agency should be making to remain competitive in the coming year. Here’s this year’s installment. Continue reading article on AdAge.com >>
...I’ve been lucky enough to have clients for whom I was all in. I lived, breathed and slept their brand, their product and the product category. Continue reading article on AdAge.com >>
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