Everyone loves digital advertising for its tracking capability vs traditional advertising. It’s easier to prove digital marketing ROI vs traditional advertising because digital makes the invisible buyer visible. But is this focus on clicks causing you to miss conversions? Let’s talk about that today. You Can’t Sell To Invisible Buyers In our zeal to prove …
A few weeks ago Tom had a chance to sit down with Luke over at Toucan Advertising to talk about how ad agencies, pr agencies and frankly anyone in the consulting world, can turn conversations into customers. The podcast, Briefly, is about 30 minutes long and they covered a number of topics including:How the worst day …
Every day you find another article about some new Social Selling tip, trick or tactic to improve your sales prospecting success. So you read, follow and try. But that’s a recipe for sales prospecting failure. Everyone is asking themselves the same question – “What’s going to change in social selling or sales prospecting?” “What’s going …
Do you remember the story of The Trojan Horse? In the story, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse and hid a select force of men inside. The Greeks pretended to sail away and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night the Greek force crept out of the …
This morning I read an interesting research study indicating that 57% of B2B Marketers felt “Getting targeted prospects to engage” was their #1 challenge in generating new leads. Following closely on the heels was “Finding leads that convert” at 55%. “Finding Qualified Names,” usually considered one of the biggest challenges was a distant third at …
Social Selling, like most things in life, is a marathon, not a sprint and you should act accordingly. Social Selling Techniques are about making an investment today that will generate sales in the next month, quarter or year. But for companies or people just starting out, let’s talk about how to begin and where should …
I don’t have time to play on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook—I have sales calls to make. Ever heard that one before? It’s been the most common thing social selling trainers and social selling agencies have heard from salespeople for as long as social media has been around. And this belief is the key reason that most sales …
How do you track social selling and content marketing success in a world where 65% of all content sharing is invisible to your data analytics software? What does sales prospecting success look like? What social selling KPIs do you track and report? Here is a simple solution. Dark Social Is Growing The chart from GetSocial …
Have you ever woken up one day with zero sales prospects in your sales funnel? I have. It was a pretty horrific day. Thankfully, I was able to fix the problem in under 48 hours because I focused on connecting vs converting. Today, let’s talk about what you can learn from my experience.A Day With …
Do you struggle with connecting your sponsorship sales leads and attendee leads lists? Leveraging people on each to help you create qualified sales prospects for the other? If so, this post is for you. A friend of mine produces large conferences and she struggles with leveraging the folks on each list, whose colleagues present sales …
You can’t sell if you can’t persuade. We all know that. But what you probably haven’t figured out yet is that digital content is the most persuasive tool in your sales & marketing toolbox and you’re not using it correctly. In my 2014 Content Marketing World talk — Using Content as Your New Sales Force — I talked about …
How often do you make a purchase that you don’t fully understand? I know I do all the time. If my house needs a new roof, I have to hire roofers who will provide the materials and complete the installation. But I know nothing about roofing! How do I make an informed decision about who …
A typical salesperson starts his day with a database full of unqualified prospects—a database that was populated by buying advertising, attending trade shows, purchasing prospect lists, or other networking activities. So, who do you call first? How do you know where to start? Here’s a proven way to help your salespeople find the prospects that …
We’ve all been taught that you only get one chance to make a first impression. Which begs the question — why are so many people forgetting that on LinkedIn? This is the blocking and tackling of social selling my friends. But so many are doing it so wrong… so let’s talk about how to structure …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …