Even before I discovered The Invisible Sale and started to build my Painless Prospecting approach to business development, I recognized the value of becoming known for knowledge. Whether it was appearing as a keynote speaker, writing articles for Advertising Age, or getting interviewed on NPR talking about the work I was doing to change the …
We just released a brand new 15-minute webinar specifically designed for advertising, PR and Digital agencies that want to learn how to combine my Painless Prospecting approach to building a consistent inbound pipeline of highly qualified, self-educated buyers that are pretty sure they want to hire you before you ever speak with them directly with …
On a recent virtual selling webinar we delivered one of the attendees asked “Do you have any suggestions on how to cut through the high-volume message clutter and information overload suffered by potential prospects?” Rather than limit my answer just to that individual, I thought I would share it with you too. So here are …
Prince wasn’t just a great singer, he was also a great sales prospecting philosopher. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at two of his songs and how he contrasts the painful traditional ad agency business development process vs a painless prospecting process preferred by agencies like Converse Digital. Traditional RFP Based Business Development Are you familiar …
Entrepreneurial success hinges on your ability to form connections – not in the opportunity networking sense but in the real human common ground and purpose sense. Here’s more on that subject today.
...What do you do when you’re in the car, or on the treadmill? Maybe you make phone calls or listen to the radio. These days, a lot of people are finding new audio entertainment in the form of podcasts. In fact, podcasting has exploded. The latest stats report over 600,000 podcasts are available and over …
Over the last 10 years, content marketing has emerged as a powerful driver for effective social selling and inbound sales lead generation programs. And while largely heralded as a way to drive inbound leads there is another, even more powerful reason that ad and PR agencies should develop a consistent content marketing program. Let’s talk about …
Recently I participated in an interesting discussion on the #Digital360Chat Twitter Chat hosted by Bernie Fussenegger around the idea of sales & marketing automation, specifically about automating the connection process on social media. It’s hard to really go deep on a subtopic in a Twitter Chat, so today I thought we could explore this key …
Whenever you read about Social Selling, everyone spends a lot of time talking about creating content. It makes sense, because content is at the core of a successful social selling program. But you shouldn’t be paying your salespeople to create content. Instead, teach them how to properly curate content (maybe even give them the proper …
Have you ever received a LinkedIn Cold or Warm Message like the one above? You know, where someone makes a sales ask via LinkedIn’s Messaging system either as a first or second touch? Arggg. I hate those. Folks just don’t realize that you only get one chance to make a LinkedIn impression. But beyond that, …
I read Gary’s missive this week and to be fair, I love the tactic he suggests but hate everything else about his recommendation because if you blindly follow it, you’ll fail. Let me explain. Conversations Become Customers I couldn’t agree more with Gary’s recommendation to create proximity with your sales prospects using events as a tool …
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 …
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 …
Let me show you an example of how this might work, using Chapter 14, of my book, The Invisible Sale, “Creating Text-Based Content.” Chapter 14 easily deconstructs into multiple individual blog posts. One blog post idea is to repurpose the “Talking vs Typing” section into a blog post titled “How to Use Voice-to-Text Transcription Software …
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 …
We all want the Google Juice. We’ve been told it’s the silver bullet to inbound marketing success. But we’re wrong. The only way to truly Google Proof your website, and your online marketing efforts, is Propinquity. Today we’ll talk about why propinquity marketing is a better long-term strategy vs the classic Google/Inbound strategy for most …
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 …
On May 1st, Converse Digital turned five — five years of helping clients turn conversations into customers. But as I sit here reflecting on what I’ve learned over the last year, two overriding lessons overshadow everything else. Such universal truths. Such simple rules. Rules that I’ve spoken of before, but yet, it took the events of …
Back in 1950, psychologists Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, and Kurt Back launched a study to investigate how friendships developed among students at the new Westgate Complex at MIT. They found that the strongest friendships developed between students who lived next to each other on the same floor. Where friendships developed between students who lived on …
Everything you once knew about marketing and sales prospecting is wrong. Or at the very least, social selling is quickly rendering it obsolete. Once upon a time, companies treated information about their product as sacred. After all, information is power. The traditionally held belief was that a company’s marketing efforts should force prospective customers to call and …
Prefer to listen versus read helpful information on social selling and sales prospecting with social media and content marketing? Well today you’re in luck. Recently Tyler Anderson interviewed me for his Casual Friday podcast where we talked in depth about what social selling is and isn’t. Today I’m sharing that with you and for those …