How Internet Marketing Has Reversed B2B Prospecting
Losing Our Touch Most who have worked in business development know this saying: call or die.
When you need new clients you have to try to reach them with outbound marketing.
This means cold calls, direct response mail, and email and voice-mail spam.
With telemarketing, the rule of 7 becomes necessary to understand.
This states that when cold calling a prospect, you have to get at least 7 "touches" before you have much of a chance of getting someone's attention.
Strange thing about the rule of 7 is that number always seems to be going up.
You hear 7, then 9, and one day 12 touches.
12 touches? How about 20? Even if on call number 13 you managed to reach the target, how is the call going to go? What kind of leverage do you have to start the sales process? It's not uncommon for a business development person working B2B to have a list in excess of a thousand people they are trying to contact.
This means keeping track of some 7,000 touches.
It's hard to argue that this is an efficient process.
Most who work with outbound prospecting feel it is a necessary evil.
After all, not only is it time consuming, but you often have to go forward with limited data.
The list you have to work is of suspects: people who fit a general profile of those you might sell to.
But these lists are often inaccurate, and the touch process becomes one of qualification.
You spend huge amounts of time trying to contact people who actually have no interest in what you offer.
Tedium aside, the real back breaker for many who do this work is its intrusive nature.
For every person you contact who has some interest in what you do, you have to interrupt and waste the time of many more who don't.
Before long losing your touch is the least of your worries-you're losing your mind.
Information Consumers Take Control! Technology is changing the business development landscape.
Spam and unsolicited information is easy to block.
Email filters, voice-mail screening, using TIVO to skip commercials; information consumers are now in control-and they need to be.
We are living in an information avalanche, and if you don't keep tight control over what you deal with you'll get buried.
This leaves those who push outbound, unsolicited information in a bind.
The touch process is heading towards infinity-there is no target to aim at.
The Information Facilitator The Internet is both the cause of and solution for this information conundrum.
You can push out unsolicited info to huge numbers of people and let it end up in the trash heap.
However, you can also post your information on the web and let huge numbers of people find you.
This is the basis of inbound marketing.
You put together your marketing collateral on a website and optimize so that when someone has interest in what you offer, they can find you.
Unwanted "touches" reverse into desirable "hits".
This process is facilitated by search engines, primarily Google.
Say, for example, you sell electric powered bicycles.
When someone is interested in looking at your product, they can type relavant keywords into a search engine and be lead to your site.
Details like where you are located can lead to more specific results.
Your website also needs to be set up to convert.
Perhaps the visitor signs up for newsletter, emails a questions, or makes an appointment to test ride a bike.
You get a name, an email address, or a phone number.
Now you have a prospect who has demonstrated interest in what you sell.
They are a legitimate lead to put into your sales pipeline.
The Game Has Changed The implications of how we deal with information in the world of Google, Facebook and iPhones are very serious with regard to business development.
Outbound marketing needs to be curbed and when done, highly focused (an introductory letter to local prospects, for example).
Your business must be prepared to let prospects come to you when their time management allows for it.
Most cold callers will rejoice at this change.
On-line search still takes work, but it is far less intrusive and the prospects you put into the sales process are higher probability.
A website that has expert search engine optimization (SEO) is critical to success so your site can be found.
Likewise, blogs and social media create an interactive experience that nurtures prospects.
Analyze your website.
Get on Google and do a search on the keywords you'd like to findable for.
Are you open for business?
When you need new clients you have to try to reach them with outbound marketing.
This means cold calls, direct response mail, and email and voice-mail spam.
With telemarketing, the rule of 7 becomes necessary to understand.
This states that when cold calling a prospect, you have to get at least 7 "touches" before you have much of a chance of getting someone's attention.
Strange thing about the rule of 7 is that number always seems to be going up.
You hear 7, then 9, and one day 12 touches.
12 touches? How about 20? Even if on call number 13 you managed to reach the target, how is the call going to go? What kind of leverage do you have to start the sales process? It's not uncommon for a business development person working B2B to have a list in excess of a thousand people they are trying to contact.
This means keeping track of some 7,000 touches.
It's hard to argue that this is an efficient process.
Most who work with outbound prospecting feel it is a necessary evil.
After all, not only is it time consuming, but you often have to go forward with limited data.
The list you have to work is of suspects: people who fit a general profile of those you might sell to.
But these lists are often inaccurate, and the touch process becomes one of qualification.
You spend huge amounts of time trying to contact people who actually have no interest in what you offer.
Tedium aside, the real back breaker for many who do this work is its intrusive nature.
For every person you contact who has some interest in what you do, you have to interrupt and waste the time of many more who don't.
Before long losing your touch is the least of your worries-you're losing your mind.
Information Consumers Take Control! Technology is changing the business development landscape.
Spam and unsolicited information is easy to block.
Email filters, voice-mail screening, using TIVO to skip commercials; information consumers are now in control-and they need to be.
We are living in an information avalanche, and if you don't keep tight control over what you deal with you'll get buried.
This leaves those who push outbound, unsolicited information in a bind.
The touch process is heading towards infinity-there is no target to aim at.
The Information Facilitator The Internet is both the cause of and solution for this information conundrum.
You can push out unsolicited info to huge numbers of people and let it end up in the trash heap.
However, you can also post your information on the web and let huge numbers of people find you.
This is the basis of inbound marketing.
You put together your marketing collateral on a website and optimize so that when someone has interest in what you offer, they can find you.
Unwanted "touches" reverse into desirable "hits".
This process is facilitated by search engines, primarily Google.
Say, for example, you sell electric powered bicycles.
When someone is interested in looking at your product, they can type relavant keywords into a search engine and be lead to your site.
Details like where you are located can lead to more specific results.
Your website also needs to be set up to convert.
Perhaps the visitor signs up for newsletter, emails a questions, or makes an appointment to test ride a bike.
You get a name, an email address, or a phone number.
Now you have a prospect who has demonstrated interest in what you sell.
They are a legitimate lead to put into your sales pipeline.
The Game Has Changed The implications of how we deal with information in the world of Google, Facebook and iPhones are very serious with regard to business development.
Outbound marketing needs to be curbed and when done, highly focused (an introductory letter to local prospects, for example).
Your business must be prepared to let prospects come to you when their time management allows for it.
Most cold callers will rejoice at this change.
On-line search still takes work, but it is far less intrusive and the prospects you put into the sales process are higher probability.
A website that has expert search engine optimization (SEO) is critical to success so your site can be found.
Likewise, blogs and social media create an interactive experience that nurtures prospects.
Analyze your website.
Get on Google and do a search on the keywords you'd like to findable for.
Are you open for business?
Source...