Professional Services Leadership, Marketing & Rainmaking
From the monthly archives:
In the Selling Consulting Services forums, a member recently asked about everyone’s favorite topic, cold calling. “Should I do it? Must I do it?,” he asked. He went on to explain that he’s trying to reach senior people and wants to share information with them on how to solve a specific problem based on work he’s done at similar organizations.
He also explained that he is not very comfortable calling someone he doesn’t know, pretty par for the course with how most people feel.
Until a little while ago, social media was an experiment. Will it work? Will it make a difference?
In 1995, so was that Worldwide Interweb thing. Not so much anymore.
Same goes for social media. We’re currently making the transition from if to why and how.
According to a recent study by Business.com, webinars and podcasts are the number one and number two social media resources that North American business professionals turn to to get what they need (advice, tips, etc.) to do their job. And a lot of people now, people with decision making positions, are included in that group.
Let’s take a closer look.
It’s no secret: the firms that are the best at selling do things differently than those that aren’t the best.
This dandy of a chart by Aberdeen Group covers a lot of ground, including, getting business developers up to speed and selling fast, keeping the best sellers, and so on.
But what jumps out at me: what the top firms do to maximize cross-selling and up-selling.
Oily. Smarmy. Phony. Mendacious. Two-faced…
Right or wrong, these words are often associated with salespeople. They are also the first words that come to mind for many consultants (along with images of the overly aggressive, overly slick, walking sales cliché) when they learn they need to sell.
We’re always trying to get in front of the decision maker, many of whom are C-level executives. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been told that C-level executives don’t search online, don’t spend time in social media, and don’t do their own product, service, or company research on the web. Perhaps they’ll make a cursory glance at your website to see if you exist, but beyond that, some underling is doing the research for them. If they’re doing research at all. Right?
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A lot of what we talk about here on the Services Marketing Blog focuses on marketing. (How’s that for a revelation.)
Marketing, however, isn’t worth much if you can’t convert great strategy, brand, positioning, and messaging into opportunities. And it isn’t worth much if you can’t convert those opportunities into new business.
When it comes to business-to-business purchases, few buyers are willing to take chances on new providers, according to a recent survey of 3,600 B2B buyers conducted by Enquiro.
When it comes to cost per sales lead, inbound marketing channels continue to deliver dramatically lower costs over outbound channels. In fact, organizations that primarily use inbound channels experience a 60% lower cost per lead than those that mainly use outbound channels, according to HubSpot’s The State of Inbound Marketing 2010.
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