There are a number of factors that set top sales people apart from the rest, but the most frequent is that they are great storytellers. A great story captivates and connects with people. A great story from a top sales person has points that are not pitched, but are shared through relevant anecdotes and relatable accounts; therefore, the sales are all about the stories you can tell.

The most effective and experienced sales people most likely have a stash of these stories tucked away to pull out at different times during a conversation with a customer. It is completely natural for them. Their conversation is effective because they know what story to tell and how to tell it.

What would it look like with a whole sales team who have their own stash of stories with skills to share them? To start this up, you need to create a system for capturing these stories and publishing them into a format that is easy for each team member on your sales team to re-tell them.

Here are some different formats that were used in a B2B environment:

“One of our customers,

Although direct marketing can be a smart move if carried out intelligently, there are a couple of things that do frequently go wrong with the strategy of the direct marketing companies. Such strategic errors can spell doom for the direct marketing companies and result in failure.

To start off with direct marketing, you need to identify the prospects first. Prospects are the people whom you can analyze further and drill down to find your customers. In case you miscalculate and your prospects are not the ones who are most likely to buy the concerned product, you will end up with no results.

When reaching out to your customers, you need to establish a very personal relationship. The messaging in  email sent to a prospect and the one sent to a customer is very different. If you treat your customer also as a prospect, you might diminish your brand image in the customer’s mind.

An email or flyer sent to the customer should relate to them. It should have engaging content. If you just send across generic content to your customers, the mail or catalog will end up in the trash.

Direct marketing companies need to have plan to send out direct contact mails, or mailers. It is important to send out marketing communications at the right time when there are new offers, change in prices, additional products etc. The companies sending mail out of phase can cause major mishaps.

Another mistake is focusing more on the designs and patterns than on the content. Other various mistakes include: not following up well with leads, not integrating direct marketing activities with other marketing techniques, etc.

Purba Mazumdar, Prospectr Marketing

When your company is faced with the question of whether to take up lead generation internally or outsource it to a lead generation company, you need to weigh the pros and cons of both the approaches. It is mostly about saving time and money, and which approach saves cost or makes more profit for you in the end. But with growing volumes and size, hiring a lead generation company seems like a better bet.

To grow your company, the main thing you need to invest in is to acquire new customers and expand horizontally. As you start to expand, you need more and more people to handle the sales volumes. As you start growing you need someone to pre-screen your leads and find potential customers. Then you have a sales specialist, who can make the actual sale. This increases the number of people required to do one job. The whole activity of hiring and paying so many employees takes some more people, and in total, increases the costs for the company.

On the other hand, if you outsource the pre-screening of leads to a lead generation company, you can pay a fixed price for their services and do with much lesser number of people in the company. Also, you can use the services as and when you want them. If you hire employees you cannot fire them easily as you cannot predict the market conditions of supply and demand. Also rehiring is an additional costly activity.

Another important benefit of taking the services of a lead generation company is the expertise in generating leads. Your company might not have any skills in the new online methods of lead generation and you need an expert to help you utilize that path. The lead generation company can help you decide on the approaches that best suit your requirements.

Thus, a lead generation company can really help you cut down on costs in the long run and help you generate leads using most effective lead generation techniques.

Purba Mazumdar, Prospectr Marketing

There has been a steep rise in the number of internet marketing companies around the world. With the availability of numerous resources over the web to market one’s products or services, the internet marketing industry has seen a major boom in the past couple of years.

First, many marketing companies started to include online marketing services in their portfolio of services offered. But as we saw a burst of various social networks and, thus various techniques of marketing online, a variety of specialized internet marketing companies started to sprout.

These specialized companies use various types of marketing techniques such as Search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, video marketing, etc.

Since there was a huge demand for such Internet marketing companies, the gap was filled by many small niche companies. And the numbers are still building up. But again there are some bigger players in the market that hold a big chunk of the market share. These big players keep growing and to take a bigger share of the pie, they have started to acquire smaller companies.

Such acquisition might happen if the smaller company has a good customer base, some unique algorithm or technique, or has become popular in a niche area. Acquiring such a company gives the bigger player access to the smaller company’s customers and technology, and helps consolidate the growing number of companies.

The major acquisition activity has been of traditional media and advertising firms acquiring boutique internet marketing companies. This shows that it is easier for the bigger company to acquire the internet marketing competencies by simply taking over a specialized firm.

In the past link building for businesses was used for appearing in search results. However, social media has changed the face of building online businesses through sources like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. The new link building is now about social visibility, mentions, and building your company’s presence.

Building relationships and then nurturing them is key for business development, because it will earn your company mentions from relevant websites. Focusing less on the technical aspect and more on the targeted traffic (people who will most likely be interested in your product).

Link building to attain social visibility and mentions can be reached in three simple steps.

Step 1. Research
Start with a simple Google search. You will be searching for relevant and local websites that pertain to your industry. Enter descriptive and long-tail keywords. To search further add a site operator (keyword-site:domain.com), this will enable you to discover new sources by discarding the sites you already know about and keeping the new links available.
Facebook is another place to search internally. You can find both relevant websites and start to build relationships.
The web catalog is yet another source where you can find out each website that links to the site that you are examining.
Once you have found your relevant and trustworthy websites begin to assemble a list.

Step 2. Outreach
Now that you have formed a list of websites that are local, trustworthy, and relevant, it is time to get the word out about your business.
Getting the word out begins with your story.
– Your story should be genuine and compelling, in order to let people know that you are passionate about your idea and are not just trying win them over for a favor.
– Don’t hit them full-force with your product spiel. BUILD a relationship with them, because no one is going to write about your online business from a one time encounter.
Another way to outreach is to create accounts on social networks.

Social Mention – this website helps you identify people for outreach by seeing real-time mentions from multiple social sites. All you do is type in your business’ keyword.
Twitter lists -Will gather people around relevant topics and from there you can start a relationship.
Rapportive – will help you find contact information on people who are interested in your business and build relationships with them.

Step 3. Keep Relationships Going
Stay in contact. Nurturing the relationships you have started is very important because this will contribute to your business’ reputation. Leaving someone hanging dry after you have started a relationship will have consequences. By reciprocating what has been done for you will also help build these new relationships.

Throughout these three steps staying organized with your search results, contacts, follow ups, links you are working on, etc. is incredibly important. A simple way to do this is by making an excel sheet to keep track. From there, you are well on your way to connecting with the targeted traffic and building those relationships!

~ Chelsea Jensen, Prospectr Marketing