NEW on June 27, 2017 » This video offers good insights about selling services as opposed to products. Obviously Still River Creative is in the right column. Good stuff here.

 

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★  2 more from Alex B:  What to do when a prospect goes dark

                                       3 Ways to get Prospects on the Fence to Buy

» » »  All Experiment27 videos set up in left sidebar as a course to work through

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LinkedIn Targeting Guide

Although written for customers advertising on LinkedIn, there's plenty of valuable info we can use. If the live link doesn't work you may need to request an invitation to share the dropbox SRC-Public.

view / download this LinkedIn doc

The graphic below was accompanied by the following text on the original source page.

Many businesses have differing lead generation processes depending upon the complexity or cost of the purchase being considered. Some have processes that are triggered by events, such as the birth of a child or start of a business.

The lead generation process, like most every other aspect of marketing, has been impacted dramatically by the Internet, access to abundant content and information and a prospect’s ability to block uninvited messages.

The four new stages of the lead generation process acknowledges the fact that your job as a marketer is to get involved in moving someone from awareness to conversion and at each of these stages, address a prospect’s evolving relationship with your organization.

So, your lead generation process might look something like this today:

#1. Lead Awareness

This stage is all about how leads become aware of a organization and its offerings. The key activities in the lead awareness stage include networking, public relations, advertising, and content. These core marketing tactics are some of the best ways to become known. Also, in many businesses a referral or search result is the first exposure that someone gains to an organization.

#2. Lead Education

Once lead awareness is created you must build trust for your products, services, solutions and expertise. An consistent newsletter, event or seminar can be a tremendous tool for lead education as it allows you to demonstrate expertise, knowledge, resources, and experience over time. Lead education offerings that teach is what important here. When you develop a process for teaching people, then you get invited to places where you have the opportunity to sell.

#3. Lead Sampling

Today’s shift in lead generation now incorporates lead sampling. Prospects want to be able to sample your expertise, product or service and it’s the easiest way to move people to lead conversion, particularly in highly competitive and highly priced situations. Continuing to build trust through demos, audits, trail offers, samples, assessments, etc. is such an essential element of buying. Really this is an audition and it’s where you need to deliver more than anyone could possibly consider doing.

#4. Lead Conversion

Lead conversion, or what most businesses still refer to as selling, is a profoundly changed activity in this process. If the lead generation process described above has been followed to this point, there is very little selling that remains. The job here is to make sure the prospect can see how they can get the desired results with your solution. This is still an education and content play, but now it’s all about showing proof and forecasting results in your process.

Every time you enter a new market or develop new product or service you can use this framework as a way to make sure you create the perfect end to end lead generation process for every offering.

The Basics

1. No pressure; we're just using intelligence and old-fashioned smarts to reach decision-makers and piquing their interest so they want to learn more about Still River Creative.

2. We have a great story to tell, deep industry experience and expertise (more than 25 years), and a flexible approach that appeals to every prospect. Beyond this there are key qualities that help differentiate our company: While we offer many of the services of a digital agency, we're not typical (in a good way).

3. First, find prospects who have a need for our services. Then qualify them as to what they need, how soon they need it, what their budget is, who/how many service groups are competing for the work, etc.

4. Qualifying leads:

• Weeding out prospects who are shopping on price only (there will always be someone cheaper)
• Giving prospects the right info about our agency so they can appreciate what we offer
• Eliminating prospects that are looking for unpaid advance work such as a detailed proposal or reply to an RFP / RFQ cattle call.

5. You don't have to close the sale unless you want to, or unless it makes sense (i.e., because the prospect wants to lock us in with a deposit). Once the prospect is located and qualified, you suggest a phone conference, video conference, or Google Hangout with principal partner Charles Moore. He'll take it from there.

Must-haves: Top-notch English speaking and writing skills. Excellent listening skills. Professional demeanor. Detail-oriented follow-up.

Top-notch Sales Tools and Support

1. Our existing website is already a powerful sales tool that contains a wealth of useful information. Due to busy schedules, however, prospects may need to be guided to the right info — words and images on our website that address their pain points / hot buttons (we can create and deploy new content rapidly).

2. You have an excellent story to tell and real value to offer prospects. The credentials and experience of Still River Creative's core team will satisfy the most demanding prospect. Our industry knowledge, our flexible style of working with clients, our internal tools and workflow, our mission to demystify / make things easy for clients — all these combine to give you a potent arsenal for outreach. You can approach prospects with confidence knowing the team behind you can deliver.

3. You have outstanding sales support. After decades in marketing/advertising, we are well-versed in the sales process. We will provide a variety of support materials, including a script if you wish, and we'll offer suggestions about logical starting points (for example, companies who don't yet have a mobile compatible website). From there it's your job to figure out how and where to find sales leads to explore. Email, telephone, LinkedIn, whatever works for you. 

4. Target industries and prospect profiles are in the sidebar. If necessary we can decide together who to approach. Then you can contact them, detemine their level of interest, provide info that will bring them to the tipping point, and set up the hand-off.
» see typical qualifying questions

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target prospects

Based on recent, highly successful projects and case histories found on the Our Work page, we will target prospects in Food & Beverage and three add'l categories:

• Beer, Craft Beer, Alcoholic Beverages
• Craft Breweries
• Specialty Foods
• Real Estate & Construction
• Sports & Recreation
• Clothing

For broadening our reach & special side projects:

Based on direct experience with clients over 30 years in marketing/advertising

• Catalog Marketing:
  - Specialty Gifts
  - Clothing
  - High-tech

 

• Old list of ad agency projects
  (limited usefulness, might spark ideas)

quick reference:

Still River Creative Prospect Profile

 

June 2017

The Ultimate Guide to Follow-up Emails

 

 

 

★ All Abram Popov videos here