Can we get real at this point? If you’re a race car driver, you need to know how fast your car can go and how far you can go on a set of tires. If you’re a farmer, you need to know how many bushels of wheat or beans or whatever an acre of crops are going to produce. Whatever your business, you certainly would measure the results of each effort so you can use that information to predict future results.

Why is it that most business owners don’t measure what’s happening in their sales and marketing efforts?

Really?! Can you really quote any hard data about your marketing and sales processes other than what you spend on ads and marketing, what your payroll is and how much you sell each month?

Sorry but, that is NOT going to cut it!

Think about this in the farmer example… If all you know is how much you spend on seeds and equipment and supplies during the year andthen how much you sell your produce for after the harvest then yes, you can figure out if you made money or not. But, you can’t do anything about it. Next year, you can say “I lost money on that wheat crop last year so, I’m switching to corn this year because the seeds are cheaper.” That’s no guarantee of better results. You need to know how many plants grew on an acre, how much water they got, how many plants died due to disease or bugs, etc. With that information you can adjust next year – plant closer together, bring in a watering system, etc. and get better results. You can also compare this crop with alternatives more clearly.

It just makes sense right? If you’ve got a sales team to manage, then you either measure the process or get used to firing sales people regularly and constantly training new ones that won’t last. The key to hiring and keeping sales people is making them successful. How can you help them if you don’t look under the hood?

After 7 years of working with business owners, sales executives and marketing gurus, I know that it’s just not easy to get the data that matters. Think about it like this… If you’re not doing it now because you can’t figure out how to, then your competition probably isn’t either. What if you figured out how to measure your marketing and sales processes so you can turn them into an Automatic Selling Machine?

Warning – most contact management, CRM and marketing analytics vendors are going to try and sell you more than you need, over complicate the challenge and expand the cost and cause you to fail to get what you really need – some real numbers you can use.

Sure, using a CRM solution, contact management system or marketing analytics solution can make measuring your process very easy but, only if you keep it simple.

That’s our objective here – to highlight the short list of things you need to measure so you can make it happen with or without software.

Really, you can use a piece of paper or a simple excel sheet to do this. My experience helping businesses implement CRM solutions tells me that you’re better off starting very simple and getting some data than spending 6 months trying to find and implement more complex marketing analytics and CRM systems.

The basic components of any marketing and sales funnel are Unqualified Leads, Qualified Leads, Value to your company, Won Sales and Referrals. That’s it. No reason you can’t start keeping that info in a spreadsheet right? In fact, if that’s all you have to have, setting up a contact management system to do it is easy too.

Again, the problem is that you’ll get dazzled by all the other things the various CRM solutions can do for you and things will get complicated fast.

#1 Metric You Must Know about Marketing and Sales
Total number of leads coming in.

Simple right? Well, it is but, it means you need to know about all of them. All the referrals your sales people get that they never mention to you. All the call-ins that come in but, never get called back by a sales rep, etc.

#2 Metric You Must Know about Marketing and Sales
Where does each lead comes from?

How did they hear about you? What ad did they respond to? Where did you meet them? Who referred them to you?

Again, simple stuff but, the key is to be sure you get this information for each and every lead you talk to. If you get 100 leads a month and fail to collect this information for 5 of them, it could really throw off any analysis you do.

#3 Metric You Must Know about Marketing and Sales
How qualified is each lead?

This one is tougher. The reason is that you have to decide on objective criteria that makes a lead qualified. Do they have a need for what you sell? Do they have the money for it? The answers don’t necessarily need to mean that are absolutely going to buy from you. Just that there is a basic fit between their needs and situation and your company. They’re worth your time. Choose the 4 or 5 questions you have to ask every new lead and start capturing the answers for each and every lead. I know, you won’t be able to get all that information for all of them. That’s OK. If you don’t get it all, they’re not qualified.

#4 Metric You Must Know about Marketing and Sales
What’s the value of the sales opportunity?

Best case scenario, what can you sell them in the near term? What is this opportunity worth to your company? Pretty simple.

#5 Metric You Must Know about Marketing and Sales
What market segment do they fit in?

In every business, you have a few segments you have developed unique solutions for. It might be business vs. residential or small vs. large. You’ve got to know where they all fit.

#6 Metric You Must Know about Marketing and Sales
Product you propose to them.

This could be a direct one to one relationship with the segment they fit in but, it’s usually not that simple. Some customers will request certain solutions even though it’s not what you’d recommend for them given the segment they’re in, etc. Again, you’ve got to track this for each lead.

#7 Metric You Must Know about Marketing and Sales
Won or Lost

Did they buy or not? Simple right? What about if they just say “call me later”? (that’s a No if they don’t buy within a reasonable amount of time BTW)

#8 Metric You Must Know about Marketing and Sales
Did they give you a referral?

Why do you need to know this? Well, you need to know if they were asked for one thing. Also, this is a great measure of the satisfaction of that client. Let’s face it… You can value customers by how much they spend but, a customer that gives you referrals is much more valuable than one that spends the same and doesn’t give you any referrals.

That’s it. That’s all you really need to know!

With this information you can look at each and every source of leads, every advertising expense and determine its value to you.

Powerful Insight into Marketing Return

You’ll compute the cost of each dollar in sales based on the source of the lead and you’ll be amazed at how different it is from one marketing channel to another. Variances of 100% or more are common.

Really, just start putting each new lead in a spreadsheet with columns for each of the metrics above and keep it up to date.

In fact, if you don’t have a centralized contact management system or CRM solution in place today, creating this spreadsheet is a great way to start looking for a CRM system. You can share the sheet with potential vendors and they’ll be able to see what you need to measure.

Just get started tracking and measuring these things right away. Even if you’re not sure where this is leading, I promise you it will uncover valuable insights that will lead you to more profitable and sustainable growth.

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So at this point we know that throwing money at advertising and marketing firms is not an option. We need a way to generate leads that doesn’t involve putting up huge sums with no way to know how and when it will come back to us. Ideally, we’d like a way to invest a relatively small amount, measure the results closely, make adjustments to increase the profitability and then ramp up the investment, the leads and the profits according to our needs.

Of course. And while we’re at it, let’s also say that we want our sales people to get involved only when we know we have a highly qualified lead.

Believe it or not, this is not as tall an order as it appears to be. The basic principle is to design a lead funnel, a series of steps that each lead can go through that will ensure that they want and need what you’re selling. At each step, you offer the lead something and their choice tells you if now is the time for your sales team to talk with them.

So how do you decide what these steps are? What do you offer to the leads at each step in your funnel?

The first one is the hardest so, try to get yourself in the head of your customers. Talk to them. Ask them what questions were going through their mind when they decided to start looking for a solution like yours. What is it that everyone in your audience or market needs or desires?

#1 Action Step to Get More Quality Leads and Close More Sales
Offer something that every potential prospect for your product or service will be interested in.

Remember, this is a funnel or a series of steps. The first one should not be too exclusive. It should be highly attractive to people that need and want what you’re selling and people that likely will need or want what you sell in the future.

The first step is not a free trial or an appointment with a sales rep or a buyer’s guide. Those are things you offer later in the process. Up front you want to offer something that someone with a general interest in the subject will find interesting. We want their accepting the offer to tell you that they could be a prospect some day. If you sell an industrial pump, you might want to write a quick guide titled “Are you spending too much keeping old pump equipment running?”.

Responding to your first offer doesn’t indicate a readiness to buy. But, it indicates that this is someone who is within your market space. You want to establish trust and credibility with this person so that when they are looking for what you sell, they reach out to you. That’s why you’ve got to have a plan to nurture the relationship regularly.

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#2 Action Step to Get More Quality Leads and Close More Sales
Nurture leads automatically

These are not hot leads. You’re going to be worrying about closing the hot deals in your pipeline every day. That’s why your lead nurturing efforts have to be automatic. You’ll put it off or forget about it if it requires you to stop what you’re doing.

Plus, there are email marketing systems, auto-responders, online CRMs or just simple contact management systems that are affordable, easy to set up and can do the job for you. At a minimum you need a contact management system or CRM that can keep track of which leads have accepted which offer and let you know when it’s time to make the next offer.

Mix it up. Some of the leads that accepted your first offer may actually be ready to buy. Give them that chance! Don’t force them to accept each offer in the sequence you determine. If the final step in the funnel is to attend a demo or schedule a 30 minute consultation, then there’s no harm in presenting that option to new, early stage leads.

#3 Action Step to Get More Quality Leads and Close More Sales
Let the offers qualify leads for you

A buyer’s guide is a perfect qualifier. If a lead wants to learn how to buy what you sell, then they are much more qualified than the lead that’s only been willing to read your report on effective maintenance schedules.

Attending a webinar or demo is a good strong qualifier. Anything that involves the lead investing their own time or money. But give them options. If they’re not ready for the buyer’s guide, have something else with involving less commitment on their part as well.

#4 Action Step to Get More Quality Leads and Close More Sales
Build your sales process to fit the offers the lead responds to

You’re sales person isn’t going to pick up the phone and call each lead that responds to the first offer. The idea is for them to invest their time only in leads that have responded to offers that really qualify them as near term buyers.

Be sure that your process makes it easy for your sales people to respond appropriately to each lead’s actions. If they responded to your first offer and then immediately requested the buyer’s guide, they just might be very hot. Don’t make that lead wait. Call within hours. However, if you’re going to call leads that respond to earlier offers, be sure the sales person is not going for the close immediately. In that situation, their objective is really to steer the lead toward the next offer in the funnel.

Again, a good contact management system or CRM will help. With a CRM that tells the sales rep which offers each lead has responded to, they’ll know how to handle each one. Many CRMs can even allow the sales rep to change the email campaign that the lead will receive based on what they learn on the call.

#5 Action Step to Get More Quality Leads and Close More Sales
Measure lead quality and close rates

A subtle change in the offers you make can have tremendous results. Some offers will attract the wrong sort of lead unexpectedly. Believe it or not, the worst thing you could do is generate too many leads of the wrong type. In that situation, your sales people are spending lots of time on leads that don’t buy.

For these reasons, you’ve got to know the metrics of your funnel. For everyone that responded to step one, how many closed? And the same for each step. When your sales people talk to the leads, what is their judgment of quality?

These metrics will allow you to find the offers that are working and the ones that aren’t and adjust accordingly. Your CRM should make it easy to track these metrics and analyze them.

#6 Action Step to Get More Quality Leads and Close More Sales
Hold your team accountable to following the process

This is not selling 101. Most sales people have that “go for it” attitude. They’ll want to call all the leads. That may be a huge mistake from the stand point of time invested in unqualified leads. Make sure they understand when to get involved and what to do in each situation.

Make sure they document things properly as we’ve discussed above. Again, this is not throwing sales people at leads and hoping for the best. This is a finely tuned funnel. You can’t tune the funnel without data. The sales team is going to be a big part of gathering that data.

Communicate these concepts to the team and then make sure they’re held accountable. If they document the quality of leads only 80% of the time, that can completely skew your analysis.

If particular sales people are having trouble following the process – taking the right action at the right time or documenting results, you’ve got to know about it and you’ve got to address it.

I’ve always found that the best way to encourage participation and buy-in by the sales people is to take advantage of their natural competitiveness. Use your CRM to run a report of how many leads have been responded to by each sales person and how many had the results documented properly. Put that report in front of the entire team at sales meetings. None of them want to be on the bottom of this list.

Remember, this is the 5th chapter in our newest eBook, “Build Your Own Automatic Selling Machine”. Register to receive each new chapter as its released and the entire eBook when complete, free here.

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When you are able to track advertising in this way, some very powerful things begin to happen. Your ability to objectively evaluate advertising options greatly improves. Your negotiating position with advertising and marketing vendors improves. Your ability to hold these vendors accountable to promises and expectations they set improves.

These things should enable you to have significant impact on the cost of and quality of leads. If you can reduce the average cost of each lead by 10% and increase the quality of each lead by 10%, that could be big for your business couldn’t it?

Well, that’s just scratching the surface! After all, getting the leads is not really the most challenging part of acquiring customers is it? It’s closing the deals. It’s hiring, training, motivating and managing all those sales people to take the leads your marketing generates and turn them into customers.

There is no question that the single most effective way to ensure the success of a sales person is to provide him or her with the highest quality leads. If 80% of your sales people are over quota this year instead of 20% like last year, what does that mean to your bottom line?

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OK, hopefully I’ve got your attention now! So let’s get specific about how we can measure the results of your advertising and marketing, channel by channel, ad by ad, so you can maximize the most profitable and do away with the duds.

#1 Way to Measure Advertising and Marketing Return Easily
Create a system to track leads from first contact through to close.

Now, don’t lock up your checkbook so fast… I’m not proposing that you run out and spend thousands of dollars on expensive solutions. In fact, this is one area where things can and should be extremely simple. Heck, if you can draw up a one page “lead sheet” that your reps can use to quickly check off the results for each and every lead, great! You’ll need someone to sit down periodically and tabulate the information but, this type of low-tech approach might be the best place to start for many.

Regardless of what method or technology you choose, here’s what you need to know about each lead –

Where did it come from? Be specific here. If they found you on the web, you need to know exactly how. If they did a search first, then you’ve got to know what they searched for. If they saw an ad in a magazine, you need to know which one.

Are they qualified? In any business, there are 3 or 4 questions you can ask any lead and know if they’re likely to become of customer. You’ve got to be sure you ask these questions every time and record the answers. (See our recent eBook – Double Your Sales in 2010 – for more discussion of how to qualify leads)

What are they likely to buy, for how much and when? Ultimately, we want to project the total amount of sales that can be expected and the projected time frame for each and every advertising option you have. This info is clearly crucial.

Did they actually buy and if so, what and for how much?

A couple of other things that are important to find out –

What’s this person’s role in the purchase decision?

Are they currently working with a competitor?

Again, if you can come up with a low-tech way to capture this information consistently for every new lead, that’s great. After all, this is going to require some changes in your processes and methods for your customer facing team so, you should keep it as simple as possible. However, if there are more than one person in your organization dealing with each potential customer or if the volume of leads that anyone in your team is considerable, then writing it all down can get to be a problem. Remember, all your analysis will be skewed if this information isn’t gathered consistently.

So, investing in a good contact management solution or CRM can be wise. Keep in mind the purpose of this exercise… You’re going to reduce the average cost per lead, increase the average quality of each lead and ensure that your sales people beat their quotas and your company grows!

Basic requirements for your contact management system or CRM solution that will allow you to measure your advertising results effectively –

Allows you to document the above information quickly and easily for each and every lead

Allows you each person on your staff that will interact with the lead or prospect before purchase to update the same contact management or CRM database

Allows you to mine the information captured to see the number of leads from each advertising source and quantify the portion that buy, aren’t qualified and/or are still in process.

That’s it. Remember, simplicity is key to success here. This is a means to identify the most profitable advertising channels for your business, it’s not an end in itself. Don’t get enamored by CRM solutions that do everything anybody could ever want but, cost thousands per person and take months to implement. That could defeat the purpose.

Regardless of whether you choose a low-tech approach or a high-tech online contact management solution or web based CRM system, you’ve got to be able to learn this information about each lead. So where is that data going to come from?

#2 Way to Measure Advertising and Marketing Return Easily
Ask the prospect.

Again, we’re going for simple. Sure, you could invest in all sorts of technology, fancy survey emails or even telemarketing surveys to gather all this info but, how long is that going to take to put together? What will it cost? Believe it or not, many sales people will push back and resist asking the specific questions you need answered. You’ll need to help them understand how you’re going to use the information to provide them more leads that are higher quality.

It’s crucial that you follow through too. You can set your efforts back by months or years if you force this on your sales team and then fail to use the information.

Be clear – every person that has contact with the lead before they purchase is going to need to be consistent in asking the decided upon questions and recording the answers.

#3 Way to Measure Advertising and Marketing Return Easily
Make it automatic.

Hey, wouldn’t that be cool? If you’re completely ecommerce, then it may be possible. All this data can be gathered by your website and shopping cart. However, if your customers typically talk to a human being at your company as a part of their decision making process, then there is going to be some manual data entry. No matter how shiny and new and innovative your contact management or CRM solution is, it’s the information that your customer tells your sales person that is likely to be the most valuable to you in measuring the effectiveness of the advertising that drove him or her to your company.

So, you should focus on automating all the other steps along the way and making it as quick and easy as possible for the sales person to add their contribution.

For instance, you can easily have different 800 numbers that you publish in each ad so you’ll know how the lead found your company when you pick up the phone. If they’re visiting your website first, you can build tracking into your web forms that will capture what terms the lead searched for in Google to find you. Many online contact management systems and web based CRM solutions allow your web forms to post new sales leads directly into the database with tracking information embedded.

If you’re using a contact management system or CRM solution, then required that the sales rep fill out all the key data we’ve discussed when they create or update the lead’s record. Also, make sure it’s easy for the sales rep to see what key information has yet to be gathered on each lead so they can ask those questions.

I’m sure you’ve got the idea. In the end, we want to see a table something like this –

# of Leads Qualified Closed

Trade Journal Ad 100 50 20

Paid Search 200 50 10

Radio Spot 50 25 15

Add the costs for each of those ads and you can calculate which is most profitable. You’ll be amazed to find that what you think you know if wrong and how much opportunity is available when you redirect spending to the most profitable channels.

Remember, this is the 5th chapter in our newest eBook, “Build Your Own Automatic Selling Machine”. Register to receive each new chapter as its released and the entire eBook when complete, free here.

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small and medium sized businesses face with limited resources for advertising and marketing when attempting to grow their sales. The eBook provides affordable and actionable steps any business can take to generate qualified sales leads without busting the budget.

“Build Your Own Automatic Selling Machine” will be released as a series of chapters (blog posts) here on our blog, one post per week. Then we’ll release the entire eBook in PDF format when complete in February. Register now and we’ll notify you via email as each chapter is released.

• 4 Reasons You’re Throwing Money Down the Drain When You Pay for Advertising and Marketing
• 3 Radical Changes in the Way People Buy Going On Today You Can Use to Increase Profits
• 4 Fallacies in Marketing and Selling that Cause You to Waste Money and Destroy Profits
• 2 Reasons What Your Sales People Tell You About Your Leads and Your Marketing is WRONG
• 3 Ways to Measure Your Advertising and Marketing Results Easily
• 6 Action Steps to Get More Quality Leads and Close More Sales
• 8 Metrics You Must Know About Marketing

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Here are a few examples -
“The trick to double sales lies in ‘Laws of Attraction’. Though we can’t stop calling on and reaching out to prospects and clients, we must double our efforts on creating the value that attracts them to us.”
“The thing that I believe will increase sales the most in 2010 is implementing more creative ways to sell and “connect” with decision-makers of ones product/service. - Social Media, Blogging, anything to “connect” and Attract” with decision-makers - I think that will help increase sales the most.”
“All kidding aside, that is the secret…More conversations = More Appointments = More Opportunities = More Deals. I live it every day, and I never speak with less than 20 people in a day. Amaxingly (believe it or not), it only takes 2-3 hours of my time.”

To my highly trained and perhaps somewhat jaded eye, the common theme here is those who are planning to increase sales significantly in 2010 are looking for faster and better ways to generate more quality prospects. Essentially, our car needs more high performance fuel to go farther next year.

In my experience as a sales manager and coach, most sales people point to the need for more leads first when asked what you can do to help them.

In order to actually achieve breakthrough growth in sales, I believe a broader perspective is helpful. Staying with our auto analogy, the defining elements of how far and how fast we can go include not just the fuel (leads), but also engine (the sales process) and the road (the market).

What if we take a step back and look at all the choices and alternatives we have in choosing the fuel,the engine and the road we take? The likelihood of radically improving sales performance increases if we’re willing to adjust all these elements so that they are all tuned to work perfectly with the others.

If I’m on a dirt road through rough terrain, I might be best served with a powerful 4×4 machine and deisel fuel.

If my market is chemical refineries and the decision maker is typically the production supervisor, then I’ll want to start spending time at the bowling alley near the plant and drinking beer at Gilly’s (forgive me, I live in Houston).

For the average sales person, sales manager or VP of Sales, we may not be able make changes to the market we’re targeting or even the way we sell to the market. Another reason we tend to focus on leads is its what we have the most control over.

However, we all have some measure of control over the entire selling process and can adjust in valuable ways, whether officially endorsed or not.

We’ve put together this list of important, substantive adjustments to our lead generation and selling processes that don’t generally require board approval or cost much money. In other words, there’s no reason not to do it! The payoff can be 2x your sales this year!

The Road (Who You Sell To)
Get to the decision maker. I know you already know that one but, how well do you practice it? How often do you find your self spending hours and hours with information gatherers, influencers and end users in hopes that they’ll put you in front of the decision maker eventually? Stop it. When presented with the supporting cast, start with questions about what the decision making process is, if the budget has been approved and when you’re going to get to meet the big cheese. Don’t answer their questions unless you’re getting answers to yours.

Find the right decision maker. Start with decision makers that have a big budget. Don’t follow the path of least resistance and spend your time chasing the easy ones, the ones you can get to easily. Do the research and figure out who’s got the potential to make your quarter or your year and go after them.

The Engine (How You Sell)
Learn first, deliver last. Doing presentations and preparing proposals can be the most time consuming things you do. If you’re not sure you’re talking to someone that’s going to like what you show them and will spend the money required, then don’t spend your time. Focus on setting the table through strong qualifying and asking great questions to get commitment that if you do the presentation and it meets the requirements they’ve shared, they’re going to move forward. Essentially, you want to re-order the sequence of the things you do for each prospect so that the most time consuming and costly are reserved for the sure things. For a more in depth discussion of how to sell more by presenting less, read our free ebook, “Double Your Sales in 2010“.

The Fuel (How You Connect With People to Sell To)
Ensure you have more than enough leads and be sure they’re the highest possible quality.
In some businesses, its easy to know who your prospects are. You can join the national association of whatever and get all their names. In that case, your challenge is to block off enough time each day to make meaningful progress in connecting with them. In these cases, I definitely recommend leveraging LinkedIn and other more industry specific sites to get connected.
If your universe of potential prospects is very large and your challenge is to figure out which ones are in need of your solution today, then I suggest putting a very basic “Attraction Marketing” program together. It can be simple:

1. Call, mail or email them and offer them something of intrinsic value to someone in that role for free. Ask for their permission to offer them similar things in the future.
2. Send them additional offers. Design some of them so that anyone interested in them can be consider to be interested in buying a product or service like yours. A “Buying Guide” for your product or service is a simple example of this.
3. Those who take advantage of this second offer are your sales prospects. Go to work.

For more discussion of how to leverage email and attraction marketing to generate quality prospects, read our free ebook, “Email Marketing - The Only Bailout Your Business Needs”

Being sure you have an ample supply of quality fuel (leads) is crucial. If you fail here, everything else in the overall process will be more difficult too. For this reason, its imperative that you get organized.

If picking up the phone and cold calling people is your plan to generate leads, then you need to allot time in your day to make it happen. You also need to be sure you’re as productive as possible during that time.

If emailing or mailing offers to leads is your plan, you’ll need to invest some time in creating the content of your campaign and then invest in an email marketing system to automate the delivery of the pieces in your campaign.

You’re going to need a contact management system or CRM and an email marketing system. Think of it this way… You’re going to do twice as much this year without cloning yourself. If you want to get any sleep, you’re going to need to automate things.

When selecting a CRM, contact management system or email marketing system, keep it simple. You need to be able to easily tailor the CRM around your business and your customers. It won’t help you double your sales in 2010 if you’ll need to spend 4 months selecting and implementing the system.

Write down what you need the CRM system to do for you. Not what you’d like. What it MUST do. Then go in search of it and don’t let yourself get enamored of shiny gadgets. Get what you need, nothing more. Be sure you’ve chosen a vendor who can help you get it set up and churning for you quickly.

I hope that you’re seeing your road, your car and your fuel more clearly. This not easy. If it was, everyone would be doing it. It is however completely do-able! If you’ve got questions about some of the decisions you must make to double sales yourself, join us on December 23, 2009, for our webinar, entitled “Building Your 2010 Sales Machine“.

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When you think about it, finding, making contact with and qualifying new prospects involve a very different set of skills and strengths than preparing proposals, negotiating and closing sales.

In the end, the objective is to maximize the dollar volume of sales generated by each sales person. So it makes sense to reduce the burden of the least productive activities they manage and allow them to focus on the most productive. In this case, productive means profitable really. A simple example of this is a business that invests in hiring a sales assistant to prepare proposals for the sales team, based on their specs, so that the sales reps spend more time with clients.

Did you know that most sales people that generate their own leads spend over 50% of their time finding and qualifying prospects vs. presenting, proposing solutions and closing?
So what does 50% of your sales staff’s time cost? A lot!

You can free up the 50% of your sales teams time and feed them with highly qualified leads for less than $100 per sales rep per month.

The following is a step by step guide to making it a reality quickly and affordably.

Step 1 - Make a list of the criteria that make up a highly qualified prospect.

Are they in the right industry? Do they have the requisite number of employees/trucks/facilities, etc.? Does the prospect have responsibility for the appropriate are in the customer organization? Do they have decision making authority this size purchase?

Your business has its own set of criteria and no one knows them like you. Get your team together and get all the criteria into one list.

Step 2 - Get a list of leads that fit the criteria.

You may not be able to get the perfect list. You may be limited to choosing certain industries, sizes of companies and titles. That’s fine. Get as close as you can get. Be sure you’re as inclusive as possible. Get all the industries and titles, etc. that are likely to be a fit.

Step 3 - Develop something to offer this list of people, for free.

Whitepapers, reports, ebooks, event invitations, webinar invitations, etc. are some common examples. Whatever it is, the subject or use of this offer should be designed such that whoever shows interest in it is indicating that they’re likely to be interested in your product or service.

Step 4 - Send your offer to your list.

Email, direct mail, that’s your decision. Whatever you send should intice the leads to request your offer. An email invitation for them to visit a page on your site, complete a form and download the report or a phone # to call, provide their contact info and have the offer mailed to them.

Its that easy. Everyone that requests the offer is a prospect for your sales team.

Clearly, developing the offer is key to the quality of the lead. As an example, a report on the health benefits of water filtration is one thing, a buyer’s guide for purchasing a water filtration system will generate fewer but, more qualified leads.

You don’t have to be a high tech company to do this. Here’s an example:

A manhole repair product manufacturer was focusing its sales efforts on manhole repair contractors. For every repair job needed by a city, there could be several contractors bidding on the project. So the sales team spent most of its time making contact with and nurturing relationships with hundreds of contractors in hopes that the contractor would order the company’s products if they were awarded the job. In addition, often certain products were spec’d into the RFP by the municipate engineer because they had used that product before.

So, they created a document with detailed specifications for manhole repair that municipal engineers can use to prepare a request for proposal to send to contractors. They offer the specifications document to municipal engineers via email. Engineers that download the specs become prospects for the sales team.

The result is that the company can target a much larger list of engineers via email than they could via sales calls and the sales team spends its time with engineers currently working on specs for manhole repair jobs.

A few tools you may want to consider once you’ve gotten your list and your offer ready…

A good online CRM that allows you to easily prepare and send out the offer via email or print. You’ll also want to be sure that as prospects request the offer, you’re able to track their request, easily and quickly fulfill it and make sure a sales person follows up quickly.

At SalesNexus, our online CRM does just that and our Marketing Service partner, Steven Green, can even help you develop the entire campaign.

Here’s what the customer says -

“This is just a note to let you know how much we value what SalesNexus and Steven Greene have taught us. We have only started utilizing some of what you have done for us with tremendous results! I can’t wait to see the results as we implement more and more of our strategy. The time and money we spent on SalesNexus has already shown a return on our investment! We look forward to building our sales force utilizing the SalesNexus online CRM system!” - Michael Farruggia, Parson Environmental

If you’d like to see just how easily you can begin generating quality leads for your sales team with the SalesNexus Online CRM, join our webinar any Wednesday at 2pm Eastern. Click here to register!

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Steven Greene, SalesNexus Director of Marketing Services, has put together a great list of words and phrases that you should avoid in your email communications in order to stay out of the Junk Folder.

Click here to see the entire list of Spam Words to avoid in your emails!

Good luck!

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It just so happened that SalesNexus had decided to make Email Marketing our #1 development priority for 2009. So far, we’ve already upgraded our email server backend technology, released new opt-in/opt-out management and a library of 50 pre-designed email templates included in each subscription. Before the end of 2009, we plan to release open and click through tracking, analytics and dynamic campaigns that change for each contact based on their individual behavior.

So, in June, we released "Email Marketing - The Only Bailout Your Business Needs". Its been a huge success! This last Tuesday, we held an Email Marketing Workshop in the form of a webinar. We selected one lucky SalesNexus customer and worked with them to develop the strategy, the content and the actual emails so that all workshop participants could see the entire process live in action.

Wow! We got some tremendous feedback. It seems the vast majority of small businesses have very high hopes for initiating their own email marketing campaigns but, really don’t know where to start.

Then today, I saw a tweet about a marketing survey. Be sure to check the survey out here. According to the survey, Email Marketing is one the top marketing methods by budget and expectations.

• 80% said Email is the strongest performing marketing channel they have.
• 54% said they plan to increase their email marketing budget this year.

So much promise. But from the experience with our webinar, there is so little know how.

Here’s the good news folks…

Email Marketing is not hard. The concepts and skills required to be very successful driving sales results through email marketing are simple. Some are counter-intuitive though.

We’re going to hold our webinar again - at a date to be disclosed later - to be sure we get this information out there for everyone.

In the meantime, take a look at our Marketing Services page and reach out to my good friend Steven Greene. He’ll be happy to discuss your needs with you and point you in the right direction.

Then get started. Don’t worry that you’re not Shakespeare. You’re an expert at what you do. Put that expertise in emails and send them to people that will value it. You’ll be surprised how things take off after you take the first couple of steps.

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Now we’re holding an Email Marketing Workshop/Webinar to walk readers through the steps, from strategy to implementation, to create winning email marketing campaigns!

Its going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to select one lucky reader of "Email Marketing - The Only Bailout Your Business Needs" and work with them to create a powerful email campaign for their business. Prior to the workshop myself and Steven Greene, SalesNexus Marketing Services partner, will consult with the selected reader to understand their email marketing objectives. Then we’ll develop a series of emails designed to achieve those results. During the Workshop/Webinar, we’ll walk everyone through this process so you can see exactly how to do this for yourself. Normally providing this type of consulting would be priced at over $2,000. We’re going to do it for one lucky business owner at no charge.

What’s truly unique is that all of this is FREE! No charge do download the ebook and no charge to participate in the workshop.

If you’re planning to begin email marketing soon or struggling to achieve results with your existing email marketing efforts, then you can’t pass this up.

The Workshop is July 28th at 7pm Eastern. There’s plenty of time to read "Email Marketing - The Only Bailout Your Business Needs" between now and then…

All who download the ebook are automatically invited to the workshop so, get started today by downloading your free copy of "Email Marketing - The Only Bailout Your Business Needs" - click here.

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This is the third installment in our “Email Marketing - The Only Bailout Your Business Needs” e-Book.

In the previous four chapters, we’ve discussed the blocking and tackling of email marketing.  How to stay on the right side of the law, how to create emails that won’t annoy your customers, how to provide valuable information to your contacts via on-going emails and how to engage prospects so that you’re the one they buy from when the time is right and how to nurture relationships with existing clients.  Click here to read the 1st, the 2nd, the 3rd and the 4th chapters.

The hardest part after participating in a seminar or webinar, taking a course, or just reading an e-book is distilling everything down to an actionable agenda and applying the information to your business.

It always seems that the examples given in the material don’t directly apply to your particular situation, that somehow while you may believe in what you have experienced… turning that experience into action is too tough, and too time consuming. We all have these thoughts whether we are the CEO of a large company, a solo entrepreneur with a business run out of the den, or one of many sales persons in any sized organization.

Its easy to put aside what we have learned. There are always other things going on, a deadline for revising quarterly projections, or some good reason that gets us to wisely conclude the best course of action is  “Let’s Wait and See”.  This is the phrase that kills innovation, progress, and potential in our businesses and our lives …

Don’t wait! Do something. Even if you don’t do it 100% correctly. You will get started on a new path that leads to positive results.

At this point, you have the right to ask the question.

“OK, I read all this stuff. I know e-mail marketing makes good sense. What do I do tomorrow morning?”  How do I start in a way that will help me and doesn’t consume me?

The first piece of this puzzle is to gather the people who have touched your business in some way. These are the people who touch your business by calling, requesting information, responses to advertising or mailers, visiting a physical location or hitting one of your web pages.

We have already discussed putting a system in place where you manage prospects’ contact information in an automated fashion (CRM System). These systems are easy to use and very cost effective. We have also discussed going back to your existing system of holding your contacts (even if it is file cards) and migrating the data to a CRM or contact management system. In this way anything you create can be sent out in an automatic, sequenced way. This works for every contact you add to the system, whether the contact is old or new.

However, no matter how elegant the system, it still only software. The system is only as good as what we put in it.  So even if you don’t have a contact management system in place yet… can’t find all the contacts from the last couple of years… or don’t have contact capture pages (squeeze pages) built for your web site yet, you can still begin the process.

Good places to start:

• Accounting records - as we’ve discussed, your existing customers can be a great place to begin email marketing
• Sales Contacts - you should be able to gather together the contacts your sales team has accumulated in their personal email program, address book software or PDA.
• Business Cards - buy a “CardScan” system at the local office supply store.  It scans your business cards and converts the image into an excel file of names, phone numbers and email addresses

The important thing to remember is that this is a relationship building endeavor. Nothing else. You should start right now with the contacts you have under your control…. whether it is five… or five thousand.

If your target audience can be identified by industry, size of business or some other demographic criteria, then you should be able to purchase a list of contacts.  A relevant trade association can be a good source for lists or you can contact a list broker.  Obtaining lists including email addresses can be difficult and expensive.  You may want to consider sending an initial direct mail piece out inviting contacts to visit a web page and provide up to date contact info, including email address, in order to access some valuable information.  You can also advertise your “offer” on other web sites that may target a similar market. Start simple and small and keep your budget as low as possible. The point is to get started as quickly and simply as possible. Once you’ve gotten things underway and have seen some results, you’ll be able to make smart decisions about how much to invest.

The plan is easy. Create a simple sequence of e-mails. Start with between three and five. Don’t sell hard in these e-mails. You are creating a relationship. You are attempting to become the person who gives something of value - so when people see your e-mails in their inbox – they open them. So giving value becomes very important. This value can be information about your specific category of business, a few paragraphs about business in general, or recommended sites and information that you feel prospects will find useful.

It’s really easy to find information that gives value. For example, many people who write e-books will allow you to give them away, as long as you don’t change anything in them and give the author appropriate credit.  Sites like ezinearticles.com allow you to republish articles written by others often at no charge.

You can also make your first email and invitation to participate in future emailings. Let them know what you’re planning to offer in future emails and ask if they’d like to receive these offers. Basically, this is your “opt-in” email.

So grab your contacts. Send out your first e-mail with an offer for valuable information. Note who responds, fulfill the promise you made in the offer and then send more e-mails… one campaign to the responders and another set to the non-responders. One of the benefits of this methodology is that it shows you the hierarchy of your prospects. Responders should be better candidates for products and services.  As folks respond, you can move them from one campaign to another.

Eventually, you can run many such campaigns simultaneously with hundreds or thousands of contacts. Your CRM system will allow you to do that in a completely automated, very cost effective way. And as more contacts are introduced to your business, you add them to your list. You will soon discover that by giving useful free information away, your contacts will refer more contacts to you.

We can not stress enough that you can start with just a few contacts and a few e-mails because you are building relationships through creative content. The important part is to start… get the process going. The payoff is a truly dramatic increase in added sales and new sales with a decreased cost for those sales.

Remember, you don’t have to worry about building a system. The systems are already built. You are building and leveraging relationships. That is what you have to work on.

We’ll release the entire “Email Marketing - The Only Bailout Your Business Needs” ebook in just a few days. Register to receive the entire eBook here.

Special thanks for contributing to this installment go to Steven Greene.  Steven’s written and managed lead generation and nurturing campaigns in industries from banking to boating.  His input on email marketing is invaluable.  To learn more about Steven click here.

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