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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Advertising firms will be pleased to create a “campaign” for you. They’ll charge you for every minute of their time to produce “creative” and to make “media buys”. They’ll start to tell you about the old marketing axiom that says a person must see your ad three times before it really sinks in. They’ll start to use the word “brand” a lot.

No doubt, your brand is important. However, if you’re a small business and you’re not sitting on a huge pile of money that will allow you to completely saturate your marketplace with your company’s brand, then “branding” will not grow your business.

#1 Fallacy in Marketing and Selling that Causes You to Waste Money and Destroys Profits – All Marketing and Advertising Starts with Branding First

Wrong! Think about it… When you think of strong brands, who comes to mind? IBM, Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola? No question that those brands have real value. Those names have been beat into our heads since we were all children. They’ve also been very consistent. A Coke today is pretty darned close to a Coke 40 years ago. Heck, these companies names are part of our language.

Think about the last few Coca-Cola ads you’ve seen. They’re really not about the product at all. They’re about emotions – happy times, good friends, etc. The objective is to create a connection in your mind between the word Coke and these positive emotions. That’s great for Coke. They spend billions of dollars on this type of advertising because their product is already literally everywhere. As you go through your daily life, you are presented with the opportunity to purchase a Coke in the break room, at lunch, at the gas station, in the grocery store, etc. If you’ve got a warm and fuzzy feeling connected to their name, as you’re walking down the aisle it may cause you to stop and grab a six pack.

You don’t have that kind of money or time. You need to generate sales. Huge media buys (TV, Newspapers, Radio, Product Placements, etc.) are not an option. If you’ve just introduced a new caffeinated beverage, what are you going to do? How can you possibly chip away at the huge mountain of history and branding that is Coke?

Not by trying to beat them at their own game, that’s for sure!

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#2 Fallacy in Marketing and Selling that Causes You to Waste Money and Destroys Profits – Small Businesses CAN Afford to Go Head to Head with the Big Guys

That’s right! We’re just not going to try and beat them at branding. That would be insane. You need to connect with customers who have a need for your product or service. If you’re selling to businesses, what are the problems you solve or the opportunities you allow customers to take advantage of? That’s how you’re going to “brand” yourself.

In B2B selling, it can be difficult to even get a list of specific people that want or need what you have to sell them. There is no magazine written specifically for refinery production supervisors with employees with problems following safety regulations, for instance. For many businesses, it comes down to this – you can’t afford to advertise in magazines, etc. that are read by your audience because they’re also read by thousands of people that aren’t going to be interested in your product AND your competition has run up the cost of that advertising.

In our last chapter, we talked about the new ways in which people buy. Internet searches are a key step in the buying process for most people now.

You can cut through the challenges we’ve discussed by positioning your company and your services at the point where the customer begins to look for solutions to the problem your service address – his Internet search. In a later chapter, we’re going to give you 6 simple steps to generate qualified sales leads you can afford. For now though, let’s focus on the how you get in front of the customer.

We know you can’t afford to broadcast yourself to the masses in hopes that those that actually need a product like you sell will see your ad three times and respond to it. We also know that those that do have a problem your company can solve will likely go to the Internet and start searching for solutions as one of their first steps.

Your challenge is to be there. Be at the top of the results when they do the right search. They type “how to fix a broken widget” into their search engine and up comes a link to your website. Think about how that changes your advertising and marketing challenges.

Instead of trying to “get in front of” the thousands or millions of people that could possibly one day need your products, you just need to jump out in front of the ones that have begun to look for solutions.

We’re not going to get into all the details of Search Engine Optimization, Pay per Click Advertising, etc. There is plenty already available for free on the Internet for you to read and I bet you’re not interested in editing HTML pages anyway. You can hire someone to do all that for you and it shouldn’t be too expensive.

Your job is to create something of value that you can give to your prospect for free. I know, we’re talking about growing your sales. Remember, someone who doesn’t know your company at all just did a search on the Internet and your company has come up in the results alongside several others. You know, by virtual of what they searched for, that they have a problem you can solve for them. What you need now is to help them see your company as a resource to solve their problem or conquer their opportunity.

So, you create a resource they can use to understand their challenge more clearly, analyze possible solutions and essentially become an informed buyer. A report on the Top 10 Reasons Companies Suffer From Whatever it Is That Your Customers All Suffer From. A Buyers Guide that tells them the key questions to ask themselves and vendors when buying the things you sell. A “Free Consultant” or Needs Assessment can even be an effective offer in many cases.

When someone takes advantage of these resources, you know they have a problem you can solve and that makes them a lead. You can create a marketing funnel that leads highly qualified leads directly to your sales team. They take advantage of your report on the Top 10 Reasons… and at the end you offer them a free consultation.

In addition to getting this sort of free offer in front of your market via search engines, you may be able to do this through direct mail, telemarketing and other means. In fact, that’s what’s so powerful about this approach. It works through all mediums. If you write a free report to hand out at the big industry trade show, you can also publish it on your website and you may be able to get it included in the trade association’s post trade show newsletter, etc.

It’s important to think about this process in terms of quantity. If you specialize in custom designed valves for processing plants that handle a certain type of material, you wouldn’t want to offer a free consultation to every processing plant you can find. That would leave your sales team spending a lot of time with prospects that may be highly interested in learning about the cool, innovative product you’ve come up with but, have no need to buy it because they don’t work with materials that require it.

#3 Fallacy in Marketing and Selling that Causes You to Waste Money and Destroys Profits – More leads is not always better

Your sales team is the engine of your business’ growth. Why would you want to pour bad fuel into the engine? What happens to an engine that runs on bad fuel? It deteriorates. Your sales people will get frustrated if they’re spending all their time on leads that don’t buy. You’ll have more problems with keeping them motivated and more importantly, your cost to close a real deal will go up.

The number one objective is to develop a marketing funnel that feeds your sales team with highly qualified leads. If they’ve read the free report, downloaded the buyer’s guide and requested a free consultation, they have essentially qualified themselves and educated themselves. They’ve basically turned themselves into a slam dunk for your sales team!

As you build your marketing funnel, you’ll have to experiment a bit. You may find you get a lot of response to one offer but, getting the prospect to take another step in the process is tougher. You’ll need to get analytical about managing your marketing funnel. Using a good contact management, lead management or CRM solution is crucial. You need to measure each step in the funnel and track where your sales people are spending their time and what’s working and what’s not. It’s a mistake to try and manage this process by listening to anecdotes from your sales team. ( more on that later ) You need hard data to make decisions confidently. A good CRM system can provide that information while also helping your sales team be more productive.

#4 Fallacy in Marketing and Selling that Causes You to Waste Money and Destroys Profits – Relationships are not about being face to face

Just as you can’t afford to blanket the marketplace with your “brand”, you can’t afford to have your sales people flying all over the world talking to every prospect that demonstrates curiosity in your products. That is a sure-fire profit killer.

Maybe an average deal for you is $100,000. That sort of sale can justify a lot of travel expense and sales time. However, if you’ve got to visit 10 customers 4 times each to get one order and still pay for building and delivering your product or service, the numbers don’t look as good anymore. It’s also about time. The amount of time your sales team spends on each lead defines the maximum number of sales you can make. Increasing the profitability of your sales effort means reducing the amount of time spent with leads and preserving their time to work with and filter a higher volume of leads and focus quality time only on highly qualified prospects.

Especially if you’re selling a big ticket item or a long term relationship, the tendency is to “get in front” of prospects and build relationships. There are lots of ways to build relationships that don’t involve a face to face visit.

In fact, relationships are really about trust, credibility and empathy. The marketing funnel process you’re going to build will create credibility for your company by offering your prospects bite sized pieces of your knowledge and expertise. Delivering the content can help build trust. But, most important is empathy. Asking the right questions of your prospect and listening to their unique answers shows that you’re both knowledgeable and appreciate the specific needs of each prospect.

Demos and presentations can be done over the Internet. A phone call that involves you asking open ended questions and listening a lot can build a much stronger relationship than an expensive trip where you roll in with your overhead projector and walk the prospect through 20 slides.

Remember, this is the 3rd 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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In the pre-Internet days, a publication called “Consumer Reports” was very popular. Those of us that pre-date Gen X, Y, etc. remember how often Consumer Reports was cited in advertising. If your company was reviewed positively by Consumer Reports, you were darned sure going to let me know that. Their specialty was doing in-depth tests of all the important components of each product and then comparing all the major competitors side by side. What made them unique is that they did not accept advertising. This enabled Consumer Reports to conduct their analysis objectively and just as importantly, it gave their readers the impression they were uninfluenced by advertising dollars. Relatively high subscription payments from readers were the only source of funding to pay for all that exhaustive research.

Why did so many readers pay such a high price for Consumer Reports? Because it helped them make smart purchase decisions. People wanted to feel like they “got a good deal” or made the “wise choice”.

In addition to reading serious publications like Consumer Reports, other options were going out on your own by visiting stores and the library, checking with the Better Business Bureau, and talking with friends and colleagues.

Lots of time was invested in all of this investigation. Then, once you selected your short list of products and vendors, you had to start calling or visiting vendors and negotiating the price and terms.

As recently as 10 years ago, making a truly wise decision and getting a good deal involved a LOT of time and diligence.

So it’s no wonder that the Internet has become a crucial step in most people’s buying process. What most people don’t realize is how much the Internet has changed things.

As an example, just think of your last car purchase. Your buying process probably included all the above steps with the addition of some Internet searches. In the past, you might get out and visit some dealerships early in the process and “kick some tires”. And what’s the one thing we all detest about visiting a car lot? When it gets down to negotiating, there’s the inevitable process where the sales rep keeps going to check with his manager on the pricing, financing, etc. Why is it so frustrating? Because they leave you sitting there waiting not just once but several times in a visit. Sometimes for 30 minutes or more at a stretch!

When you were buying that car, when you did your searches on the Internet, you probably found some vehicles online that you requested more information about. That probably meant waiting for a sales rep to receive your request and call you. I bet you ended up spending a lot more time with the sales people that called you back quickly! We hate to wait. Especially when we’re ready to buy!

So the Internet has become the place to go for quick research and a quick response. In fact, virtually all buying processes involve two separate activities on the Internet. First, you do your research. Second, you reach out to vendors you’ve selected to actually begin the negotiation process.

#1 Radical Change in the Way People Buy: The Internet is the first place people go to do research to aid in their purchase decision and when it’s time to contact your business.

Even if people have to visit your physical location to make their purchase, you can bet they will look you up online to check store hours, get a map and maybe even request some info before they visit.

Your company needs to be a resource for customers during every step in their buying process. In fact, you can reach a much wider market via the Internet than you can via other media for the same money. You can expand your marketing reach and fill your funnel with far more prospects than you have today. But first you have to be sure you have what your customers want in at least three points in their process of deciding to do business with you.

We’ve already talked about two of them – the research stage and the contact stage. However, the most valuable step is actually the first step. It comes before the prospect has even decided to make a purchase. Maybe they are not even aware that the type of thing you sell is available. They’re just sitting out there suffering from a problem that you can cure for them.

Imagine if you were able to become a resource for folks with that particular problem or challenge before they decided to do something about it! Now you’re engaging with your entire market and positioning yourself and your business as a trusted authority on the subject. Who better to do business with when the time comes?

#2 Radical Change in the Way People Buy: Reaching a wider audience is no longer done through branding your product and service to the masses. It’s done through branding yourself and your company as a trusted information resource for people with problems you can cure.

In upcoming chapters of “Build Your Own Automatic Selling Machine”, we’re going to get specific about how to get yourself and your company in front of the right audience at the right times.

First though, let’s consider another way that the Internet has changed the way people buy. Remember the story about Consumer Reports earlier? The magazine filled a need for objective research for consumers. In the old days, if you were lucky, you had a friend, relative or colleague you could call on for advice about an upcoming purchase. For most of us, that meant we had one or two people we could call on about a given subject. Sometimes we just didn’t know anyone with the right sort of experience. That meant we were left talking to Uncle Bill, who seemed to know a little bit about everything…

The process of reaching out to people you know is a natural human instinct. Advice from friends suffers from at least three flaws –

A. People tend to think highly of their own decisions, which leads them to recommend things they’ve previously bought or visa versa.

B. People tend to tell others what they want to hear. Your colleagues are not likely to tell you anything that disagrees drastically with your point of view. They’ll skew what they say about their real feelings to make them more compatible with yours.

C: It’s time consuming to make contact with people and get their advice.

So here we are with the Internet making all our research easy and fast. It’s also very quick and easy to reach out to vendors for information. When you’ve got a problem and you’ve decided to fix it, most of us are not disciplined enough to put the brakes on and wait a week or two while we reach out to selected friends and colleagues.

Where do we turn for that crucial “advice from a friend” component of our buying process?

Online communities. Some would call it Social Media. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo Groups, etc. They’re all the rage right now of course. For many business owners and sales managers, they seem to be a way for employees to waste a lot of time talking with friends about non-work related stuff. However, these communities fill an important function in most buying cycles. They connect the buyer –your prospect– with others that can lend some advice in a very fast and organized way.

If you haven’t tried any these online communities yourself, then put this book down now and sign up for LinkedIn or Facebook. Join a group related to the industry you’re in. Ask a question that a prospect of yours would ask. Watch how many folks response and how varied their input interests are. The key question is how many of your competitors can you find in the community?

Recently Google began indexing LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter internal pages, among other sites. This means that when your prospects start their research by doing a Google search, they’re going to see recent discussions about related topics in online communities right alongside the regular web page results.

Back to the human need to connect with other humans for advice. These sites make that so easy and so fast, you’d have to be crazy not to post a question about an upcoming purchase.

#3 Radical Change in the Way People Buy: Online Communities are a rapidly growing touch point in the purchase process because they provide fast access to the experience and expertise of hundreds or thousands of people rather than the two or three people most of us know to ask.

The good news here is that this trend is still relatively new. Even in many high tech but very specialized fields, you may be the first of your competitors to take advantage of this trend. Many of the sites also make it extremely easy to monitor what’s being talked about related to your business or industry quickly.

Your short list of near term objectives for online communities should be –

1. Identify the communities you need to participate in. Ask your customers where they spend time. Don’t try to be everywhere.

2. Figure out how you can keep tabs on topics of interest to you in these communities efficiently. Many, like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, make it very easy.

3. Start getting involved in discussions that are related to your area of interest or expertise and/or business. More on this in upcoming chapters.

For most business owners that have been around for a few years, the website is an online version of your brochure or catalog. You’ve probably spent some money on the design of the site, as well as Search Engine Optimization and Pay per Click advertising. As discussed in our first chapter, “4 Reasons You’re Throwing Money Down the Drain When You Pay for Advertising and Marketing”, you probably weren’t pleased with the results and felt you overpaid.

That has to change. As you read the following chapters of “Build Your Own Automatic Selling Machine”, you’ll probably want to spend more time and money on your online presence. That’s good. However, we’re going to make sure you know what you’re getting and how to measure it first. Overtime, your online presence must become the most robust and appealing of the “interfaces” with customers and prospects you have.

In the coming chapters, we’re going to get very detailed about how to get you in front of a much wider audience as a trust expert in your field. You will have the opportunity to control the prospects buying process before they even know they’re buying anything!

Remember, this is the 2nd 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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The topic is adjusting your sales process in order to maximize close rates and return on leads that come through your web site.  If you’re spending money to drive traffic to your website, then you there are some very common but deadly mistakes that you should avoid.

I hope you’ll give it a read and let us know what you think by commenting!

Click here to read the full article. 

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I found this video on John Winter’s blog and just had to share it.  Apparantly it was used to help focus a team preparing a branding campaign.

Its also quite moving.  I hope you enjoy! 

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His e-Book, “Fishing Where the Fish Are” maps social media to the B2B buying cycle.  Well worth the read.

If you’re a business owner or sales manager with lots to do and not enough time to learn about social media the hard way, Chris’ e-Book is a great quick start guide!

I hope you enjoy!

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Certainly my competitors aren’t!  In my webinar this Wednesday, we hold one each Wednesday at 2pm EST, one of the attendees mentioned that our response to her request for information via our website was “super fast”.  That was a nice comment to hear in a webinar like that!

She also mentioned that she had filled out web forms requesting information or free trials from a few of my competitors on the same day.  She still hasn’t heard from any of them - a WEEK later.

If you have leads coming in via your web site, you HAVE to set up a process that allows your sales team to know about that lead instantly and contact that lead immediately!  If you don’t, your odds of selling something to that lead go down tremendously.

You may say, “What I sell isn’t bought on impulse, its a high ticket item” or “I don’t want to waste my sales people’s valuable time on tire kickers that visit my web site” or “I like to take a look at the leads and hand the out to the sales people individually as an incentive or based on which accounts they manage” etc.

Well, I can tell you from first hand experience that SalesNexus wins business every day because we’re the first to respond.  When our prospects request a demo or free trial from us, they almost always do the same thing on a competitor’s site.

We call immediately. We can because we use our own technology that pops the lead into our database and alerts the sales rep instantly.  Its easy for the sales rep and the prospect is always impressed with our promptness.  We use this to take control of the research process or buying process the prospect is in and to make the point that SalesNexus is different from its competitors in the attentiveness we pay our customers.

If you can’t see a way to do this for your “web leads”, then you shouldn’t be spending money on them.

BTW,  the worst offending competitor is Salesforce.com.  They typically take a week or so to call the lead.  You may think I’m crazy divulging this competitive advantage.  The fact is that Salesforce.com won’t care.  They’re not that interested in the types of small and medium sized businesses we are.  If you only have 20 sales reps, you aren’t big enough to get top notch sales response from Salesforce.com.

I’m not bragging here but, I highly recommend that you put it to the test!  Request a SalesNexus Free Trial and a Salesforce.com Free Trial.  Watch what happens next.  If you’re willing to try this, let me know your thoughts afterwards.

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Todd Miechiels, a Web Marketing guru that I know and trust, just posted a great article about an experience with a client who’s phone system was turning off prospects.

Todd’s article also highlights the value of track-able phone numbers that enable recording the calls.  If you’re spending big bucks on lead generation, these are things you should consider.

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Most small businesses are missing a HUGE opportunity to improve the quality and quantity of the leads their sales teams are working with and improve marketing ROI.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM).  I know, I’m sort of preaching to the choir here on this blog but, my point today is not to convince small business owners to focus more time and spending on SEM.  I’ve tried that for 4 years.  I’m rarely successful.

Somehow, most small business owners just don’t get it.  My point today is to ponder why this is.

I’m sure part of it is just good old fashioned ignorance and discomfort with all the unfamiliar technology and jargon.

But, the opportunity seems to me to be compelling enough that most entrepreneurs would be willing to wade through the learning curve.

Here’s how easy it can be - with the SalesNexus online contact management system for instance - you can put a form on your web site (lots of our customers don’t even have a contact us form when we meet) and every time a prospect fills it out, their name, phone, email, etc. can be automatically added to the contact management database, an auto-responder email campaign can be started AND an alert for the sales rep to call can be triggered.  All automatically and instantly.

Beats spending hours and hours at networking events collecting business cards that probably never end up in a centralized, shared contact management database and many of which probably don’t even get called back.

But to me, the real win is that a search lead is already qualified in ways that a cold call or networking referral can never be.

When you get a referral for instance, they may occasionally have a burning need you can fill but, most often, they need or use what you sell but, are busy with other projects right now and you start a process of chasing the referral, trying to cajole them into making investigating your offering a priority.

With a search lead, your potential customer has decided on their own, without any prompting from you, to stop what they’re doing and do a search for something like what you offer.  So, by the time they click on your search ad or listing, visit your site and submit your form, they are effectively telling you they have a strong need for what you have.

You pick up the phone and you don’t have to convince them to give you some of their time, they’re happy you called.  They are immediately ready to tell you all about their needs so that you can help them address the problem, challenge or opportunity that caused them to do the search in the first place.

Its a big difference.  In a small business, that difference means shorter sales cycles and more sales time focused on hot leads looking to spend money on a product or service like yours rather than on luke warm leads that might buy something someday, if you’re lucky.

Of course there is a lot that you have to do right to make SEM work this well.  In my opinion, you do have to have a good contact management system to collect the leads, ensure proper follow up and enable analysis of the quality of the leads.

You also have to have a good offer that compels visitors to your site to fill out the form.  This offer has to be “in tune” with your search campaign and with the type of customer that is most profitable for your business.

Of course, there are a lot of experts out there that can help.  There are also a lot of people pretending to be experts that can waste a lot of your money.

Here are some resources for you:

Do it yourself tips and tools from Google.

A great SEM guru you can trust to recommend solutions that will work for your business. 

If you’d like to explore how Search Engine Marketing can help your business grow and profit, join me for my SalesNexus webinar on Wednesdays at 2pm EST.  We always cover our contact management system working with our web lead capture service and if you hang around until the end, I’d be happy to answer any questions on SEM.

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