I just got back this afternoon from a great workshop on SEO techniques by one of our favorite partners on the topic, www.SEO.com. I have tweeted a bunch of the epiphanies I gathered but one that came up that I get asked a lot about is the topic of this post:
How to get the most for your money with a SEO-optimized press release.
You may not know about how frugal InsideSales.com is; we have built our company without ever taking venture capital and we were recently ranked by Utah Business as #10 in Utah for growth (See September Issue of Utah Business). I bring this up because we did it organically by scrimping and saving yet keeping one foot on the gas pedal when everyone else in our industry is just trying to find ways to spend their venture money (rather than their own earnings.) Not us, this is our money and we are very careful with it. Or, to put it another way; we are very “fiscally efficient,” and proud of it.
Why is SEO important? The best leads that close into the biggest deals.
Why is PR important? The 2nd or 3rd best way to improve SEO.
The players in the market for SEO optimized […]
6 Reasons Why Salesforce Users Need Hosted Dialer Technology
24 October 2009 — Ken Krogue
7 Comments
Even though Inside Sales is becoming noticed more and more as a primary method of lead generation and sales, many people are unaware of the potential leverage they can bring to bear to dramatically increase productivity.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software has become commonplace in almost every sales department, whether tradition face-to-face, or a remote selling model like inside sales. Salesforce is the leading provider of on-demand CRM software on the planet. I get asked a lot why saleforce.com users should consider on-demand power dialer solutions. Here are 6 reasons:
1- More Revenue: In 2005 a landmark study was done by CSO Insights that showed companies that use CRM software have 17% more revenue. That is notable, but not overly compelling. Dialers coupled wth CRM software often increase overall revenue by 200%, 300%, or more by significantly increasing dials, contacts, appointments, and talk time, while lowering costs and wasted time.
2- More Dials: Our internal lead generation department department and many of our clients make 300 calls per rep per day. Most internal lead generation departments in companies we come across fall between 20 and 70 calls a day. Most outsourced lead generation companies we are familiar with make between 70 and 110 calls […]
One of my favorite trainers that used to come teach us when I worked at Franklin Quest (now FranklinCovey) was Joel Weldon. He tells the story of a high school teacher who found this illustration in a cattlemans publication and would share it at the first of his social studies classes every year:
In socialism, if you have two cows, the government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
In communism, the government takes both cows and gives you the milk.
In fascism, you keep both cows, the government takes the milk and sells it back to you.
In New Dealism, the government shoots one cow and pours the others milk down the drain.
In nazism, the government takes both cows and shoots you.
In capitalism, you sell one cow and buy a bull.
What do we call what is going on now?
Technology has trained us to expect things, NOW. When I have a question I’ll Google it and millions of possible answers will be at my fingertips in .27 seconds. I forget that I used to have to go to the library or call a company by looking through the yellow pages.
I forgot my cell phone one day when I went to work. I was lost, unable to do things that not too long ago were impossible with a land line. I can call, text, email, tweet, find a restaurant, make a reservation, get turn by turn directions … hey there’s an app for just about anything.
A prospect who fills out a form on your website is looking for a solution, NOW. They have a problem and it’s unacceptable to contact them 2 days after or not at all.
inside|sales has done research with MIT professor, James Oldroyd, covering the topic of Lead Management with a goal to discover the best time to contact an interested prospect. The results surprised us, as we learned that companies don’t have the luxury of waiting 2 days to contact: or 2 hours. Whether you are a B2B company, or a B2C company, […]
What does it mean to manage a lead effectively? Listed below are the 9 steps to follow when managing your leads.
1. Lead Generation: any of a number of marketing or sales methods used to generate inquiries.
2. Lead Inquiry: a person provides contact information inviting a response.
3. Lead Capture: the method whereby contact information from an inquirer is gathered.
4. Lead Scoring: the practice of grading and prioritizing an inquiry prior to a response to a lead from your sales department.
5. Lead Routing: the geographical, skills-based, random, or other decision process whereby an inquiry is assigned to a rep for response.
6. Lead Distribution: the method used to send inquirer information to a rep for response.
7. Lead Response: the practice of responding immediately, consistently and at optimal times to optimize contact and qualification ratios.
8. Lead Nurturing: the practice of persistently marketing over time to increase awareness, education, and need using ‘permission-marketing’ strategies and tactics.
9. Lead Tracking: the process of gathering key performance indicators and metrics on sources of leads their progress towards sales closure.
We will be reviewing each lead management step in depth. If you have any questions or comments about any of these steps, please, leave them in the comments—we’ll be writing […]
I got asked again today how to talk about InsideSales.com. This question comes up several times a week so I thought it would be good to make is easily accessible in the future.
1. InsideSales.com (IS) was the first company to blend hosted power dialer technology inside a CRM solution. Now we don’t sell much of our own lead management CRM; but we recommend salesforce.com as a much more complete solution instead and we integrate our dialers inside of Salesforce.com.
2. IS sells a power dialer for B2B and complex B2C inside sales, not a predictive dialer for B2C or telemarketing.
3. IS has four main suites of Products: Outbound Dialers, Inbound Call Routing, Lead Management CRM, Intelligent Workflow (automated marketing or lead nurturing) products. These products help respond to leads immediately and consistently to dramatically increase contact and qualification rates.
4. We pioneered and invented Lead Response Management in conjunction with MIT research. This means we built tools to immediately capture leads and respond to them in 8-10 seconds while the person is still by their phone.
5. We work best for companies with lots of web leads and an inside sales or lead generation department.
6. We focus on increasing the qualification of leads from your […]
I still receive requests to share again the 17 most effective lead generation methods that I gave in November of 2008 at a breakfast seminar at Novell from research first published in the 2008 Lead Generation issue BtoBOnline Magazine.
I will share the 17 methods ranked first by effectiveness, then by popularity, then by the points of variance up or down.
Popular isn’t necessarily good, it just means everyone else is doing it (email for example is ranked 1st as most popular, but ranked 7th in actual effectiveness.) Take especial note of the degree of variance and whether it is positive or negative. High positive variance shows extreme effectiveness that is relatively unused or unknown by your competition.
I believe that the best methods are those that are most Effective, but least Popular. So look for a low number on Effective, and a high number on Variance:
Lead Generation Method
Effective
Popular
Variance
Executive Seminars
1
8
7
Inside Sales
2
9
7
Search Marketing
3
6
3
Webinars
4
10
6
Tradeshows
5
3
-2
TV Advertising
6
17
11
Email
7
1
-6
Radio
8
15
7
PR
9
2
-7
Online video / podcasts/ rich media
10
12
2
Direct Mail
11
4
-7
Blogs
12
13
1
Sponsorships
13
7
-6
Online Ads
14
11
-3
Other Web 2.0
15
14
-1
Outdoor
16
16
0
Print
17
5
-12
At my company, InsideSales.com, we combine the first five (Executive Seminars, Inside Sales, Search Marketing, Webinars, and Trade Shows) to bring us the best results.
My personal background with founding the original inside sales division at Franklin Quest as the largest time management seminar company […]
I first heard of ‘Web 2.0’ from Chris Knudsen and Dave Beisinger, at a vidcast company called 10SpeedMedia. They were helping us make micromercials to test web video as a new lead generation media. They told me enough to get me very interested.
As my research about Web 2.0 began on Google in the summer of 2006, I started with Tim O’Reilly’s landmark article ‘What Is Web 2.0’ and expanded from there. I read Paul Graham and Andrew Keen and dozens of others and was enthralled and amazed at the point and counterpoints surrounding the Web 2.0 buzz.
I wanted to see how all of this related to sales. I immediately wondered what ‘Sales 2.0’ would look like. I knew someone espousing Sales 2.0 would be close behind.
Sure enough. I soon found that everybody out there had come up with their version of ‘Something 2.0’: Call Center 2.0, Business 2.0, Marketing 2.0 and Small Business 2.0 to name a few. The common thread was that they all linked back to the disruptive change brought about by the Internet.
It was August of 2006, I couldn’t find a thing on the web about Sales 2.0. I bought the domain Sales2-0.com to have a way to communicate our thoughts.
I didn’t […]
As always I want to make things clear, and today I’ve set my sights on some acronyms that are used a lot in remote sales: B2B and B2C. What do they stand for? ‘Business to Business’ and ‘Business to Customer’ respectively.
Some may argue (and do if you read some of the blogs out there) that there are virtually no differences in the sales processes targeting these to groups. B2B and B2C become arbitrary classifications to these people. Instead of tallying up the many ways they are the same, I want to highlight some of the key differences between the two categories and explain why that warrants a different sales tactic.
Quantity: There are two major differences in quantity between B2B and B2C markets: a difference in number of clients, and a difference in size of their budget. There are millions of individual customers while some B2B operations struggle to have customer bases creep into the thousands category. But what businesses lack in shear number they more than make up for in how much each individual customer is able to spend. Because of these differences each sale to a B2B customer has more […]
