Lead Generation Tips: Hold a Special Presentation of Your Products or Services

Today's Lead Generation Tips:


Test the idea of having the prospect e-mail a form to you, or mail back a letter on company stationery. With this type of request, you do not need to feature a discount, coupon or phone number. Always include a survey, questionnaire, or bounce-back when you send literature or information to a prospect. Use the opportunity to gain as much information as you can about the prospect. Introduce them to additional items and services.

Let your prospect know she can respond to your offer by calling a special toll free number --which connects her directly to a salesperson.

Have your prospect attend a business briefing, special presentation or demonstration of your products or services. This can be held locally at a hotel , restaurant or sales office. Or online with a webinar, tele-class or tele-seminar. Host a preview in person or on the phone or web. This will qualify your prospects and may eventually do away with the need to cold call.

How can these tips help your business? Do you have any lead generation tips that have worked for you?

Lead Generation Tips: Include a Qualifier in Your Ad Copy

Today's lead generation tips:

Include a qualifier in your ad copy. Begin your headline with the name of the market or the specific market for the product or service. “Headaches?” will only attract people with a headache, and if that’s your target audience, you’ll reach them quicker and with less effort. Or you can name the market, like, “If you’re in charge of marketing… you should mail the Special Buy Card today.” Or “Subscribe to our newsletter, where you’ll find solutions to common marketing problems and case studies which show how others in your industry are solving them.”

Ask your prospect to complete a short survey. Online surveys help you flesh out what is really bothering the prospect. It identifies the “pain” that your product or service will solve. Your ad copy might say,” Just answer these five questions and we’ll e-mail you a customized recommendation on how you can save up to 25% on your personalized marketing plan.”

How can these tips help with your lead generation? Do you have any tips?

Lead Generation Tips

With the average cost of face to face cold calls going through the roof, sales organizations are testing new ways to bring back a higher quality of sales leads for their sales people. A good flow of quality leads will help keep your sales people motivated, reduce your advertising and selling costs and boost overall marketing efficiency.

For the next few weeks I am going to share some lead generation tips with you. I have found these to be useful in my own business.

Today's tips:

Qualify the prospect by telling them a salesperson will call to follow up. For example your copy might read, "Send for this special report today. You can download it instantly and begin to profit from the valuable information right away. We’ll even have a representative contact you with a very special, limited time offer."

Put the price in your copy. This will usually separate the lookers who love to collect free brochures and product spec sheets from the serious buyers. Your copy might say, “Find out how you can purchase this remarkable timesaving “product” for as low as $1250.

Have you used these tips before? Or are they new to you?

Which Side of the Recession Do You Want to Be On?

In a recession, some people win and some lose. The big news is that you can decide today which side you want to be on.

In 1975 Ronald Reagan was elected President. Interest rates were enormous; people were waiting 2 hours in line to fill up their gas tanks and hostages were being held in Iran. Times looked pretty bleak. Then came one of the most prosperous times in U.S. history.

We know that some people prosper during these hard times. Bankruptcy attorneys, blood banks, cleaning services, home based business opportunities and venture capitalists are doing well now. How can your product or service innovate itself to become part of the solution instead of part of the problem?

The Question Is: How Do You Or Your Business Take Advantage Of These Opportunities?

During recessionary times, successful people are the ones who are more creative. They build wealth and success because they seize the opportunities before them.

This is why this period in history offers the greatest opportunities of our lifetime. Real Estate is distressed, the stock market has bargains galore and retail discounts areeverywhere.

Wealth is built by seizing opportunities, reducing costs and maximizing sales conversions.

What's holding us back?

Let's face facts. Most business people are just too busy putting out fires all day to worry about all the new fangled marketing strategies. They're not sure what the best strategyis, what a good response (ROI) is or if they should do it in house or outsource. Most executives feel their time could be better spent elsewhere. They yearn for the day when they can spend less time doing what they don't enjoy and lead a more fulfilling life.

What's the answer?

Identifying and presenting the most relevant solutions - solutions that will give your customers and clients hope to raise sales and profits while reducing expenses.

What Your Customers Really Want

Martin Etherington, VP-Marketing at Tektronix, Inc. said in an article in BtoB Magazine, January 19, 2009, "We have an absolute focus on helping our existing customers in thisdownturn and providing innovation in a crisis. They have the same problems we do - controlling expenses, improving time to market and increasing revenues"

Naylor Gray, director of global marketing at Frost & Sullivan, said "the most important thing is to focus on ROI and focus on the things that will make the company money, such as lead generation programs, webinars and white papers."

Recession Marketing

Stefan Tornquist, research director at Marketing Sherpa recently identified the 5 key elements essential to marketing successfully during a recession. He made his comments in a Wall Street Journal interview in June, 2008.

1. Branding matters. Downturns create branding opportunities for small players to increase their visibility because there is less competition advertising in the market. It's basically an "end-run" strategy.

2. SEO & SEM remain unleveraged. Organic search is not complicated but most marketers don't realize how important it is in the grand scheme of internet presences.

3. Increasing traffic is expensive. Increasing conversions doesn't have to be. It's easier to test various conversion strategies than constantly looking for more traffic and leads.There are two quick ways to improve your website's effectiveness; better usability design and better copy.

4. Copy impacts web conversions more than any single factor. The way to improve your copy is to constantly test, tweak, test, tweak, etc.

5. Direct mail is still the marketing workhorse. Research confirms what direct mail experts said in the 1980's: Short, single purpose direct mail pieces will outpoll a 75 pagecatalog. Define your target buyer and mail them something that will lead them to a highly personalized website.

Time saving resources that work.

Welcome to the age of content marketing. B2B marketing strategists envision 2009 as the year of interactive content marketing and custom publishing. Clients are demanding more"what's in it for me" content that solves their problems, needs and challenges. Marketers are beginning to rely on more personal, segmented, prospect focused content that they can track and respond to in real time.

The chief marketing council (CMO) found in a recent study that 75.9% of senior marketers believe they are not realizing the full revenue potential of current customers.

In most cases these companies are spending money on acquiring new customers. They could reduce expenses and boost revenue dramatically by using strategies to up-sell, cross-sell, partner and be more inventive in ways to engage existing customers. It's a matter of integrating and mining your current database with your salesorganization.

Find which leverage point you can easily improve upon and begin to implement specific strategies. Content marketing in all of its forms (audio, video, print, teleclasses) areeffective at each of 5 customer leverage points. Attraction, Qualification, Conversion, Retention and Multiplication.

Low Cost Marketing For Businesses On A Budget

As most other marketing experts will also tell you, it’s time to start a more aggressive marketing campaign. Now is the not the time to stop marketing. That’s what your competitors are doing…. nothing!

However, don’t do what most businesses do. The local newspaper or radio station salesman shows up at your door trying to sell you a “package,” which will tell everyone in your city how wonderful you are. That’s sounds really interesting, but now is the time to cut costs. One way to cut costs is to fine tune your targeting. Make sure you understand who your best customers are and find more like them.

Here’s how…

Partner With Complimentary Businesses

Bensinger’s Fine Cleaners in Memphis, Tennessee printed gift certificates with the logo of three prominent men’s clothing stores offering anyone who bought a shirt from any of those stores, 2 free cleanings. The stores were happy to give away this value added service to their upscale clients. The dry cleaner was thrilled with all the new customers.

Ask For Referrals

Referrals are the fastest, easiest way to double your business. Referred customers are better customers because they cost less to acquire, they are much less price resistant and less likely to complain. This type program rewards the person who is referring you new business and rewards the new customer. It normally costs $250 or more to acquire a new customer. It doesn’t happen by itself. This is a much easier and affordable way to achieve it.

Winback Inactive Customers

Peggy Placek of Houdini’s Cleaners in Ypsilanti, Michigan discovered the secret of how to incentivize employees and win back inactive customers. Here is what Peggy said,”Two days ago my counter girl made calls. The next day one man brought $300 worth of drycleaning into our store. He said he came because she called him. Just a friendly call and only a $5.00 discount on a $300 order. That was awesome.”

Reward Customers

It’s easy for a new customer to walk in when you’re giving her a discount coupon. The trick is to get her to come back. Bob Clarke of the Clothes Doctor in Foothill Ranch, California gives out “Laundered Money” Cards to new customers with $5.00 off each of the next 4 visits. This gets customers appreciative about his quality and thrilled with his service.

Steve Thompson of Sand Dollar Cleaners in Jacksonville, Florida uses a “poor man’s loyalty program, where he rewards customers with wooden “sand dollars.” For every $10 a customer spends they receive a sand dollar worth $1 dollar off their next order. The nice thing is, the wooden nickels can be reused over and over again.

Social Networking

Work out an arrangement with a local school or charity looking for donations. One dry cleaning member in California built a school house out of cardboard, put it in his lobby and donates the “cents” on any receipt put in the house to the school. His customers forgot he had raised his prices.

These are five low cost strategies you can implement right away to get more customers and keep them coming back and spending more.

Recession Proof Marketing

In good times and in bad, the one sided media is constantly bombarding us with negative forecasts a gloomy predictions. When companies feed into this negativity it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy almost. “Well the economy is getting bad, so let’s reduce expenses.”

One economist noted that there are always ways to make money – you just do it differently in good times versus bad times. It’s difficult but essential to keep a positive attitude when dealing with a slowdown in business. Doing nothing will not solve any of your problems. The only way to break through fear is to do the thing you fear.

Begin today to develop a competitive strategy to deal with the coming months. Realize that a slow economy causes people to stagnate and do nothing. So if you’re doing something, anything to stimulate business and reduce costs, you’re still ahead of the game.

Take Business Away From Your Competitors

Your competitors may be doing nothing to promote their businesses. Take advantage of their lethargic nature and attract people in your neighborhood who may be dissatisfied with their lack of attention to detail, or the fact that they can’t remember you by name.

Begin to Develop Better Relationships with Customers

Remember, the Rockefeller Foundation found that 68% of customers leave an establishment because of an attitude of indifference on the part of an employee or management. What are you doing today to make sure that does not happen to any of your customers? You cannot afford, during these uncertain times to lose customers to indifferent attitudes.

Begin to establish a system to keep in touch with customers more often, whether through email, newsletters, mail or phone. Find out why fading customers haven’t returned and do whatever it takes to make it right so they’ll return. This is a whole lot easier than begging and discounting so new customers will try you out. You already have a relationship with these former customers. Get on the phone and develop it further.

One dry cleaner began calling lost customers. She retrieved the customer who came in and spent over $300 on one order. You never know if customers are thinking about you and all they want is a phone call.

Do Customers Know All The Services You Provide?

Business owners take their services for granted. But all of your customers do not know all of the services you provide. Train your sales people to tell customers and prospects about all the services you provide.


Diversify Your Marketing Strategies

Usually in uncertain times, marketing is the first expense to be cut. According to the March edition of the Harvard Business Review, this is exactly the right time to begin an advertising campaign. The reason is your competitors are wallowing in fear and doubt and so you can now take advantage of this and attract new people into your store.

Power Up Your Technology

You don’t have to purchase fancier technology. If you have a POS system, you possess the greatest asset you can own – a customer database. The problem is only about 10% of businesses use their POS for marketing. Those that do report sales increases of 15% - 20% with each customer contact. Understand the power of segmenting your customers by customer type and relating to them on an individual, personalized basis. When you do this you’ll establish rapport and insure a loyal customer.


Refresh Your Customer Care Skills

You have to get better. More organized and use technology to your advantage. Your front counter people are the eyes and ears of your organization. They hold the key to research about what customers want, believe about you and what they think about your service. With employee incentives you can motivate them to find out a goldmine of information about what your customers want and then deliver it to them the way they want it, on time in a quality package. Look for creative ways to help customers .

Most importantly talk to customers and prospects. Develop relationships so you can easily ask them if they have needs for more of your services, or if they know people who might be in the mood to switch to your company. Maybe they know new people who have moved into the neighborhood.

If you treat each customer the same, you’ll continue to get the same results. When you listen you’ll be one step ahead of the game and ahead of your compe

Convert & Keep The Right Customers

Convert The Right Customers

You have to stand for something. Be different, maybe even outrageous and that will set you apart from the competition. Forward thinking companies today are getting on the “green” bandwagon, giving proceeds to charities important to their local communities and empowering employees to assist in these efforts.

Customer Retention

There are two types of customer personalities. One is the indifferent personality. People who look at buying as a chore. These people want the best payoff between price and convenience.

The second personality type is the engaged personality. People who pursue an outcome of your service as something meaningful and valuable to them.

To keep the right customers, your advertising message and the culture of your company must exude this meaningful and valuable difference. Quite a task, don’t you think?

Qualify The Right Customers

People qualify customers differently. Some people simply look at what a customer is spending today. Others see the potential of a long term relationship; a third simply looks for the most prestigious customers. Still others look for customers who will become enthusiastic about their service and recommend you to anyone who will listen.

It goes back the 80/20 rule. 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. So if you’re not weighing your customers as accurately as you’re weighing your goods, you’re headed for trouble. Business as usual does not build loyalty.