Monthly Archives: January 2011

Sales

$100k Hiding Right in Front of Your Face


That’s right, I said hiding right in front of your face.

There’s a lost art in sales today called eagle-eye prospecting. With all of our sales and marketing automation, conference calling, web leads, emails, social media, etc. – sometimes some good old-fashioned field work wins the day.

Here’s how I landed a $100k deal this week using this technique.

On Tuesday I had one scheduled meeting when my daily goal is two. I needed that extra meeting.

While visiting my first client, I checked out the surrounding area and found that I was very near a new prospective client. I gave her a call to see whether I could ‘”pop by to say hello,” and the rest is history.

She said “yes, that will work well this morning.” We refreshed a conversation about a project that we were discussing in November that had just been green-lighted and I closed it on the spot.

How many times do you do your first meeting and then go back to hide in the office hitting the phones, emails, or administration tasks?

In sales, we make the biggest difference when we are face to face and belly to belly.

My new client’s direct quote? “…sometimes these spontaneous meetings work better for me than trying to schedule one anyway.”

So take a minute to do a search in your CRM by zip code, or just eagle-eye a new prospect while you’re out.  Then challenge yourself to snag that extra meeting.

You could find $100,000!

Advertisement
Standard
Marketing, Social Media

The Four Stages of Getting Twitter


Have you been using Twitter?  Well, 190 million people have found some valuable reasons to.  Perhaps it’s time for you to check it out.  Once you do, don’t expect to become an expert or to fall in love right away.  It takes some getting used to.

Here’s an example: Aaron Lee, who is a great “Tweeter” on social media topics, “Re-Tweeted” (forwarded)   Jay Oatway‘s tweet about the info-graphic above in November.  It’s posted on pop-culture blog TopCultured and captures your learning curve better than anything I’ve found out there.  Without Twitter, I would never have known it existed.  He breaks it down into 4 Stages:

 Stage 1: You begin – “Crazy morons…”  and “…I tried it for a day, it’s stupid!” 
Stage 2: You will progress to being curious: “…I had a burger today.”
Stage 3: The light bulb comes on: “…I think, therefor I am.”
Stage 4: You are a full convert:  “Hey, @Tim_Kocher – Thx for re-tweeting!”

 Once you get there, you’ll find Twitter can be your most valuable source of targeted, real-time, and interactive information.  It’s like a cable TV channel that you build over time with the most relevant and up-to-date information that exists for you. 

So get started, you have a few stages to work through!

Standard
Marketing

Consuming Information Via The 5 Screens


I’m reading The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.  I have it in hardcover.  It may not be the best novel ever written, but I’m really enjoying it.  One side-effect of being bombarded by so many messages (it is hotly contested statistic but most media experts agree we’re exposed to thousands daily) is that a little quiet time away from a screen is a rare treat.  

You don’t even realize it until you stop and think, but much of your day is spent on “screen time,” and not just TV.  For Marketers, I’ve found that an interesting model to ponder is  the “5 Screens.” 

This entry in  Wikipedia summarizes the historic line of Communication Screens:

  • First screen, (the Silver Screen, Movies)
  • Second screen, Television
  • The Third screen really came about after the advent of two technologies melding together – the Personal Computer and the publicly available World Wide Web in 1995
  • Arguably the Fourth screen is related to mobile hand-held devices.  It followed in 2002 with the advent of Hand Held technologies and Wi-Fi, 2g and 3G mobile services.
  • The Fifth screen are screens often seen in public areas.  The digital screen that is seen outside the home in many different venues. Screens are installed in elevators, malls, airports, train stations, on a subway platform, in retail stores, banks, etc.

Not many of us deal with the first and second screens much, unless we are working with global brands.  It is notable that only these first two screens were widely available before 1995. Which brings us to the others…

You most likely have an active effort around the third screen (your website, this blog, web applications, etc).  How if at all are you working with the fourth screen (mobile applications/internet, phones, tablets)?  Finally, the fifth screen is exploding in Point of Sale, Point of Wait and Point of Transit installations. It is expected that millions of these screens will be deployed over the next five years in places like Retail outlets to promote sales of products, or while waiting in line as at a bank, and in transit, such as Digital Billboards on highways.

A lot of screens to think about, both as a consumer and a marketer. 

But first I think I’ll knock out a few more chapters of my book.

Standard