Quick Comments, Quick Links
Written by Brandon Hull on April 9, 2007. Leave a Comment on this Post.
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A few fast notes on recent, unrelated sales articles and posts floating around the Internet…
LocalPitch.com helps you establish a “referral profile” that you can then leverage to generate referrals and leads from satisfied customers and other local business owners.
If you’re a small business owner, and you’re personally immersed in your business, I don’t think this is necessary. The best referrals come from the mouths of your satisfied clients, face-to-face, which you then turn into another face-to-face meeting and a new client. I’m not convinced you need this service.
B2B Power Exchange, on the other hand, allows you to share leads with other sales and business professionals via face-to-face meetings. Primarily based on the West Coast right now, it’s a more focused version of the lead exchange groups we’ve all heard of or been a part of at some point.
I’ve not been too fond of these types of groups–too many participants look to get first, not give–but a more focused group may make such meetings more effective.
Finding Customers Who are Ready to Buy Now! is a teleseminar Jill Konrath is hosting on April 12. It’s an anti-high-activity workshop on prospecting appropriately for big companies with whom you can enjoy a shorter sales cycle.
Jill is simultaneously to-the-point, yet conversational, in style, so I’m certain this will be a great teleseminar to attend later this week.
Should You Leave a Voicemail? Bill Rice asks this question in a recent post at his blog titled, “Better Closer.” He makes good points on why you should, and a few thoughts on why you shouldn’t. My two cents: leave one, but don’t go in-between–either make an offer or make it a marketing call.
The argument against leaving voicemails is weak. If you’re going to block off time to make calls, don’t set yourself up to have to make 25% up to 100% additional calls later because you didn’t reach your desired contact.
Seven Easy Steps to Follow-up by Phone is an article posted by C.J. Hayden of Get Clients Now fame. She offers a nice list of things to keep in mind or do specifically as you prepare and make follow-up calls. Too often, she reminds us, we simply pick up the phone and start dialing. Mistake!
Important advice here from C.J., whether you’re on the phone a lot or a little as a sales professional. I can’t select a “favorite” to pull from her list, just read and heed.
Have a great Monday morning!
B2B Power Exchange is definitely a different type of lead exchange group. It was started to take the concept of lead exchange groups like the ones you mentioned, and actually make them work for people who sell to businesses at the senior decision making level.
Most of the other groups out there are populated with micro-businesses and individuals selling to micro-businesses and individuals. They don’t work well for consultants or business developers who are chasing established companies.
There will always be some element of people, at least over the short term, who look out for themselves, with no intention of giving back. The nice thing about the B2B Power Exchange is that those folks weed themselves out pretty quickly, as do people who are not experts in their fields.
For experienced consultants and business developers, the B2BPE meetings are like a homecoming party – where they can have intelligent business conversations with others who “get it.” For people who are not on top of their game or are not familiar with selling in a B2B environment at senior levels, the meetings can be pretty intimidating.
One other note about general leads groups: it is not just the willingness to reciprocate that makes a group successful. The attendees must also be able to reciprocate the right types of leads. If other participants are not in complementary businesses or at least chasing the same type of prospects, the group won’t work for you over the long term. Sure, you may get a bluebird every once in a while, but busy people need to use their time effectively, so they should go where their time will be best spent.
The B2B Power Exchange breakfast meetings are predominantly based in the western region for now, but expanding rapidly. The goal is to have 40-60 physical meetings running nationally by the end of the year. That being said, the organization also provides online meetings where business development pros from all over the country (and beyond) can connect with others to form relationships and pursue opportunities. Let’s face it; many of us chase business in larger territories than we can easily reach in a car or on a regular basis. Or we may be out of town working with clients and want to stay connected to our contacts at “home.” So these online meetings are proving to be a great way to maximize territory management.
There is a larger vision behind B2B. It’s not just about exchanging leads. It’s about leveraging current technologies and business models to help business developers, consultants and entrepreneurs do business in ways they could not have done it even a few years ago. It’s about saying yes to more and larger sales opportunities – and being able to effectively deliver on your promises. It’s about collaboration between peers who genuinely want to see and help one another succeed.
I have a confession to make. I probably come across as a big proponent of what B2B Power Exchange is up to. There is a reason for that. I am the founder of the group. But let me be clear about one thing: the group is not about me. Rather, it is about the people who plug in to the group succeeding.
Happy selling!
Chris,
Thanks for checking in. Your program looks more focused and relevant than many of the lead exchanges we’ve all dealt with before.
Best of luck!
Brandon
Brandon,
Sorry, a little late seeing this, but I thought I would comment on your pointer to Better Closer Blog (thanks too).
It is all about context of your sales advice, as you know. In a B2B context, I totally agree with your comment, but the majority of my readers, clients, and sales teams I coach are high volume Internet Sales Centers. That simply means they are outbound calling on Internet submitted inquiries and generally are sourced by a lead generation company–like LendingTree or LowerMyBills.
So, I will break my analysis down a bit. In that case I am outbound calling hundreds of “general” inquiries a day. They are all direct consumers and may have intentions from curious on price, can I qualify for financial product, to I am ready now. They also typically put in the inquiry because they don’t want to sit on my 800#.
Therefore, in that scenario we typically set up a high volume “contact team” that does nothing, but make live contact, introduce the company, pre-qualify, and transfer to a better trained financial counselor.
The post was to open discussion on the topic because many of my clients are reporting higher contact rates and conversion rates on lead flow with the no voicemail approach. I like you thought that was a little counter-intuitive so I thought I would open the debate.
Thanks for spreading it. Gret Blog–I really enjoy it!