B2B Blog

What are simple sales strategies for cold calling

Focus All of Your Questions On Your Client, Not Yourself

In your initial contact with the prospect, focus all your attention and your questions on the prospect.

Plan All Of Your Questions In Advance

In cold calling, the more information that you can elicit, the easier it will be for you to qualify the prospect and then go on to make a sale.

Don’t Follow Any Cold Calling Scripts

Once you have a positive response from a prospect to your opening question, you then ask him questions about his business, his market, his budget, and so on.

Don’t Overwhelm Your Prospect during First Meeting

If the prospect is interested and wants a presentation and more information, you can always go back to your car to get what you need and bring it in. But, when you go in without a briefcase you lower the stress of initial sales resistance and cause the prospect to relax and open up to you sooner.

Don’t Attempt To Sell On Your First Cold Call

Focus on information gathering. Unless you are selling something inexpensive that requires little thought, you want to interview the prospect by asking questions. Take notes and tell them you will come back to them.

Keep Your Prospect Relaxed

The longer that your prospect remains relaxed, and the more he opens up to you, the more likely it is you will make the sale in the long run.

If you are cold calling on the phone, read my previous blog about my “100 Calls Technique” that I like to use. It will help you to relax and be much more personable on every one of your sales calls.

Find Out Exactly What Benefit Will Cause Your Customer to Buy From You

With each customer, there is a key benefit that will trigger buying desire and cause the customer to purchase your product or service.

BONUS TIP: Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For More

If you are open, honest, and genuine, and ask out of curiosity, you will be amazed at the answers you’ll hear. Prospects will ofter give you all the information that you need to make a sale.

Follow-up Email Templates & When to Use Them

1. Cold Call Sales Follow-up Email

The cold call follow-up email should be used shortly after a cold introductory phone call. This type of prospect is one of the newest leads in the sales pipeline, and therefore your follow-up message is at the highest risk of being ignored, discarded, or marked as SPAM.

2. External Event Sales Follow-up Email

An external event email is triggered by noteworthy external events such as new regulations, major industry developments or staffing changes at a prospect’s company. This type of follow-up is designed to respond to an event that might indicate a prospect may be ready to buy or make changes.

3. Lead Magnet Sales Follow-up Email

The lead magnet email is triggered by a potential prospect downloading an attachment contained within a mass marketing email, clicking on a link to a white paper, signing up for a newsletter, or similar activity.

4. Web Inquiry Sales Follow-up Email

Use a web inquiry follow-up email to respond to anyone who signed up using a contact form on your website to learn more. These are qualified leads that have already done some research on your company as a potential solution.

5. Inbound Call Sales Follow-up Email

You use the inbound call follow-up email to respond to anyone who has taken the time to call your office directly regarding a specific inquiry. This is your chance to prove you are a customer-centric partner by proving that your team used active listening.

6. Networking or Public Event Follow-up Email

The event follow-up email is the message you send immediately to qualified leads following networking visits like trade shows or after they’ve attended a hosted event such as a webinar or online training.

Email Workflow

Email workflow is a series of automated emails that trigger based on subscriber behavior or data. These are often referred to when marketers assemble a series of automated emails that work together to accomplish a goal, such as onboarding new customers or nurturing new leads. Through a series of emails within an email workflow, the customer journey continues until they are finally ready to make a conversion and take the next step.

1. It’s automatic

One of the biggest benefits of email workflows is they are automatic. After they’ve been set up, you can choose specific criteria to trigger the workflows. You don’t need someone to click send and you can rely on the email automation to work 24/7.

2. Nurturing leads

Email workflows are designed to nurture your leads.

Some businesses get their sales team to contact new leads immediately before it goes cold. But sometimes, these leads are not ready to be contacted by a salesperson. Just because a contact has downloaded a free how-to guide from your website, doesn’t mean they want to talk to your sales team.

3. Benefits sales team

As email workflows are designed to nurture potential customers, this hugely benefits your salespeople. They can see what emails and content the lead has read and engaged with. There’s a higher chance the lead will be interested by what your business has to offer.

Some email workflow tools, like Hupport, will send internal emails to employees if/when an email recipient makes a specific action.

4. Relevant to the email recipient

When you start planning your email workflows, you can make sure they are entirely relevant to the people who will be receiving them.

It’s irritating when you receive several emails from a company that are irrelevant and unhelpful. Most people will then unsubscribe or send your emails to their spam folder.

5. Increases brand awareness

When the email contact receives helpful and relevant emails from your workflow, they will naturally have a greater awareness and understanding of your business.

So, when it’s time for a salesperson to contact them, they will know exactly who and what your business is, and they will likely be more interested in what you’ve got to say.

6. Personalization

In some email workflow tools, you can personalize your emails.

In personalized email workflows, when an email is automatically sent, it will have personalization tokens that are filled with the contact’s information. Instead of saying, ‘Hi, there,’ the email will instead say, ‘Hi, Bill.’

Some email workflow tools can also add other personal information like location, the company they work for and much more.

Automated Email Templates

EMAIL 1: THE WELCOME EMAIL

Goal: Say hello to your new subscribers and make them feel instantly welcomed.

Great For: General blog opt-ins, general site opt-ins

EMAIL 2: THE CONTENT UPGRADE EMAIL

Goal: Deliver the content upgrade to the subscriber

Great For: Blogs or sites giving away an extra piece of content in exchange for email addresses

EMAIL 3: THE DISCOUNT EMAIL

Goal: Delivering your discounts and coupons to subscribers

Great For: Ecommerce stores or general websites offering a discount in exchange for an email address

EMAIL 4: THE SUPPORT EMAIL

Goal: Keeping your unhappy customers from going nuclear

Great For: Small companies that don’t have a dedicated support staff

EMAIL 5: THE “FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA” EMAIL

Goal: Building up a bigger following on social media

Great For: Turning your interested subscribers into social media fanatics

EMAIL 6: THE “BEST OF” EMAIL

Goal: Turning your blog subscribers into blog devourers

Great For: Blogs that want to show their best content first

EMAIL 7: THE QUESTION EMAIL

Goal: Finding out information from your subscribers

Great For: Gaining blog ideas, understanding your audience

EMAIL 8: THE REVIEW EMAIL

Goal: Getting a review from your subscriber

Great For: Apps, podcasts, plugins and products that thrive on reviews

EMAIL 9: THE WEBINAR REGISTRATION EMAIL

Goal: Getting more attendees on your webinars

Great For: HUPPORT businesses that want to turn leads into users

EMAIL 10: THE DOWNLOAD MY APP EMAIL

Goal: More downloads of your app, duh

Great For: Companies that have apps

EMAIL SEQUENCE

An email sequence is a series of emails sent based on pre-set time intervals or trigger-based automations (or both).

A time-based email sequence involves messages that are sent at predetermined intervals (e.g. immediately after opt-in, 30 days after purchase, one year after subscribing etc.). Time-based email sequences are also referred to as ‘auto responders’.
Trigger-based email sequences are sent whenever someone takes an action on your website or within your email sequence (e.g. not logging into the software platform for a week, clicking a link in an email, clicking links in the last three emails etc.)

Why create email sequences?

Email sequences are automated. And when you use both timed and trigger-based emails, messages go out when they’re most likely to have an impact. For example, say I’ve got an abandoned cart email sequence set up.

The different types of email sequences

Let’s break down some of the most common types of email sequences companies use. And while these may not all be applicable to you, you’ll probably need to use several of these to meet the needs of your business.

Nurture sequence

An email message (or series of messages) designed to help introduce subscribers to your company. These messages may be used to deliver any promised opt-in bonuses (a coupon code or lead magnet, for instance) and should set subscriber expectations on the frequency and content of the messages they’ll receive in the future.

Engagement sequence

An engagement sequence aims to deepen the relationship with your subscriber. Once subscribers have absorbed your nurture messages, engagement sequences can help nudge them to take smaller-scale actions that’ll prime them for future conversion opportunities.

Conversion sequence

Conversion sequences are your ‘big guns’. You’ve nurtured your subscribers and advanced your relationship with smaller-scale engagement suggestions. Now, you’re ready to ask them to take action – usually, to purchase something.

Onboarding sequence

You’ve got the customer – now don’t leave them hanging! Onboarding messages ensure your new customers understand how to use the product they’ve just purchased so they can get full use and enjoyment out of it right away.

People get frustrated when they can’t figure out the products they’ve purchased and you want your customers to be happy so they’ll make repeat purchases and tell others to buy.

Abandoned cart recovery sequence

A would-be buyer has left something in your shopping cart, but left without purchasing. An abandoned cart recovery sequence may help bring them back.

Renewal sequence

Email list subscribers become disengaged for any number of reasons, no matter how many nurturing and engagement sequences you have in place. Maybe their inboxes are flooded or maybe they’re no longer interested in what you’re selling.

Event sequence

Like a conversion sequence, an event sequence aims to encourage subscriber action. In this case however, that action is attendance at an event (for instance, a live in-person meet up or an online webinar). Event sequences accomplish several things, including:

Informing subscribers about the nature of the event and the benefits of attending
Getting subscribers to sign up to take part (ideally, using in-message sign-ups)
Reminding subscribers as the event approaches to ensure good attendance
Following up after the event to share replays and get feedback

Follow up sequence

Follow up sequences are similar to the onboarding sequence described above, but where onboarding messages are intended for new product users, follow up sequences should be used whenever customers complete an action (such as finishing an online course or purchasing a product).

The goals of your follow up sequence may include (among others):

Reinforcing information learned or top-of-mind brand awareness
Driving referral or affiliate sales
Reiterating sales messaging (for example, extending a post-webinar sales offer)
Sharing details on the next event
Reminding customers to purchase a product that may have run out

Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.

Direct Marketing a Good

Direct marketing is a good and rewarding career choice for anyone that:

Is creative
Likes solving problems
Likes writing
Enjoys helping people find workable solutions
Is analytical
Enjoys conducting digital research
Has a social personality
Thrives in a fast-paced work environment
Enjoys challenges
Is an objective thinker

Entry-Level Positions in Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is a consistently expanding, lucrative career field choice. The website payscale.com lists the median entry-level pay for each of these digital marketing positions in the United States as follows:

1. Direct Marketing Associate – A DM Associate typically has less than ten years of direct marketing experience and averages a salary of $ 43,900 annually.

2. Direct Marketing Specialist – Average annual entry-level pay for a DM Specialist is $48,500.

3. Digital Marketing Manager – Entry-level DM Managers can expect a median annual salary of $62,100.

4. Digital Marketing Director – DM Directors average roughly almost double the annual salary of an entry-level DM Associate. $80,900 per year for an entry-level DM Director position is the national yearly average.

Digital marketing strategy

1. Know What You Want (& Set the Objective)

Set & Measure Your KPIs:

Get specific with your KPIs by identifying the figures you will be held accountable for achieving.
Get realistic with your KPIs by analyzing your previous digital marketing efforts first – this will ensure you aim for a positive increase on your current results, while helping you to avoid setting your expectations too high.

2. Analyze Your Past (& Learn From Your Mistakes)

You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) go into the planning period in the dark. Analyzing your digital marketing strategy’s past success and failures can help focus you on setting the best KPIs for your business. You, therefore, might want to complete step one and two together.

3. Remember who you’re talking to (& Speak Their Language)

Don’t let the planning take away from the people you’re trying to reach. You already know who your audience are (at least we hope you do) but sometimes they’re the first thing a digital marketer can forget amidst the KPI setting, budget fretting and channel selection.

Develop Useful Personas:

Start with the basics and note down all the demographic information you know about your target consumer – like age, gender and location.
Then dig a little deeper and identify the problems you can help your target persona solve.
Delve into their emotional desires, goals, aspirations and fears and document all of the factors that could make them tick (think about their conscious and unconscious desires).

4. Identify Your Means (& Stick to Your Budget)

Three things are important for identifying your means: these are your budget, your digital channels and your team (or people). It is important to take stock of all of your resources before deciding on what else you might need for the next period.

For example, now is the perfect time for creating an audit of your existing digital channels and to decide whether you’re going to outsource specific sections of your digital marketing and whether you need to set budget aside for a new hire or two.

5. Make the Plan (& Don’t Stick to It)

‘Create a plan and don’t stick to it? But, but, what do you mean?’ Before the panic sets into the most organized of digital marketers let me explain…your plan is never going to be perfect from the outset. Not every assumption you make is going to be correct.

ways to ask for referrals

1) The client who needed help

This one has been around for decades. (There are no “new” ideas.) Someone had a problem and came to you. It might be a home repair. Maybe they wanted to sell their house. You did a spectacular job for them. The problem went away. They are more than satisfied.

2) The person who wanted to learn

There was a change in the tax laws. A client wondered if it applied to them. You are a CPA, so they called and asked. You explained it simply and thoroughly. They were happy. Logically, they know other people in the same boat.

3) The dissatisfied friend

You do a great job helping your client manage their investments. After presenting their quarterly review, they realize you provide great service. Your primary investment strategy is professional money management.

4) The social introduction

You want to meet someone influential. Through LinkedIn you have learned one of your first-level contacts knows them. Business might come long-term, but right now you want a social introduction. You call your first-level contact.

5) The more specific, the better

“Who do you know…” can sound very vague. People’s minds usually go blank. Detailed requests often focus their attention.

6) Problem – solution – action

Clients may be willing to make an introduction, but may not know how. You might need to coach them. Offering to meet together over dinner helps.

7) Exclusivity

Your client might assume you have all the clients you can handle. After all, you are always busy! Exclusivity sells. I learned this from the founder of a financial planning firm.

HOW TO ADD A SIGNATURE ON YOUR DESKTOP

Step 1: Launch your favorite browser and log into your Gmail account as you normally would.

Step 2: Next, click the cog icon in the upper-right corner of the screen and click Settings from the drop-down menu.

Step 3: Under the General tab, scroll down until you see Signature. Click the bubble beneath No signature, and enter whatever information you want in the signature box. You can also add a logo or image here, if desired.

Step 4: After you’re satisfied with your signature, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Save Changes button. That’s it! Your signature will now appear on all new messages and outgoing mail.

If you have an email address from Yahoo, Outlook, or another email service, you can also send emails via that address using Gmail’s “Send mail as” feature. You can set that feature up from within your account settings, and once you do, you’ll be able to create a different signature for that email address. Just click the drop-down menu and choose your preferred email address.

Prepare for a Job Interview

To follow up after the interview, and more interview preparation tips.

Analyze the Job

An important part of interview preparation is to take the time to analyze the job posting if you have it. As you review the job description, consider what the company is seeking in a candidate.

Make a Match

Once you have created a list of the qualifications for the job, make a list of your assets and match them to the job requirements.

Research the Company

Before you go on a job interview, it’s important to find out as much as you can about not only the job but also the company. Company research is a critical part of interview preparation.

It will help you prepare to both answer interview questions about the company and to ask the interviewer questions about the company. You will also be able to find out whether the company and the company culture are a good fit for you.

Practice Interviewing

Practice interviewing with a friend or family member ahead of time and it will be much easier when you’re actually in a job interview.

Get Your Interview Clothes Ready

Regardless of the type of job you’re interviewing for, that first impression should be a great one. When dressing for an interview for a professional position, dress accordingly in business attire.

Decide What to Do With Your Hair

How you style your hair for a job interview is almost as important as the interview clothes you wear. After all, the interviewer is going to notice everything about you – including your interview attire, hairstyle, and makeup – and you only have seconds to make a great impression.

Research hairstyles for short, medium and long hairstyles for inspiration for what to do with your hair when you’re interviewing.

What to Bring to a Job Interview

It’s important to know what to bring (and what not to bring) to a job interview. Items to bring include a portfolio with extra copies of your resume, a list of references, a list of questions ask the interviewer, and something to write with.

Practice Interview Etiquette

During the interview, watch your body language – shake hands firmly and make eye contact as you articulate your points. Pay attention, be attentive, and look interested. This is something you can work on in your practice interviews.

Get Directions

It’s important to know where you need to go for your job interview – ahead of time. That way, you’ll avoid running late to the interview. Use Google Maps or another app to get directions if you’re not sure where you are going.

Listen and Ask Questions

During a job interview, listening is just as important as answering questions. If you’re not paying attention, you’re not going to be able to give a good response.

Follow Up With a Thank You Note

This thank you letter is also the perfect opportunity to discuss anything of importance that your interviewer neglected to ask or that you neglected to answer as thoroughly, or as well, as you would have liked.