The New Rules of Successful Sales & Marketing

Recently, NY Report produced the 2011 Sales & Marketing Playbook Conference, sponsored by Constant Contact. The conference consisted of six breakout sessions covering the critical tools and strategies, lead by influential sales and marketing experts. Here are some of the top tips presented at the event. 

Hitting Moving Targets 

To effectively market a brand, Eric Keiles, founder and chief marketing officer of Square 2 Marketing, advises businesses to adapt to changing buyer behavior and deliver your message in a way that your target market will respond to. “Ten years ago, we didn’t have iPhones, Facebook, LinkedIn, PR Newswire, Twitter, Yelp, or Craigslist. Now, you have to know how to use all of these to market successfully,” said Keiles.

As an example, Keiles discussed a bed-and-breakfast in a small town that was experiencing declining business, even during their peak season. Keiles discovered the owners of the bed-and-breakfast were not active on tripadvisor.com, a website that gives customers a forum to rave and rant about their travel experiences. Unknowingly, the bed-and-breakfast had received poor reviews online and was not responding to the comments online or by improving their services to combat customer dissatisfaction. “If you’re in hospitality and you don’t know people are talking about you and raving about you online, you’re cooked,” Keiles said. 

Getting Buyers to Your Website 

On average, a business has a 10 percent chance of getting a click with paid search versus a 30 percent chance with organic search. Andrew Hazen, founder of Prime Visibility, provided tips for improving web strategies for both paid and organic search. Here are two simple ways you can improve your organic search: 

• Optimize your website URL with keywords. Customize the URL for each page based on the search terms your customers and prospects are most likely to use. For example, if you own a sporting goods store, the page for tennis equipment should not have joesports.com/sports_equipment_2 as the URL. Optimize the URL by using, say, joesports.com/tennis_racquets. 
• Optimize your title tag, which is the text in the top left of the window. Hazen suggests using keywords instead of your business name. He gave the example of a law firm: instead of using Smith Jones LLC, they chose Divorce Attorney NYC. If you do decide to go with a pay-per click campaign, the optimization strategies that help with organic search will help with paid search campaigns. Pay-per-click isn’t just a dollars game anymore. Google now assigns a quality score to your website, so a business that bid $2 on a keyword will appear higher in the search results than a company that bids $10 on that same keyword if the site is less relevant. 

Hazen also said that selecting negative keywords is as important as buying the most appropriate keywords. He gave the example of a drug and alcohol rehab center that was spending thousands of dollars on clicks resulting from dog and cat rehab searches. Those clicks were costing money and obviously not converting to sales. 

Better Cold Calling Strategies 

To turn cold calls into hot leads, Jeremy Rawitz, president of Sales Strategy Corp., challenges salespeople to think with their right brain: “We get stuck in a routine that’s produced proven solutions, but we forget about the creative and emotion-evoking methods that can produce more leads.” 

One way to get creative is to toss out the 30-second elevator pitch in favor of a different approach. Rawitz suggests using these three approaches to initiating a cold call: 

“I’m John Salesperson, did I catch you at a bad time?” 

This works because it is unexpected “Prospects expect you to ask them about their day or ease into the conversation,” Rawitz said. By giving them an out, you put them at ease. 

“Don’t rack your brain. We’ve never met and there may not be a reason for us to talk.” 

According to Rawitz, this will intrigue the prospect. “When you tell someone they can’t have something or it may not fit for them, the natural response is to prove them wrong,” he said. 

“This is actually a cold call. It’s awkward. I know you hate getting them; I hate making them.” 

Human nature is to comfort someone who says they are uncomfortable and Rawitz says this opener makes the prospect feel inclined to listen to the salesperson because they relate to them on a personal level. 

Closes That Work 

After an initial contact with a prospect, a salesperson’s follow-up email can make or break a deal. Charles Bernard, sales expert and founder of Criteria for Success, uses a concise email structure based on an algorithm: 

Determine Requirements 

During the initial meeting, Bernard says at least 50 percent of the discussion should focus on determining the needs of the prospect. In the follow-up email, briefly summarize problem areas in bullet points. Bernard recommends using numbered or bulleted lists because they are easier to read and make it simple for prospects to ask questions. 

Engage the Client