As an old school sales and marketing guy I can tell you stories... I've been in sales and marketing for many years.Let me tell you that digital marketing was, and is, a game changer.
Before Digital
Here's how it worked before digital.
- I would cold call 20 prospects before I could get 1 appointment. Very time consuming and expensive wear and tear on my vehicle for a 5% lead ratio.
- It would typically take 2 appointments to close 1 deal (50% closing was a good ratio, not an average ratio).
- At a trade show, if you were lucky, you would get to talk to about 20 real prospects on average. Of those 20, 5-6 would be worth following up on, 4 would give me an appointment and I would close 2.
In other words, I was working hard to get a sale against a pretty hefty expense.
Digital Marketing
When the wonderful world of the Internet arrived it was like a God-send! With out site getting into the top positions we were getting 3-5 leads a week. Multiply this by 4 weeks in a month at a 50% closing ratio and you can see why Internet marketing is such a joy.
With less work, cheaper expense to both myself and my company, we would close 6- 9 sales in the same time it used to take to find 3-4 leads.
Putting it simple, it works!
Empower The Sales Team
The work doesn't stop at getting leads. Your SEO company can help deliver the leads but don't drop the ball after that. Prepare your sales team to give the customer confidence in what you do so they sign an order.
- Make sure your sales team is trained enough to do the talk and walk the walk. Put them through product training, especially when launching a new product.
- If your rep doesn't have the answer, make it easy for them to find it fast. (If they knew everything, they probably would have taken a different career path then sales.)
- Be flexible! Every client is different and comes at you with different objections you have to address. If you are too stringent, you will lose a lot of potentially great clients. For example: If a football team gets on the field with a game plan and won't adjust to counter the other team's unexpected game plan, you won't win many games.
- Under promise and over deliver. It may be a clich, but it makes a lot of people happy in the long run.
- Finally, follow up with the client so they feel respected for having given you some of their hard earned money.
It doesn't matter what you sell. The bottom line is you need to have a good product that people can find and make it an easy decision to buy it from you!