Very often, a company in its early stages will market their products through a variety of methods, including personal selling, advertising and networking. And as part of the sales process, they'll often conduct a Webinar with their prospects as a way of demonstrating their features and benefits. Many of those prospects (in fact, often all of them) will close successfully. So when the company has the resources to scale up their marketing by adding cold calling, or even other methods like pay-per-click, they'll often include conducting a Webinar as a required step in the process. And then their close rate falls off a cliff.

The reason this happens, it turns out, is that the Webinar was not actually required. Yes, it's a convenient way to tell prospects about features and benefits. But what drove the sale was actually what took place before or after the Webinar: the relationship building, the uncovering of needs, or even the particular way in which the leads were generated.

I can't tell you the number of times I've heard owners or salespeople say, "Just get me in front of a prospect, and I can close them." After so many of them insisted that all we needed to do was set up Webinars, and after so many of those leads failed to convert, we realized that this was a classic case of "killing turkeys causes winter."

What makes this problem especially bad, though, are the time and money wasted setting up Webinars that don't ultimately happen, and the frustration of salespeople chasing unqualified leads.

1. He created a compelling value proposition, Make America Great Again, that people could relate to, one that reminded them of how secure they felt in their childhood homes. This is as opposed to Stronger Together, which implies that you have to share your home with people whom you don't like.
2. He used the Repetition Effect, and reinforced his message constantly (MAGA hats everywhere). He got way more than 6 touches per person.
3. He leveraged free media.
4. He understood the decision process. He knew exactly how the decision process (i.e. the Electoral College) worked, and focused on the decision makers (middle class people who were actually going to vote), rather than on people who needed to be persuaded to vote.
5. He handled Objections very well. Rather than wince when confronting an objection, he counterpunched, and turned every objection into a criticism of his competition.
6. He created a great story (i.e. We're going to bring back jobs), and invited his audience to revel in it.
7. He focused on Benefits, and used Benefit Selling (e.g. we're going to get rid of that bad Obamacare, and replace it with something really great!, We're going to make great deals!)
8. He got people to overlook his flaws (e.g. misogyny), and turned it into something they wanted to hear (e.g. he has power and can get things done).
9. He bypassed media intermediaries, ignored the influencers (pundits), and took his story straight to the decision makers, giving him better control of his message.
10. He turned his competitors' strengths (e.g. experience) into weaknesses (e.g. stuck in old ways of thinking.)
11. He leveraged an unmet market need (i.e. the desire for change)
12. He understood very well his customers' Willingness-to-Pay (i.e. what he had to promise them in return for their vote.) In particular, he showed that all the costs (e.g. deportations, paying for the wall, loss of health insurance) were externalities (paid by immigrants, Mexicans, sick people), while the benefits (more jobs, a better future, lower taxes) would accrue to his voters.
13. He flooded the market with content. And he published faster than the fact-checkers could check it, enabling him to manage the news cycle.
14. And he took advantage of the marketing mistakes made by his competitors, who were also hurt by an underground smear campaign.

While you may not agree with his politics, his campaign is right out of Marketing 101.

The Problem

While it has virtually destroyed many traditional advertising media like print and trade advertising, the Internet has seemingly provided the B2B business with a vast new ecosystem in which to get its message out. Unfortunately, with now 15+ years of experience under our belts, most B2B business owners have come to the conclusion that the Internet is mostly just a “siren song,” often leading to nothing more than disaster in the market.

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"B2B Cold Calling" ($9.95) provides you with a step-by-step guide for developing an effective cold calling program that will enable you to generate more, and more qualified sales leads, ones that lead to more sales, increased market share and greater profitability.

Click here to read the White paper. Click here to read the book.

As you can see in the full chart above, almost every B2B sector (the sizes of which are reflected by the widths of the bars,) are predicted to decline 2014 - 2017 (with the magnitudes reflected by the heights of the bars.) Only software, tech hardware, and semiconductors are predicted to grow. Healthcare, autos, transportation, food retail, capital goods, telecom, utilities, real estate, materials, energy, and oil services Capital Expenditures are all expected to shrink. If you're selling into any of these sectors, your market is shrinking. And the only thing you can hope to do is take share from someone else. There's no rising tide to lift all ships.



This is reinforced by another analysis they did back in November, which shows capital expenditures falling from a high of 40% of corporate cash usage in 2009 down to 29% expected in 2016! If you sell into a B2B market, you have not recovered from the recession!

This clearly explains the lack of hiring in the industry. It also shows that the industry is a circular firing squad, since many of the companies that are cutting Capex are themselves beneficiaries of it.

But for those of you who are on the front lines, what can you do about it? Again, this is a classic case of needing to unhook your competitors if you're going to make any money. How? Call us if you want to know.

Sometimes we don’t see the crisis, sometimes we pretend that it’s not happening or we just hope / imagine that things will somehow get better. It’s at times like this, when things get tough, you can hide your head in the sand or you can get going. When revenue objectives aren’t being met and business begins to slow, a business can mobilize its resources and grab more market share and beat revenue objectives. By focusing and going after new clients, by finding more “low hanging fruit” faster and by jumping in the middle of opportunities that your competition are already working on and come out better for it.

Most businesses have a host of contingency plans covering fires, injuries, client resolution, lawsuits, continuity, IT, credit, etc. They have plans for cost reduction, asset liquidation and establishing lines credit with suppliers and financial institutions. But most don’t have a rapid client acquisition plan in case of low sales numbers.

The fact is that having more paying clients translates directly into earning more revenue. Increasing sales quickly is the premise behind LeadGen’s Accelerated Client Acquisition Program (ACAP). ACAP ensures that your Client Acquisition Strategy or your Client Acquisition Management Plans have a rapid response for when things start heading South. Whether you have an overall plan in place or not, ACAP can prevent your business from experience any type of shrinkage or unnecessary debt acquisition by making sure you have the resources in place that quickly bring in new clients.

If you want to make sure that your business has an effective ACAP make sure that at the very least you’ve:

1. Identified complimentary lead generation service providers
2. Have access to and knowledge of use of lead barter sites
3. Ensure that non-essential employees are trained to effectively cold call

So an ACAP is kind of a standard operating procedure (SOP) that you want to use when revenue begins to drop below acceptable norms.

By ensuring that you have identified, qualified and communicated with a lead generation service provider you’ll save yourself weeks and months and maybe even years of on-boarding, training, program development and logistics efforts. By implementing ACAP when things are “good” you will have the upper hand in the negotiation, and leave you less vulnerable to choosing a poor partner.

Lead barter sites enable to trade your needs for other businesses’ leads. Getting access to good lead barter sites and learning how use them can prevent you from suffering a downturn and will more than likely generate more revenue at far less cost than traditional marketing methods. www.leadgenerator.com is a free lead barter site.

A really shrewd strategy to make the most of it when implanting APAC is to use your non-essential employees to cold call new prospects. If you want to use this trick make sure that you’ve given the best fastest training you can. A well trained person with a half decent communication skills can accomplish more in a work week that an entire SOE campaign that could cost 10s of thousands of dollars. Here is a free cold calling training course.

We at LeadGen.com are cold calling experts. Let us know if you’d like to talk about our services and see if we are a good partner when you need one. Give us a call or email us and someone would be glad to have that initial conversation with you.

To be sure, whether you have a stretch objective that you're trying to reach, or are simply struggling to survive, doing the same thing over and over again - if it isn't moving the needle - isn't going to get you there.

The problem may be that your objectives themselves (i.e. "where you want to be") are unrealistic; in which case you may need to change how you come up with your objectives. Or it may be that something's holding you back. But if there's a gap between where your sales are and where you want them to be, LeadGen.com has the Strategic Market Planning experience, tools and solutions to close the gap, and get you where you want to be. Fast.

Marketing Is More Than "Marketing Communications"

Along with Operations and Finance, Marketing is one of the core functions of your business. But "Marketing" is a lot more than advertising or marketing communications. (In fact, those are merely promotional tactics that are implemented as part of a much broader Strategic Market Plan.) True marketing - or strategic marketing planning - includes deciding what markets to go after, and how to go after them. It therefore includes everything from sales management, coaching and recruiting, to new product development, positioning, channel management, lead generation, competitive strategies, application design, pricing and more. If you truly want to close your sales gap, you have to take a look at your whole sales and marketing plan.

At LeadGen.com we pioneered the development of Strategic Market Planning as a tool for growth [see MOD]. We're also not a one-trick-pony. Whether you need to penetrate new markets or develop old ones, LeadGen.com can help.

The Strategic Market Planning Process

Closing a gap requires a little discipline, and a little flexibility. You need the textbook and experience, research and intuition, traditional tools and innovation. And at LeadGen.com, we bring it all. We're not afraid to get our hands dirty by going out in the field with your reps to see what's happening either, or talking to your prospects to find out why they're not buying from you. And we have available almost every marketing and sales solution you could possibly need. In short, we'll do whatever it takes to get you to where you need to be.

- Situation analysis: identify the revenue gap between your goals and results
- Identify information gaps to be filled, and fill them
- Identify process gaps, shortfalls and barriers to success, root cause analysis
- Strategic options analysis
- Results, conclusions and recommendations
- Decision
- Implementation
- Feedback
- Continuous improvement

Fixing Sales Problems Fast, and Permanently

We're also adherents of John Boyd's O-O-D-A approach (observe, orient, decide and act) as a means of gaining both tactical and strategic advantage. This means we take an "agile" approach that doesn't waste time, or sometimes even produce a binder.


We know the clock is ticking, the calendar is turning, and competition (and the bank, for that matter) aren't going to let up. So if you need more sales this quarter, we can bring them in. And if you need to take your business to the next level over the next year, we can make that happen, too.

For now, though, the only thing you need to know is that closing your gap starts with one phone call - to LeadGen.com.

Everyone says that "cold calling is dead," but everyone's wrong. They either don't know what they're doing, or they're peddling some other solution. We've been setting appointments for our B2B clients for over 20 years. And the fact is that, if you know what you're doing, cold calling can be easy, fun and very profitable. For only $49.95, LeadGen.com's 300+ slide online Cold Calling for Professionals course will teach you everything you need to know in order to build an effective program so you can get in the door, find new sales, and win!

To understand what a "one-stop-shop" can do for your B2B marketing and sales program, it helps to start by considering the basic nature of the B2B market. For example, unlike consumer markets that tend to be responsive to mass marketing techniques, B2B markets are much more responsive to direct marketing. This is simply because decision makers in B2B tend to focus primarily on doing their jobs, and spend little, if any, time engaging with the media. And so a one-stop-shop that emphasizes tools used in direct marketing and direct sales is going to naturally be advantaged over one that doesn't.

In addition, decisions in B2B tend to be far more rational (for example, based on ROI) than those in consumer markets, where emotional appeals tend to be more effective. And so a one-stop-shop that knows how to tie together economic or technical arguments with promotional and sales expertise is similarly going to be more effective.

But it is the B2B marketing and sales processes themselves that virtually demand the kind of integration that only a one-stop-shop can offer. Specifically, if you consider the basic marketing and sales process in B2B (below, or in more detail here), it's clear that there are specific efficiencies, and opportunities for qualitative improvements - both vertically and horizontally in the process - that only a one-stop-shop can enable, and that a multi-vendor (or even specialty vendor) approach can't possibly achieve without an extremely high level of coordination and expense.

You can begin to see where attention to the entire sell cycle (which is what you get with a one-stop-shop) can be advantageous if you consider a typical B2B marketing/sales process, such as the following:

1. Create awareness
2. Stimulate initial interest
3. Get in the door
4. Qualify the prospect
5. Uncover needs
6. Cover your bases
7. Build value
8. Meet decision criteria
9. Close

For example, if the benefits that drive prospects to close successfully can also spark initial interest as part of your lead generation program, that's always a good thing. And any competent Marketing Manager can make it happen. But what if those benefits can't stimulate initial interest? What if the attribute that stimulates initial interest is wildly different from your basic value proposition? How would you even know? How would you ever even see it if you didn't have responsibility, or at least a view, over the whole process?

You can't. Unless you have a partner who can.

Another problem is that of lead qualification, where - often - Marketing produces leads that Sales doesn't consider to be qualified. The traditional response is Lead Scoring. But most salespeople find lead scoring to be akin to "putting lipstick on a pig." Only if the marketing program has accountability for sales results - which only an integrated approach with a one-stop-shop vendor can provide - can you even begin to solve the problem.

But ultimately, the issue that drives business owners to a one-stop-shop approach is the problem that, "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". That is, without a one-stop-shop, the solution that the vendor recommends isn't necessarily going to be the best solution for you. It's just the best solution he has to offer.

A quick story - literally from a meeting I had yesterday (although this happens all the time) - illustrates the point. Specifically, I received a call from an insurance brokerage that was interested in our lead generation services. During our conversation I asked if they had a CRM, and the Marketing Director explained that she was in the process of trying to find one. She was dismayed at all the options, though, and the cost, and especially at the prospect of implementing it. This is because it involved some customization, and they had a big issue around integration with their Account Management system. But she was meeting with different vendors, and was hoping that one of them would be able to come up with a solution soon.

So I asked if I could take a look at her Account Management system. And after poking around for a few seconds, I could clearly see that they had a very functional CRM embedded in it that they had just never used.

Ask yourself: Would the CRM vendors to whom she was talking have ever done that? Of course, not. But a one-stop-shop would - because they don't need to sell a CRM, they need to solve the customer's problem. And that's a major difference that can't easily be replicated elsewhere.

Or how about the case where an IT company asked us to do some telemarketing for them. Looking at their budget though, it was clear that outsourcing was going to break the bank. Instead we showed them how we could recruit a team for them to do it in-house, with LeadGen.com providing coaching and support by phone (because we understood what kind of business they were looking for). Within a month we had their department up-and-running, and productive. And their cost-per-lead is 70% less than they had originally budgeted.

Or consider the case where we were asked to find new business for a consulting company. They had closed a number of deals on the strength of their personal contacts, but were unable to grow beyond. Only after we developed a package of case histories, sales aids and a Web site, and researched a viable target list, were we able to go-to-market for them, and bring them the new business they were looking for.

Would the company that built their original Web site have been able to do that? (No, because they don't write case histories or make phone calls.) Would their PR firm have been able to do that? (No, because they don't build Web sites or research lists.) Would their list vendor have been able to do that? (No, because they don't do market research or build Web sites.) In fact, if all we did was telemarketing we couldn't have helped. But a one-stop-shop, one that understood their business and how to market it, could.

The tens of thousands of dollars saved, just in these three examples, is barely a fraction of what a one-stop-shop can do for the typical B2B business. And, in fact, the economics and strategic advantages are so compelling that we've been able to attract some of the leading solution providers in B2B to the cause. Why? Because they want to do the right thing, too.

You could argue, of course, that looking across your marketing and sales programs is what a consultant is supposed to do. But there are several problems with the consulting option. First, it adds a significant cost to the program, even if some of it is on the back-end. Second, the issue is not "what's the right thing to be doing?" The issue is "actually doing (or implementing) the right thing." That is, giving advice is easy. Getting something done, and having it be the right thing, is what you're really after. And third, of course, is that no matter how big is the consultant's network of referrable solution providers, it is rarely big enough, and the vetting is opaque.

So, if you have a challenge in the B2B market, you have a choice. You can try to find someone with just the right hammer, or you can call a one-stop-shop. Who do you think is better equipped to solve your problem?