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The LeadGen.com Blog




Why Are You Here?


People who are on Social Media are there to sell you something. They aren't there to buy from you.

Read "Lead Generation: How We Generated Over $4,000,000,000 in New Sales - and How You Can Do It, Too!"



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How We Generated Over $4,000,000,000 in New Sales - and How You Can Do It, Too!


For the past 35+ years we've been obsessed with trying to figure out what works in Marketing and Sales, and how to make it work - for any business, in any market.

Now available as a downloadable eBook, and summarizing what we've learned from more than 350 campaigns, and thousands of sales that have generated over $4,000,000,000 in profitable revenues, "Lead Generation" describes exactly how to develop and implement a successful go-to-market strategy, for anyone who's interested in growing their business.

So you can exceed your goals for sales, market share and profitability - no matter what you're selling, or to whom.


About the book:

Starting in 1977 selling computer timesharing by knocking on doors in New York City's Financial District, the authors describe how a combination of experiences in, and study of, cold calling, field sales, advertising, market research and classical Sales Management resulted in the development of an approach that delivers successful revenue growth - consistently, painlessly and cost-effectively.

Whether you're a business owner, Sales Manager, BDR or Marketing professional, Lead Generation has everything you need - so you can generate the sales you want!


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Lead Generation: How We Generated Over $4,000,000,000 in New Sales - and How You Can Do It, Too


Are you struggling to make your numbers?

Are you fighting for visibility?

Is your Conversion Rate lower than dirt?

Is your Close Rate even lower?

Find out what works, and how to...


Make it work for you!

Read: "Lead Generation: How We Closed Over $4,000,000,000 in New Sales - and How You Can Do It, Too"

Now available at eBook


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Appearing on Whiskey WinsDay!


Mark your calendars!

I'll be participating in the "Whiskey WInsDay with Jessie Lizak" panel discussion tonight, August 28, 2024, along with Alisa Manjarrez, Managing Director of Stories Bureau.

Tonight's topics are:
1. Podcast for B2B: Advocacy and Content
2. Making Marketing Accountable: Aligning with Sales
3. B2B Marketing: Storytelling, Team Building, and Podcasts
4. Platforms Wire the Game: Connecting Systems

If you're looking for the "Secrets to Success in B2B", tune in at 9:00 pm ET, 8:00 pm CT, 7:00 pm MT, 6:00 pm PT at:

https://streamyard.com/hgz3tsmm2u

Prizes WILL be given away...


Tonight's discussion is for anyone in B2B who wants to grow their sales, their market share and their profitability.

And as an added bonus, tonight's giveaways include:
- Swag Pack from HighLevel
- 10 hours with a Virtual Assistant from Cherry Assistant
- Wireless headset from Headset Advisor
- Free year of Lavender Pro from Lavender
- One Month Free Taking Up Space Program from Jessie Lizak
- Cold Calling Seminar from Jeff Josephson

Location:
https://streamyard.com/hgz3tsmm2u

Date/Time: August 28, 2024, 9:00 pm ET, 6:00 pm PT.


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What’s an effective approach when doing cold messages?


Responding to a forum post that says: For context, we have sent thousands of cold messages before (LinkedIn, FB, IG) but open rate is low and conversion rate is lower. In fact, I think the conversion for those thousands of messages sent is actually zero.

So one person answered: Find a way to connect and be human.

Another one said: Identify your target audience and make sure you are targeting the right audience according to your niche.

And someone else said: The messages we usually send are personalized. Address them by their name, send something from their profile, and ask them how they are. We don’t usually hard sell and just want to connect first.

Look, no one cares that you’re human. And if you’re not targeting the right audience, why are you even in the job? And do you think they can’t tell it’s spam if it starts with their name?

Here’s our answer:


Anytime you’re going in cold, whether it’s by email, telephone or smoke signal, the most important thing is to first identify a real need, and then pitch to it.

To be clear, this doesn't mean guessing what they need (e.g. like assuming everyone needs a widget), or assuming the prospect can infer a need based on your product's description.

Rather, let's say you're selling IT services to mid-sized businesses. Call into the companies at a relatively low level and just survey the employees for actual complaints and problems.

Then, when you call the CIO or CEO, say "I was talking to so-and-so about your problem with X. Do you have a moment to speak?"

How hard is that?


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The ICP Concept is Wrong


I got into a bit of a debate today with a Marketing expert on the importance of identifying your Ideal Customer Profile, or ICP.

They claim that it's something you have to do. I claim it's wrong, and that it leads to waste and an enormous number of failures, when it comes to marketing and sales.

In short, according to them, the Ideal Customer Profile provides a detailed description - using attributes such as demographics, firmographics, psychographics and behavioral data to characterize prospects who are most likely to buy your product or service.

Your job then becomes to focus your marketing and sales efforts on those archetypes because, supposedly, that's where you'll get the biggest bang for your buck.

The problem is that, as a strategy, it's almost entirely wrong. And the reason is simple.

In short, the ICP concept conflates Target Marketing and Market Segmentation, and ends up sub-optimizing both.

Here's what you need to know:


Target Markets are groups of prospects (or customers) who have common demographics, firmographics, psychographics, that can be effectively targeted in the media or with sales development efforts.

Market Segments are groups of prospects (or customers) who have common "needs, pains, problems and unmet goals" that you can address.

And rarely do those groups overlap.

Basically, your goal should be to find and reach your market segments. You may only be able to do that via targeting accessible attributes, but if you start by targeting an ICP you will generally miss your market - even if you iterate.

Sorry, but this is just a huge fallacy in the industry. And it leads to a huge number of marketing failures.


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Good Reasons for Not Advertising?


So the question for today comes from a user who sells digital advertising, who asks:

What’s the best excuse you’ve heard for NOT advertising?

And I have to admit to being a bit confused by the answers he got.

One person said, for example: Everyone in this town already knows who I am.

Another one said: My customers aren't on the internet.

And another one said that the best reason they've heard is that the company they were talking to says that they already have too much business. And if they start advertising, they won't be able to keep up with demand.

I guess what’s confusing is that, to me, these aren’t GOOD reasons not to advertise. They’re BAD ones.


I mean, if you can’t keep up with demand, hire more people.

If you’re customers aren’t on the internet, find out where they are and advertise to them there.

And if everyone already knows who you are, does that mean you’re now just printing money?

I don’t know, it seems to me that the only good reason not to advertise is if it doesn’t work.

And if it doesn’t work, you probably ought to figure out how to make it work.

But what do I know?


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In the case of a limited budget, which marketing actions yield the greatest returns?


So someone posted this question to a forum I participate in over the weekend:

And it got several answers, most of which I think were kind-of wrong.

I mean, is there ever a case where the Marketing budget isn’t limited?

I’ve never seen it, so an answer can't carve this case out as an exception. And any answer that does should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

In general, marketing budgets should be tiered. You know, what do I do if I have $100? What do I do if I have $1000, etc.), and percentages (which can change by tier) within each tier deployed for specific purposes (creating awareness, creating desire, triggering actions, etc.)

Again, this formula holds whether you have $0 or $100,000,000.

With that in mind, you can now ask the right question:


What should I do if I only have $X to work with, and I'm selling such-and-such a product to this particular market, and I want to achieve so-and-so objective, against a competitive environment that looks like this, and with these available channels to reach my prospects.

Without those parameters, any answer you get is likely to be pretty meaningless.


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This Job Market Sucks


So I was doing a little research to try and get a sense of what’s happening in the job market for salespeople lately, because everyone talks about how low unemployment is, and how tech is booming. But all I hear about is how people are struggling.

For example, this one guy wrote: “I have a good amount of sales experience. Pretty diverse background. Also have experience working for a top tier tech company. Yet I’m applying to countless SDR/BDR roles and can’t get a bite. At this point I’m almost willing to take anything with a decent base. Is there any company out there that’s actually looking for salespeople?


Some of the responses would seem to suggest that someone’s lying:

  • One guy says: Everyone is struggling right now. As of now, SDR positions are going to desperate AEs willing to get demoted to put food on the table.
  • Another says: Yeah. It seems like every industry is going through a low season right now (It takes an average of around 100-200 applications to land a role)
  • And another says: Our sales team was laid off this month. Even after I was hitting 70% to yearly target at end of Q2. Been applying where I can with sales. 300 applications, 1 interview, only to be told they are going internal.

You know, here’s a funny statistic. According to the Harvard Business Review, annual turnover among salespeople is around 27% - which is, in itself, twice the rate in the overall labor force.

But you know what it is for salespeople at the 2-year point? 65%.

Yeah, things are just peachy in tech.


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Cold Calling 101: 4.14 AIDA


The classic model that we use for this process, which actually dates back to the 1930’s, is called “AIDA.”

AIDA stands for getting the prospect’s Attention, stimulating their Interest, getting them to Desire or want to do something about it, and then getting them to actually Act on that desire. Although it originally applied to consumer sales, we’ve found that these four steps are equally effective in B2B cold calling. And they provide an excellent model for designing both a cold call and a cold calling program.

Consequently, that’s what we’re going to do today, design a cold calling program, and your cold call, around this AIDA model so you can make more money, have more fun, and achieve the success you want to achieve.



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Cold Calling 101: 4.13 Creating Demand


In our experience, the process of creating demand starts with finding a suspect, someone who could potentially buy your product or service.

It then means getting their attention and engaging them in a conversation where you uncover their needs, pains and problems, as well as their unrealized hopes, dreams and goals, with which you can help. It then means getting them to want to solve those problems and achieve those goals, ideally sooner rather than later.

It also means positioning your product or service as a solution, as a means to those ends, and then getting the prospect to commit to a meeting with you or your rep to talk about it as the next step in the process of getting there.

But creating demand, and successful cold calling in particular, is the quintessential case of making something out of nothing, or at least out of nothing more than a phone call.



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Cold Calling 101: 4.12 Cold Calling Scenarios


The skills that you’re going to learn in this course are vital though, and they work, regardless of whether you’re just trolling for needs, or you have to actually educate the prospect in order to get in the door, or any situation in between. This is because even if you’re just trolling for needs, you probably still have to unhook a competitor, which takes skill. And the fact of the matter is that if your only advantage is price, you’re only hurting yourself if all you do is offer a discount in order to win the business.

But the main reason that you need to understand the full technique is that, regardless of how you go to market, account control, the foundation for which is built during the cold call, is critical to your long-term success. So learning these techniques will not only help you find more business, it will help you close it, and keep it too, no matter what kind of market you’re competing in.



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Cold Calling 101: 4.11 The Purpose of Cold Calling


Before we get too far into the methodology – and understand that we have a long way to go – we need to talk about what cold calling means to you and for your company. This is because, for some companies, demand is just out there and all you have to do is look for it, while other companies have to actually create demand for their products or services.

For example, if you’re selling a commodity that everyone needs, then getting a shot at the business is often just a matter of calling a Purchasing Manager and offering a lower price. On the other hand, if you have to educate your prospects about your application or persuade them of your value, or get them to see the need before they can be interested (or if you want to raise your prices in a commoditized market) that’s a different and much tougher problem.



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Cold Calling 101: 4.10 Objectives of the Course


One problem, as we said, is that most companies, and most sales and marketing managers, simply don’t know what works when it comes to cold calling. Most resort to the old adage of “smile and dial.” Or they tell you it’s a numbers game, and that the more calls you make, the more leads you’ll get. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, and you don’t have a process that actually works, doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result is, as they say, the very definition of insanity.

In this course, however, you’re going to learn exactly what works, and how to make it work for you. How to get past gatekeepers and voice mail, how to reach decision makers, how to stimulate interest and uncover needs for your products or services, how to create urgency and stop the endless postponements, and how to persuade your prospect to want to meet, and eventually to buy. In short, how to generate high quality leads that result in more sales, at a lower cost, with less time and effort, while having more fun, and all the rewards that come with success.



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Cold Calling 101: 4.9 Goals


So that’s why we’re here, and this is where we want to go, to enable you to generate high quality appointments that lead to more sales, more income and more fun, while expending less time, effort, money and frustration.

So with that as our goal, let’s drive it down a level, starting with how do we get there.



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Cold Calling 101: 4.8 Benefits of Success


On the other hand, success can have its benefits. Being able to generate a steady stream of high-quality appointments (ones that convert into sales) is the lynchpin for growth at many companies. It means revenue success, opportunity, and growth, not just for you, but for your entire company. Success is certainly more fun than failure, and it can feed on itself, leading to higher pay, promotion, and even faster growth rates, as success, as they say, breeds success.



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Cold Calling 101: 4.7 Consequences of Failure


For many sales and marketing professionals, not being able to generate new business can quickly lead to missed expectations, revenue shortfalls, frustration, and job loss, particularly when other marketing activities aren’t available to pick up the slack. And it’s often not just you who suffers. If you’re supposed to be making appointments for an outside salesperson, it means they may miss their numbers, the production department may have to cut back, and, of course, your own family may pay a price for your poor performance.

So while success can have benefits, failure on the phones can pull the rug out from under you, your job, your co-workers and your company.



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Cold Calling 101: 4.6 Ineffective Techniques


But other approaches to lead generation work even less well, and often cost much more.

For example, while John Wanamaker said a hundred years ago, “Half my advertising budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half,” today it’s perfectly easy to waste your entire advertising budget. Networking is fine if you like trying to sell to people who can’t buy. Email gets your Web site blacklisted. SEO is an arms race where the only winners are the search providers. Using social media for B2B is like trying to get nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Most PR is nothing but a bit bucket. And Decision Makers don’t go to trade shows.

So the pressure to perform falls right back on the individual telemarketer, salesperson or business development specialist, pressure that usually just mounts until something, or someone, breaks.



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Cold Calling 101: 4.5 What Have You Tried?


These problems are exacerbated by the fact that most sales directors, call center managers, marketing professionals and business owners simply don’t know what works to generate a good lead on the phone. So they fall back on the numbers game, a classic case of doing the same thing over and over again, and hoping for a different result.

Or they use the threat of firing to motivate high performance, a truly Darwinian solution for those who believe that creative destruction is capitalism’s greatest virtue, when the real problem is that they basically don’t know what they’re doing.



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Cold Calling 101: Your Challenges


The problem is, though, that it isn’t easy to do, particularly with some products, and in some markets.

You may be challenged by bad lists, getting past gatekeepers, rejection or inaccurate information on who the decision makers are. You may have trouble stimulating interest because people don’t seem to respond to your message. You may be getting dumped into voice mail. Or you may just be getting blocked by objections like no need, no interest, the presence of an incumbent vendor, or everyone’s favorite objection: not now.



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Cold Calling 101: Your Goals and Objectives


If you’re like most people who are responsible for finding new business or making appointments, you know that cold calling can be one of the most powerful weapons in your marketing arsenal, provided that you can do it well.

Having a painless and effective approach for cold calling means that you can generate more and better qualified sales leads, and find more new business for your company, faster, more consistently and for a far lower cost and risk compared to advertising, direct mail, SEO, networking, trade shows, social media marketing, PR or any of the hundreds of other marketing solutions.



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Welcome to Cold Calling 101


In this series we’re going to show you how to generate Qualified Sales Leads using the example of developing and implementing a cold calling program in order to sell a Cold Calling service. As you can surmise, we use cold calling as the example go-to-market tactic because it’s one of the most challenging to execute effectively.

For example, it requires you to understand your prospects’ needs, and know how to get their attention. It requires you to stimulate their interest. It requires you to get them to want to talk with you, meet with you, and potentially buy from you. It requires you to get them to take some action, like provide information or get another decision maker involved, in order to move the Sell Cycle forward. And it requires you to do all this in barely a few seconds, where they can easily hang up on you if you’re not really, really good.

So let’s mount up.



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Trust Me!


Some people can't help themselves. And some people actually believe what they're saying.

Like when your Marketing Director tells you that all you have to do is re-build your Web site, create and publish content, buy some Google AdWords, connect with Decision Makers, and send out several million emails - and the leads will just come flooding in.

Or when your salesperson tells you that all you have to do is get them in the door and they'll be able to close anyone.


But when it doesn't happen, where does that leave you?


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Marketing 2.0 - The Crime of the Century


Who among us hasn't heard that "57% of the decision process is completed before a sales person is ever contacted by the prospect"?

And who among us hasn't been told, time and again, that "if you build it, they will come," and then invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in websites, content, blogs, posts, and all manner of digital detritus - none of which will anyone ever see, read or respond to?

And who among us hasn't read about the historically high failure rate of new businesses, upwards of 70% of PE-funded companies in 2021?


You may not want to hear it but, for most businesses, Marketing 2.0 is a scam. It's a paradigm designed to separate business owners and investors from their money, and put it in the pockets of the platforms, the solution providers, and the so-called Marketing professionals hired to manage them - who then move on to their next gig when it all goes south.

Why else would turnover among Marketing professionals be nearly 40% per year?

But, hey, at least you got a great Web site out of it.


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The End of the Universe


The comedian Lewis Black tells a joke about the time he saw a Starbucks, in a Houston-area shopping center, and it was right across the parking lot from another Starbucks.

He declared that this was the end of the universe - where parallel lines converge. And the only people who don't see the problem have Alzheimers.


Now we have a major social media platform announcing that it had discovered hundreds of fake accounts, with many connecting to other fake accounts on the site.

We have to wonder, are the people who are managing these accounts working from a Starbucks in Houston?


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Doing Things Right vs Doing the Right Things


After you drank a full pitcher of Marketing 2.0 Kool-Aid, and did everything the experts told you to do, you're ready for the sales to start rolling in.

And yet you're not getting the results you need.

What's going on???


The sad fact is that virtually the entire Marketing 2.0 approach is a scam. It's a game you can't win.

It's a misdirection designed to make it look easy, to get you to waste your time, and to spend your money, and then move on when the money runs out.

At least you can comfort yourself knowing that it's not you; it's them.


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The Digital Marketing Life Cycle


Digital Marketing is a powerful tool for any business that wants to fail as slowly and as painfully as possible.

Digital Marketing says "Build a Web site that's going to stand out from the 11 billion other Web sites. Optimize around terms that either no one will ever use, or ones that all your competitors already own. Do a bunch of other stuff that sounds good, but doesn't actually work. And then wait until you run out of money before you actually think about lead generation."

After all, if you build it, they will come, right?


Do you really think your content is going to break through the clutter?

Do you really think your prospects are just waiting around for your solution to show up?

Seriously. Is it any wonder that the business failure rate is over 70%?


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Top 5 Reasons for Business Failure


Setting aside that this post from a Small Business group completely ignores bad marketing as a major reason for business failure, the cutest thing is that it's presented as a "Tip of the Week."

Oh, yeah. After you grab the "2 for 1" fries at MacDonalds, be sure to check your cash flow.


Don't worry, though. Your marketing program is just fine.


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36 Reasons Why Businesses Fail


This has to be one of my all-time favorite lists of reasons why businesses fail. If you can't find what you're doing wrong on this list of 36 different reasons, you're just not trying.

The best part is that, after listing 35 things that you need to be proactive about, such as tracking your business plan and using technology, the last item on the list is a completely exogenous variable: No market demand.


Can you imagine that? You do 35 things right, only to find out that you failed because of something you had absolutely no control over.

Wouldn't that be just a kick in the head?


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62% Fail Due to a Lack of Preparation???


In today's misdirection, a fintech tells us that 62% of businesses fail due to a "lack of preparation".

OK, Boy Scouts! Let's get out those checklists!


At least they tell us where the potholes are:

• Financial challenges
• Poor management
• Inadequate business planning
• Marketing mistakes

My question is: When is someone going to tell me how not to make those pesky little marketing mistakes.


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The #1 Reason Why Business Fail Is Wrong


CB Insights, a large Private Equity firm, recently updated their analysis of why businesses fail.

And, once again, they get it spectacularly wrong!

Sure, lots of businesses fail. Depending on how you count it, somewhere between 20% and 70% fail in their first year.

But do you really believe that the #1 reason - accounting for 42% of business failures - is a lack of need in the market?

That means that hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs come up with stupid ideas every year, they get them funded enough to get them to market, and then no one needs the product?

That's nuts.


How do you know it's nuts?

You know it's nuts because they say the #8 reason is "Poor marketing " - behind "running out of cash", having the "wrong team", getting "outcompeted", "pricing or cost issues", "unfriendly user product", "product without a business model".

Sure, most of the time, the marketing was great, but the business failed anyway?

Maybe we ought to change the definition of "good marketing" to "build a Web site, do some SEO, post a blog, and yell 'come and get it' to an empty room."


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Our Easiest Answers


If you need more sales, the answer is easy.

That's because the same Magic 8 Ball that you turned to for answers when you were young has been updated to provide you with the solutions you need today.

Now get answers like these:

• Just buy our CRM and the sales will roll in!

• Just use our Emailer, and customers will be banging on your door!

• Just hire me, and your competition will crumble!

• Just use our SEO service, and you'll jump right to the top of the Search results!

And more!


And remember, if anyone tells you that the answers are complex, don't listen to them. They're probably just a consultant.


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Our Most Uplifting Escalator


Congratulations! You started your business with a great idea and a few friendly customers.

But when you tried to grow beyond the people you knew, you hit a ceiling.

With our Most Uplifting Escalator, though, you can break through that ceiling. And take your business to the next level.


And we're not talking metaphors here. These are real escalators, that really go up!

So if your business is stuck on the ground floor, we can help you move to the second floor, and beyond!


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Our Highest Google Page Rank


Why settle for a page 12 ranking, or worse, on Google?

Why wallow in obscurity when your business can rank right at the top of the listings?

Wrap yourself in the warmth of a high page rank with out Best Google Page Rank.

Made from only the narrowest of search terms, and using only the finest geotagging, our Highest Google Page Rank will make you the talk of the town!


And for only $10 more, we'll send you a framed PDF of your listing, so you can proudly display your prominence in your home, in your office, or on the go!


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Our Best Phone Monkeys


Growing businesses need stimulation, companionship and - most of all - engagement.

And you'll get all that, and more, with our genuine Phone Monkeys.

Our phone monkeys are great at helping your shy, young business make new friends while providing you with hours of entertainment.


Because, after all, who doesn't like monkeys?


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Our Finest Door


Whenever you hear it, you know that's the sales candidate for you:

"Just get me in the door, and I can close anyone."

And that's why you need our finest door.

Constructed from the richest veneer glued over the sturdiest frame, our classic two-panel door will make your new rep proud that he'll never have to make cold calls again.


And if you need someone to actually open the door, don't forget to call our Service Department - by appointment only, of course.


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Our Strongest Guarantee


You know there are no guarantees when it comes to Marketing.

But since you're going to insist on one, here it is!

Our 100% certified money-back guarantee!

Backed by years of back-room finagling, clever wordsmithing and legal foot-dragging, our guarantee is the best in the business.


We would tell you that it's not worth the paper it's printed on, but who uses paper these days?


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Our Most Heartwarming Pillow


You know that your boss doesn't understand all this Digital Marketing mumbo-jumbo.

That's why she hired you.

Up your game, and get them to up your budget, with this all-natural, dacron polyester blend.


And if they don't up their budget, up yours!


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Our Most Self-Fulfilling T-Shirt


Show the world that you can create eye-catching content with this 100% cotton show-stopper!

This stylish and media-savvy number comes in all sizes and genders.

And it will stand up through dozens of job interviews.


Cold water wash only.


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Our Best Sales Leads


For decades, Marketers have struggled to show their impact on sales.

Media companies have invented all sorts of metrics, like impressions and circulation, to show their value.

And Marketing Managers have made up all sorts of excuses to justify spending money, often being satisfied with half the advertising budget they asked for.


But now we're pleased to offer our genuine "Marketing Qualified Leads"!

Justify whatever budget you want!

Clicks! Hits! Downloads! Form fills! Opens! Oh, my!

The conversion rate, though? That's someone else's problem, of course.


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Our Warmest Digital Marketing Mug


Digital Marketing is a powerful tool for driving an endless demand for Digital Marketers.

And now you can show them who's the boss!

Order our new custom-printed Digital Marketing Expert coffee mug, and sip your favorite hot beverage while comforting yourself that, by the time they find out it didn't work, you'll be long gone!


Digital Marketing: Never have so many spent so much for so little.


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Our Best Revolving Door


Here at the LeadGen.com Digital Marketing Academy, we know Marketing!

And the one thing we know about Marketing is that "you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time."

And that's why were now offering - exclusively for you - our Professional Digital Marketing Training Program!

In the Official LeadGen.com Professional Digital Marketing Training Program:

• You'll learn to create and post content that no one will ever read!

• You'll learn to generate Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) that will never convert!

• And you'll learn to update your resume so that it's always fresh and ready-to-go!


If you're looking for a job with high demand, high pay, and high turnover, Digital Marketing is the job for you!

Call 1-800-INBOUND today, and get $10 off our regular, low price of only $10!


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Join the Virtual Army, Generate Virtual Results!


The world has gone digital. And Marketing is leading the way!

Forget about the power of salesmanship. That's old school.

Who cares about uncovering needs? That's just Boomer narcissism.

Today, its Digital or Die!


Today's Digital Marketing soldiers know how to post content. They know how to upload TikToks. And they spend like there's no tomorrow.

Because, for most businesses, there isn't.

Join the Digital Marketing Army, and Be All You Can Be!


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The Hope Springs Eternal Gift Box


Inbound Marketing is the ultimate gift.

It's the promise of a waiting for the phone to ring.

It's the hope of that first traffic after going live.

It's the smile of making that LinkedIn connection.

In fact, it's whatever you want it to be.


For the business you love, it's always Inbound Marketing.

Who cares if there's no ROI?

Because it's the thought that counts.


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The Three Lies Custom Throw Pillow


Remember how everyone showed up for the baseball game in Field of Dreams - even though Ray Kinsella did absolutely no advertising whatsoever?

Remember how you felt when you heard that Inbound Marketing was going to save your sales team from ever having to make cold calls again?

And didn't it just warm the cockles of your heart knowing that all you had to do to beat your competition was to put the right keywords in your meta tags?

Now you can bask in the comfort of all your favorite Digital Marketing tropes with this custom throw pillow from LeadGen.com!


Or you can cry yourself to sleep knowing they were all lies.

But at least it's super soft, and super absorbant!


[more]

The "We Believe in You" T-Shirt


Congratulations!

You have a great idea for a new product. It's going to take over the world, so you build a prototype.

Your parents believe in you, and they front you the money to market it.

So you read up on how to market it. You build a Website. You put in your keywords, and do some SEO. You promote the product on social media. You make some videos and post them to YouTube. And you get your friends to upload some really great TikToks.

And then, nothing.


All is not lost! If you can't BE a millionaire, at least you can look like one!

Celebrate your creativity with this 60% cotton / 40% polyester custom t-shirt!

Remember, it took Thomas Edison almost 1,000 tries before he got his light bulb to work.


[more]

2021 LeadGen.com Performance Survey


Each January we call the companies that we spoke to in the previous year who decided not to use LeadGen.com, and we ask them how they ended up doing. Over 70% of the companies who decided not to use LeadGen.com failed to achieve their revenue objectives.


Do you think there's a connection?


[more]

The New Marketing Matrix


As anyone who studied Marketing in college has learned, Ansoff's Marketing Matrix describes the different strategies for growth, depending on whether the products and markets are old or new.

But the world has changed.

And we now have a New Marketing Matrix:


Obsolescence

Today, if you try to sell your old products into your old markets, you quickly find that your product is obsolete - displaced by faster, better and cheaper competitors.

Your best strategy is to appeal to nostalgia.

Irrelevance

If you try to sell your old product into a new market, you quickly find out that your product is irrelevant.

Your best strategy is to beg for an appointment.

Commoditization

If you try to sell your new product into an old market, you quickly find that the cost-of-change is too high.

Your best strategy is to lower your price.

Scamification

If you try to sell your new product into a new market, you quickly find that Google and the other platforms are running a scam.

Your best strategy is to wait until your funding runs out, and then get a new job.


[more]

You Too


Evidently, a lot of people think that things like New Coke, and Apple forcing people to listen to U2, are good examples of “marketing fails.”

But I guarantee you that, if you had been working for those companies at the time, you would have been, like, “Hell, yeah! We can do this!”

So, I wouldn’t be so quick to criticize.

The fact is that most marketing fails are much more prosaic. And people do them all the time.

In fact, you’re probably doing them right now.

For example, this company decided that their marketing strategy would be to post their promotional content on someone else’s inquiry form.


How is that different from making me listen to “Songs of Innocence”?


[more]

The Glut of Garbage


So here’s a great addition to the glut of garbage that masquerades as helpful marketing solutions.

Today I got an email from a company that sells an immersive workshop on how to improve your LinkedIn campaign performance.

Let me ask you a question:


If LinkedIn marketing actually worked, why are you sending me an email about it???


[more]

Read the Fine Print


So yesterday I had a conference call with a prospect who, after first going with another vendor, finally decided to use our services.

Evidently, the pay-per-lead vendor he had previously chosen failed to deliver the results that they had promised.

And so now they had a little less money to spend, and a lot less time to make their numbers. But it was still do-able, so we’re moving forward.

Not two hours later, I get a call from another company that’s interested in getting a quote from us.

So, I asked him what they’re looking to do. And I also asked what other options they’re looking at.

And he tells me – they’re considering the very same vendor that failed with the guy I had just gotten off the phone with.


Hey, guys. I’m not going to bad-mouth a competitor: But at least READ THE FINE PRINT!


[more]

Great Marketing (Not)!


Oh, here's another one. I had a call yesterday with a professional services company that's looking for help finding new business.

So I asked him what they're doing now, and he starts telling how great his Marketing department is, how they put out all this great content, and how much traffic they get to their Web site.

So I looked at their traffic, and it's all bots and Web crawlers.


Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play?


[more]

The Pay-per-Lead Scam


So today I got an email from a company that wants to know if we'll do lead generation on a pay-per-lead basis. I explained that pay-per-lead in B2B is a scam, and we won't do it.

So he says that his previous vendor charged him on a per-appointment basis.

So I asked him why he's not working with them anymore. And he tells me that it's because the leads were no good.


Does he want to get scammed again?


[more]

The LinkedIn Con


So for today's example of how businesses are getting suckered by the major platforms, we have the LinkedIn post.


How much time, effort and money do you think these companies have wasted posting content to LinkedIn that no one will ever see, read or respond to?

But, hey, don't worry about it! Maybe someone will see your resume.


[more]

Introduction Part 5


Before I go too far, I want to talk about who these videos are for.


In part, these videos are for all you Marketing Experts out there – people who supposedly know everything there is to know about content marketing, and inbound marketing, networking, email marketing, and all manner of digital marketing.

In most cases, if you’re lucky and you actually have a job, you probably work for a company that pays you to create content, develop contacts, drive traffic, send out emails, and maybe do some lead generation.

And so this series is also for all the salespeople out there who either do their own marketing and lead generation, or who rely on a Marketing expert to stimulate demand on their behalf.

And finally, this series is for all the business owners out there who have been led to believe any of that this stuff actually works. And who, as a result, pay these folks to get you in the game, until you run out of money and time because, in most cases, they can’t.

Now, just to be clear, I don’t want to say that this stuff NEVER works. But the odds that it will work are so small as to be effectively meaningless – because the game is wired against you.

Think about it this way: If a typical response rate on an email campaign is less than one one-hundredth of one percent, and you can get tagged as a spammer by Google if you send out more 250 unsolicited emails per day, how is that not a fatal flaw?

Speaking of Google. Right now, go to google and do a search on your preferred search terms. How many results did you get? Billions? And what page was your company on? And why is Google even paginated?

Anyway, how about this one: Maybe you’ve read of a study saying the 57% of the buyer’s journey is completed before they ever engage with a salesperson.

As this was being used as a potent justification for investing in inbound market, I actually called the company that supposedly did the original study. The “author” refused to speak with me. But his secretary told me that, in fact, it was entirely anecdotal, and they never actually did a real survey.

More to the point: If it were true, how would anyone ever sell something where the buyer didn’t already know he had a need??? What would he search on?

See where I’m going with this?

It’s all a con.


[more]

Introduction Part 4


From a marketing perspective, when it comes to Web 2.0, unless you own the platform – whether it’s Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or even here on TikTok - you’re the victim of a massive con.


This is because these platforms are designed to create revenues for the platforms, not for you. And your interests, and mine for that matter, are nothing more than an input to an algorithm designed to keep you engaged so the platform can make more money.

Now, to be sure, some of you may make a few dollars. An influencer here or there who, symbiotically with the platform, pulls in enough eyeballs, clicks, and advertising dollars. But let’s be clear, that’s not even what falls off the back of their truck.

Most of you will fail.

And that’s the problem, and it’s why we’re here. Whether you’re in marketing or sales – and whether you’re doing it on behalf of yourself or an employer – playing the Marketing 2.0 game is a failure path.

And, ironically, you won’t know it until it’s too late. That’s because you may have the illusion of success – clicks, traffic or followers for yourself or your employer, and maybe some sales. But you won’t gain wealth. And that’s because the game is stacked against you.

In fact, the system may even make you think you’re winning. But you’re in the matrix. You’re moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic. It’s all an illusion, a system, built by people who are genuinely smarter than you. And you, and I, for that matter, are just rats stuck in a maze.

So, in the next couple of videos, we’re going to talk about how the system is rigged against you. But my real goal is to help you beat the system.

You know, a little red pill shit.

Because, like your parents, I’ve got kids, and I have a stake in their, and (oddly enough) your, collective success. For example, I need an ROI on my retirement account beyond what I’m going to get on FANG stocks and 0.01% interest.

So, to start, you should know that us boomers aren’t really spending your inheritance. We’re wasting it on failed investments in all those start-ups that you’re working for.

For example, did you know that last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, over 75% of VC-backed companies failed in their first year?

These companies have some of the smartest people in the world working for them. And they’re being vetted by even smarter people. And yet they failed.

Obviously, there’s simply too much money around. Between PPP and the Boomers’ savings, there’s more money out there looking for an ROI than there are actual, viable businesses. And don’t get me started on SPACs. But a lot of businesses get funded that shouldn’t. And a lot of them fail.

Potentially, and potentially pretty soon, there won’t be any money left for you to inherit.

But, more likely, you’ll keep going from failure to failure until the bubble bursts, and no one will invest in another tech start-up, like what happened in the nineties. Then where will you be?

Oh, yeah, you’ll live on the gig economy.

But, then, you already know: that’s just another con.


[more]

Introduction Part 3


OK, so let’s get back to what happened, and how your generation got screwed. In my view, and you can choose to agree with this theory or not – but there were basically two major events that led to the mess we’re in.


First, Jimmy Carter, instead of kicking some ass when OPEC jacked up the price of oil, told everyone to just put on a sweater. And when a bunch of Iranian terrorists took over the American Embassy, instead of kicking some ass, he told everyone to just be patient.

And so, in 1980, we got Ronald Reagan.

Now, I don’t care what you think of his politics, or if you’re a conservative or a liberal. I think we can agree that Ronald Reagan was bought and paid for by big business.

• To wit: In spite of the fact that he had been the President of the Screen Actors Guild, mere months after taking office, he fired the entire membership of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, who had the temerity of going on strike for better pay.

• But just remember, this is a guy who was a paid spokesman for General Electric.

Now, why does this matter?

Well, back then, there was a big debate over the social responsibility of corporations.

• On the one hand were people who said that corporations should only be accountable to their shareholders.

• On the other hand were people who said that corporations should be accountable to their workers, their communities, and government regulators, in addition to their shareholders.

Guess which type of people Reagan put into positions of power? And, by the way, Bush and Clinton went down that same path.

• And that how we got Section 230 of the Communications Act – which relieves Internet platforms of any accountability for the content they host.

• And you get Citizens United, which basically says that a fictional creation of the government – which is what a corporation actually is – can influence, through virtually unlimited campaign contributions the very government put in place to regulate it.

Again, I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, or you’re completely apolitical. The fact is that, as a result of these two events – and, admittedly, there are a few other factors goosing this thing along - wealth is flowing into big corporations, and up to their leaders.

And there is no practical check on their power.

But this is why what was created as a digital, Worldwide forum for free expression – the Internet – has devolved into an automated conflict generator. Because businesses have figured out how to use it to monetize human nature – in particular, through tribalization and conflict.

Anyway, I’m just a marketing guy. So what does this have to do with marketing?

Simply put, with the early Web, publishers used the Internet as if it was cost-reduced advertising space. They could say what they wanted, of course, but it was a collaborative medium where publishers were ultimately accountable for what they published.

With Web 2.0, however, anything goes. And it’s not collaboration that rules, but conflict. And the more conflict you can generate, especially if you can tribalize your audience, the more money you’ll make.


[more]

Introduction Part 2


I’ll tell you another quick story. Would you like to know why people are so fat today?

You’ll hear a lot about people eating too much McDonalds, or people being too lazy to exercise. But here’s what really happened.


Back in the 1970s, the US government used to pay farmers to grow corn – to keep the farmers from going bankrupt because of weather fluctuations, or commodity prices. And as a result, there was a LOT of corn sitting around on farms, in silos, and warehouses around the country.

At the same time, the price of sugar was going through the roof because source countries like Brazil, Thailand and Mexico had a bit of political instability, mostly because of Communist insurgencies.

It turns out that company named CPC International, which made things like corn syrup and mayonnaise, had over-invested in this corn – and they needed a way to get rid of it. A lot of it. And fast.

So they asked a team of us graduate students at Rutgers Business School if we would do a survey, and see if we could find any food manufacturers who would be interested in using CPS’s High Fructose Corn Syrup – a sweetener you can make really cheaply out of excess corn.

It was like, one-fifth of the price of sugar back then.

So we went to the large commercial bakers, folks like Wonder Bread, but they didn’t want to risk their sensitive production process just to save a few bucks on ingredients.

And then we went to the candy companies, like Hershey’s, but they didn’t want to risk the quality of their product when they could just easily adjust the price in response to commodity costs.

So then we went to the soda manufacturers – for whom the cost of sugar was an enormous expense. And its varying availability often limited production, and their ability to grow.

And they said “we’ll take all we can get.”

And the price of making a can of soda dropped by like 80%.

Basically, they were able to cut the cost of their most expensive ingredient by 80%, and gain access to an almost unlimited supply of sweetener - and then shove the stuff down people’s throats, with government support!

And that’s why people are so fat today.


[more]

Introduction Part 1


OK. I get it. I’m a baby boomer. But let me see if I can establish a little bit of credibility with you, and tell you why I’m here. And maybe we can do something useful together.


First, my interest is in helping you be successful, which hopefully you’ll come to believe as we go along.

Anyway, most likely, you’re young. You want to have a career. You want to make money. And my goal is to help you do that. But I get that you think, or rather, you probably know, that we – the baby boomer generation - screwed things up for you. And you’re absolutely right.

We screwed up the climate. We screwed up the economy. And we’re spending your inheritance.

So, I’m going to talk a little about how that happened, and what you can do about it. Because you can be successful. You just can’t do it by falling for the con job that’s going on around you - some of which is admittedly being perpetrated by my generation.

Some of it’s on you. But the reality is that a lot of it is on people like me.

So here we go.

By way of background, I’ve been in sales and marketing for more than 40 years. I started out in sales, though, after getting my MBA back in the 70s in marketing by working for a software company that had just been spun off by IBM.

I went there because they offered some of the best sales training in the world. And I figure that, if I could combine an understanding of how sales worked, with what I learned in school about how marketing worked, I could shortcut some of the typical 20 years of experience needed to work in strategic planning – which is where I really wanted to be.

Anyway, I eventually wound up at a company called Western Electric, which was the manufacturing division of the old Bell System (the telephone company) – in my ideal job: strategic planning, where my job was to figure out which cool technologies that were being invented at Bell Labs should be funded and commercialized.

And that’s where the story starts to get interesting.

Back then, everything – including things like the telephone, TV and radio - was analog. But some folks at Bell Labs were working on digital technologies, like fiber optics, multiplexers, and digital switching that had the potential to revolutionize these industries by driving down costs, and enabling a whole new thing called “applications”.

And one of the things that I got to do was to conduct the very first market research that justified developing these technologies.

And if I could find a market, I then had to try to convince the higher-ups that they ought to incorporate it into the network.

That worked out, with the help of a bunch of other people, of course, and that’s why we now have things like ISDN, Local Area Networks, On Demand video, broadband, the Internet, and a bunch of other technologies that arguably makes our lives better.

What you should know about this, though, is that what these technologies did to make our lives better – specifically by driving down the cost of information – is the same thing that also makes our lives worse.

This is because, when information is so cheap, a lot of garbage rises to the top.


[more]

New to TikTok


This is our first TikTok.

It explains why we're doing this.


If digital marketing is so great, why do so many companies fail


[more]

Marketing Crossword #7


A more challenging puzzle.


Are you sure you'd want to be using these techniques?


[more]

Why Are MQLs and SQLs Even a Thing?


As the digital marketing train wreck grew over the last few years, it became more and more obvious that, for most companies, the investment was wasted. Most programs just produced junk leads.

So what did they do? They did what any good marketer would do:

They re-branded their junk as a "Marketing Qualified Lead".


Get it through your heads people: There is no such thing as a Marketing Qualified Lead. If Sales doesn't want it, it's junk.

With that out of the way, we can now talk about what you ought to be doing, and how to do it.


[more]

Buyer Liar


By now, everyone has heard about the so-called "study" proving that 57% of the buyer's decision is made before they ever engage with a sales rep.

The statistic has been used to justify spending billions of dollars on Inbound Marketing.

But did you know it's completely bogus?


It turns out that they never actually did a study - which I found out by talking to a secretary at the originating company. It was a made-up number from a casual conversation. But they threw it in their pitch deck, and it eventually went viral. And here we are.

But here's how you know it's nonsense:

If it were true, how would anyone ever sell something where the buyer hadn't previously been aware of their need????


[more]

Marketing Crossword #6


Here's a quickie for today.


Of course, if you need quick results from your marketing program, you know who to call.


[more]

Marketing Crossword #5


With trade shows cancelled due to Covid-19, marketing has gone online.


Is there a social network in your business life?


[more]

Marketing Crossword #4


I think we're getting better at this, but you can tell this was done a long time ago!


It's worth noting, in that regard, that we've been around forever, too. Why? Because we put our clients' success ahead of our own.


[more]

Marketing Crossword #3


Yeah, we know. It's not as though you need another meaningless task.


By the same token, if all Marketing challenges were this easy, you'd be rich, right?

Anyway, if you need help with growing your business, we're here for you.


[more]

Marketing Crossword #2


Another brain teaser from the puzzle lab at LeadGen.com.

A little easier then the first one, and one less error.


The real question is: Isn't Marketing just another puzzle?

While you're contemplating the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, if you need help with any aspect of your Sales or Marketing program, call us!


[more]

Marketing Crossword #1


Are you looking for a little brain teaser?

Enjoy today's moderately hard puzzle.


We published these a few years ago, and we thought you might enjoy a little diversion from the crazinesss - errors and all.

If this gets some traffic, we'll make some more - and hopefully better - puzzles soon.

In the meantime, if you need help with any aspect of your Sales or Marketing program, call us!


[more]

Stopping the Finger-Pointing


If you think that hiring a Chief Revenue Officer is going to stop the finger-pointing between Sales and Marketing, dream on.

First, the idea that you can find someone who really understands both functions - for anything approaching afforable - is laughable.

Second, just because they can get everyone to sing Kumbaya, that doesn't mean you've actually solved your sales problem.


For most companies, the problem isn't that Sales and Marketing speak two different languages.

It isn't even that they have different definitions of what constitutes a sales lead.

It's usually because none of them actually has a clue as to what really works today.

And neither does that CRO you just hired.

But it sounds good to say that you just hired one.


[more]

Big Lie #3


We hear it all the time from salespeople.

"Just get me in the door, and I can close anyone."

And so we do. But then they don't.


Is it the quality of the lead? Is it the product? Or is it something else?

Most of the time, it's a bunch of factors.

But you probably don't want to hear that.


[more]

The LeadGen.com 80/20 Rule


We recently went back and talked to some of the people who decided not to do business with us last year.

Most of them had told us, at the time, that they were set with what they wanted to do. But we should check back with them towards the end of the year, just in case.

So we did, and we discovered a new 80/20 Rule.


Eighty percent of the people who blew us off last year failed to achieve their sales goals.

And the other 20% were no longer with the company.

Nice work, folks!


[more]

The Chronicles of Stupid - Part 2


If you're really think you're going to find answers on Google, think again.

Unless you think 1,120,000,000 results is helpful!


But you always were a sucker for click-bait, weren't you?


[more]

The Chronicles of Stupid - Part 1


If you're going to look to Google for answers, don't just ask about SEO, or PPC, or AdWords or How to Build a Website.

After all, doesn't that assume what your strategy ought to be?

If you're going to go to Google for business advice, go all the way!


Ask the genius algorith of Mountainview the question you really want to ask: How do I make my business successful?

Think about it: If Google had all the answers, wouldn't it know the answer to the one question you really care about?

Or maybe, just maybe, their whole algorithm is BS.


[more]

Your Next Marketing Program Will Definitely Work Out


Hope is the lifeblood of every marketing professional.

And optimism is their lingua franca.

Unfortunately, the currency is yours.


And so, by the way, is the risk.


[more]

Are You Smarter than a VC Firm?


According to the Wall Street Journal, over 75% of VC-backed start-ups fail to recover their investment.

Think about that for a second. These companies have some of the smartest minds on Wall Street vetting them.

And they have endless funds to hire the smartest people in the world to make the business a success.

And yet most of them fail in the first year!


So maybe you should ask yourself a question before you hire a CRO to help you realize your vision: If they couldn't do it with the help of a roomful of MBAs, what makes you think you can do it with a Web site and some SEO?


[more]

If Your Marketing Director Is That Good, Why Are They Working for You?


It's all a matter of risk tolerance, and belief in themselves.

If they were that good, they'd have their own firm. If they were that good, they'd be able to print money.

And if they were that good, they wouldn't need you.


The fact is that they're not that good.

If you're lucky, they're competent at executing your directives.

But if they actually knew what they were doing, all the money they could make would be going into their pockets, not yours.

Maybe you ought to re-think your strategy.


[more]

Why did Your VP of Marketing Cross the Road?


Why did the VP of Marketing cross the road?

To get to his new job, of course!


Face it, when it comes to Marketing professionals, you're just another paycheck. And whether they're successful on your behalf or not, it has no impact whatsoever on them, or on their career, or on their welfare.

That's because they can get another job - probably for more money - in a heartbeat.

Set aside the question of whether they even have an "A" game; do you really think they'd bring it?


[more]

Welcome to the Marketing Zombie Apocalypse


Schools are churning out legions of marketing experts - kids born with 10 thumbs and a dream of going viral.


For most companies though, the only thing going viral is their marketing budget.

And good luck with that.


[more]

Drink the Kool-Aid, Lose Your Business


If everyone tells you that you should invest in SEO, buy Google AdWords, advertise on FaceBook, put up a Web site, upgrade your CRM, hire a CRO, pump out content, send out emails, and hire a rainmaker if you want sales to roll in, welcome to Jonestown.


On the other hand, maybe your mother was right when she said that just because everyone is doing it, that doesn't mean you should too.


[more]

CRO in a Box


If you think that hiring a Chief Revenue Officer is going to solve your sales problem, good luck.


On the other hand, maybe you could find one that has a 5-star rating on Amazon.


[more]

Zombie Marketing


Does your company invest in Content Marketing?

Do you still believe Inbound Marketing works?

If so, welcome to the world of Zombie Marketing!


In the movies, Zombies are dead people who don't know they're dead. And they feast on the living until there's no one left in town to eat.

In Marketing, Zombies are Marketing Professionals who recommend techniques - like content marketing, LinkedIn marketing, email and Google Adwords - that simply don't work for most companies.

And they feast on your budget until there's no money left to spend.

And then they move on to their next gig.

But that's okay. Everyone's doing it, so it must be right.


[more]

The Scariest Words in Business


Arguably, the two scariest words in Business are "I just..."

Whenever you hear them, you know that what follows is going to be someone making an excuse for doing or saying something really dumb.

Like when your child explains why they jumped out a second floor window using an umbrella as a parachute. ("I just wanted to see if it would work.")

Or when your Marketing Manager explains that they were just doing what Google, or LinkedIn, or whomever, recommended they do.


"I just..." is often followed by an explanation for why the person didn't think about the consequences of what they were doing.

And so it falls to you to point them out.

Only then it's usually too late.


[more]

Putting the Cart Before the Horse


Deciding on what promotional tactics to use before you've really worked out an effective marketing strategy is one of the leading causes of business failure.

We see it all the time: A business has a great idea for a new product or service. They invest in building it. And then they put together - often with the help of a so-called "marketing expert" - a plan to promote it.

And then it fails to get traction.

What happened?


Companies often become enamored with the latest-and-greatest marketing tool or technique. When they combine that with their enthusiasm for their product, they become blinded to the real challenges of the market: How to break through the clutter and get people's attention, how to stimulate their interest, and how to get prospects to actually want to talk to you. It's a recipe for disaster.

One thing is clear: A good marketing strategy isn't just a bunch of marketing tactics strung together. Developing the strategy comes first, and it often requires doing market research, and classic market planning. But it's a whole separate exercise. And it's often the critical step on the path to success.


[more]

Decisions, decisions


As a business owner you're faced with a virtual tsunami of marketing options. Everyone is selling the next big thing, the newest way to generate leads, or the one tool you absolutely need to grow your business.

Email marketing! Data mining! Pay-per-lead! AI! Content marketing! SEO!

"Just use our solution and the world will beat a path to your door", they scream.

Well, here's the reality: It's all nonsense, because none of it works - at least not for you.


When it comes to marketing, if you think that you need to be doing "X", you've already lost the battle.

And there are lots of names for it: Grasping at straws. Throwing a bunch of you-know-what against the wall and seeing what sticks. And "hope as a strategy" are just a few.

If you want to win the game, you have to start with the fundamentals. You have to work through your value proposition and your positioning, your targeting, and how to actually create awareness and stimulate interest with potential buyers.

Only then should you consider what tools you need.


[more]

Putting Lipstick on a Pig


If you differentiate between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), you're setting yourself up for failure.

In fact, even the use of Lead Scoring, in itself, can result in catastrophic sales failure for most companies. But the reason is probably not what you think.


It's widely understood that different marketing programs can produce leads of different "quality". But the issue that really matters is "time management," not lead quality.

The confusion arises from the fact that the attributes of a lead that make it worthwhile to a salesperson to pursue one day may be completely different from the attributes that make it worth pursuing on another day.

For example, if the salesperson is over quota and it's the beginning of the month, a lead with a weak underlying need may be perfectly fine to work on. But that same salesperson, if they need one more sale to make quota and it's the last week of the month, may only want leads that are ready to close.

Does your so-called lead management system allow for such flexibility? If not, get ready to fail.

Calling a lead an MQL to differentiate it from an SQL isn't dressing up a bad lead, it's covering up a bad Sales Management process.


[more]

The Myth of PPL


We get asked all the time to work on a "pay for performance" basis.

Some companies ask because they have no money, and others ask because they've been burned before. But both typically try to use our claims of competence as justification for not paying (i.e. "If you're so good...")

Both types also assert that, if we can get them in the door, they can close the deal. And as a result, they say, we're sure to get paid on the back end.


The funny thing about being so confident in your ability to close, though, is that if your salespeople were so good at closing, they'd also be good at prospecting.


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Stupid Marketing Tricks: Email Edition


Back in the day, salespeople who were afraid to make cold calls, or who didn't know how to open one, would employ an excuse on their calls such as "I'm calling to follow up a letter I sent you..." - never actually having sent a letter. They did this as a way to make the call seem less cold.

And prospects were often dumb enough to fall for it, or too polite to challenge it. And so the prospect would apologize, and tell the salesperson that they didn't get the letter.

"Oh, sorry," the salesperson would say, "I guess it hasn't arrived yet," knowing full well that no letter was ever sent. "But as long as I have you on the phone, do you have a minute?"

And off they'd go...


Fast forward, and today lazy marketers don't even bother making the phone call. Instead, they send misleading emails, and hope someone is stupid enough to respond.

How many emails like these have you received:

• "I tried reaching you by phone, but apparently you were out."
• "I don't know if you got my voice mail, but I was hoping to catch you at your desk."
• "I'm following up my previous emails to see if you're still interested."

Setting aside that these things clog up your inbox, the real tragedy is that is that someone is actually paying for this.

Some poor business owner has bought into the drip email process, probably because he or she can't find salespeople who actually know how to sell. And, of course, email is cheap.

The problem is that, by the time this business owner finds out that it didn't work, they've blown half their year.

And their salespeople are on to their next jobs.


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Making it Rain!


What is a Rainmaker?


The sales equivalent of a unicorn. Great sales people are made, not born.


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MQL


What is a MQL?


A Four-Letter Word. As if you couldn't tell by the picture!


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Stop the Revolving Door!


With the constant revolving door of salespeople, what question should you be asking yourself? Find out now:


Are you hiring for turnover?


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Thirsty for Results?


Digital Marketing is the business equivalent of Kool-Aid. Do you know why?


No protein, no nutritional value, just a sugar high!


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The Digital Marketing Scam!


There is more evidence for its existence than there is for the effectiveness of Digital Marketing. How does this impact you?


If you were to add up everything you spent for digital marketing, including personnel, what is your net cost per qualified sales lead? Still think you aren’t getting scammed?


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Chicken


Why did the Marketing VP cross the road?


To get to his next job.


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Inbound Marketing is a Scam!


When are you going to accept that you can’t win the inbound marketing war? Why can't you win?


The game is rigged. Ask yourself, why are search results paginated???


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There are those who can sell. Then those who can't, do marketing.


The problem isn’t that Marketing isn’t a legitimate function. So what is the problem then?


It’s that everyone is convinced that it’s not accountable for sales. How’s that working out?


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Marketing and Sales 2021


It’s the epic battle between Marketing and Sales. MQLs vs SQLs! And guess who loses?


You do – because there’s no such thing as an MQL. It’s either worth the salesperson’s time, or it’s not.


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Blog Post 335

Why did the Marketing Director cross the road?


To interview for another job.

It's no joke that the digital Marketing Director position that grew in prominence over the last decade has fallen on hard times. Most of the tools they use simply don't work. And so most end up jumping from company to company, just hoping to get lucky.

It's also because most of the tools available today don't work very long. Marketing today is an arms race; so if you can't tell the fools and the fool's gold, you might end up having to cross the road, too.


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The "Burned Before" Series, Episode 8: Cheaping Out


We've seen many companies blow through their budgets on marketing programs that failed to deliver. And it's sad. But it happens mostly because there's so much nonsense out there.

Everyone tells you what you need to do - "Do SEO!" "You need Click Funnels!" "Stand on your head and squawk like a chicken!" - but the vendor never draws the link to revenues, so you never achieve your goals.

And then you're left with not enough money to do anything meaningful, and ask us to fix the problem on the cheap.


The fact is that successful marketing is hard to do. And all those "easy answers" are like cheap insurance. You can afford it, but it isn't going to be there when you need it.

The funny thing is that the hardest thing to do in marketing is to come up with a strategy that's actually going to work.

But are you willing to spend the $5,000 it's going to cost to do that? Doubtful.

But that's the reason you're getting burned. It's not your vendors' fault.


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Getting Specced In: Why You’re Getting Shut Out


Are you an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) who needs to increase your company's sales?

What if you could get "specced in" by the architects, consultants, designers, and engineers who design the products, buildings and applications that use your product while they're still in the planning phase?

Learn how Getting Specced In can help!


Get Specced In can put you in front of the professionals who decide what products will be used in their project. Whether it goes into a new product, a new building, or an application, our Get Specced In solution can get you in the door.

So, you can make the sale before your competition even knows there's an opportunity.

Why Get Specced In?

Success in sales is all about account control. And account control is all about getting in early and influencing the spec.

Because you know the old adage: If you can control the spec - the design that incorporates your type of product - then you can control what brand the customer is going to buy, even - if not especially - if you sell through a channel.

LEADGEN.COM's Get Specced In solution is all about getting you there first so you can become part of the spec.

And so, you won't become "column fodder" for a Supply Chain Manager who's only looking for the lowest price.

How "Get Specced In" Works

Get Specced In is a marketing strategy and service we offer that starts with primary and secondary market research to find out who's designing the products, solutions, systems or buildings (depending on what you make) that incorporate your type of products.

We then contact these decision influencers - getting past their gatekeepers and other barriers-to-entry - and introduce your product as a potential solution.

We'll uncover their needs and goals and get them to want to hear your story because it solves their problems.

Then we'll set up the appointment for your salesperson or channel partner - so you can go in and drive the sale. And your competition won't even know what hit them.

Who Needs to Get Specced In?

If your prospects don't want you talking to their users, you need to Get Specced In. If your buyers want to assess their own needs and send out an RFP to five other vendors, you need to Get Specced In. And especially if your competition is wiring the bid, you really need to Get Specced In!

Whether you're selling components or finished products, if you're not only subject to competition, but also to a Supply Chain Manager who wants to commoditize everything he buys, you need to Get Specced In.

Because the fact is, that despite what they tell you, buyers want to ignore your advantages and make you compete only on price. So, if you're going to win, you must influence what gets purchased before it goes out to bid.

Get Specced In - and shut out your competition and make the Supply Chain work for you!


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Your Channel Partners: Lazy and Expensive


Working through independent Manufacturers Reps, Resellers, Value Added-Resellers (VARs), channel partners and distributors presents a unique set of opportunities and challenges. VARs and distributors can help you generate sales in their established territories relatively quickly and inexpensively. But getting them to open new or underdeveloped geographical areas or vertical markets can be frustrating and expensive.

And, after the initial honeymoon, keeping them performing at a high - or even acceptable - level is often difficult. What if there was a way you could get all the benefits that VARs have to offer - and more - while eliminating most of the challenges that often lead to failure, thereby giving you a higher ROI, with less investment, and a lot less risk and pain?

Discover how you can.


Why Use Reps/VARs?

Independent reps certainly have a place in the market, and they offer several benefits. For example, reps already have a presence in the market, and often have established relationships with accounts you want to target.

Reps therefore reduce the burden of creating awareness with prospects, building rapport and, often, stimulating interest - thereby saving you time, and reducing your market risk. Reps also usually work on straight commission, and pay their own expenses, so your initial financial exposure is known.

What Are the Downsides?

Even with these benefits, independent reps often fail to deliver the sales results you need. Sometimes you cannot get the attention from them that your product requires. Sometimes they will not go after the accounts that you want them to target. They almost always follow the path of least resistance, and instead stay in the friendly ground they are familiar with. Getting an agent to leave his comfort zone can be a challenge. And getting them to make effective cold calls is nearly impossible, and therefore greatly avoided. You almost always give up account control. And sometimes the better reps demand commissions that make the whole deal uneconomic.

How Can LEADGEN.COM Help?

We have worked with dozens of companies that use independent reps, VARs and distributors, helping them maximize their return by providing outsourced lead generation - the "critical path item" in the strategy.

We've been there. We understand the challenges, we have the solutions, and we know how to make them work. Here are some of the challenges, and how we help:

Challenge 1

Reps Can't or Won't Take You into New Accounts Reps are comfortable with their established accounts. But if you need them to go after anything new, they can't, or won't, do it. Many won't even make cold calls or do prospecting.

Our Solution
LEADGEN.COM can quickly get you into new accounts where neither of you have a presence - enabling you to increase your market, and your market share. This is our "niche," and what we do all day, every day.

Challenge 2

With Reps, You Often Give Up Account Control If the rep brought you in, they "own" the account. This often leaves you at a disadvantage, especially in margin, but also in leverage and knowing the pulse of the market.

Our Solution

By initiating the relationship with the prospect, LEADGEN.COM can ensure that you own the account, and the territory. We can keep you plugged in, so you don't lose Account Control. And feedback is untainted, so you'll always know what's really going on.

Challenge 3

Reps Are More Expensive Than You Think If you're missing business because your reps are unmotivated, too challenged, or already too fat, you're leaving valuable $$$ on the table.

Our Solution

By having LEADGEN.COM generate the leads on your behalf, you can dictate the terms of the relationship. And they'll also be more motivated and loyal. (In fact, many reps use LEADGEN.COM themselves for lead generation because it helps so much.)

Challenge 4

Reps Vary Greatly in Quality Every company that uses reps has good ones, and bad ones. As a result, one-size-fits-all programs seldom work.

Our Solution

LEADGEN.COM can customize the program by territory, so you can build a high-performing team quickly and painlessly or build a territory in-house to attract better reps when replacing lower performing agencies.

Summary

By having LEADGEN.COM do the lead generation for your independent agents, you get control of your channel, and your market. (Remember: "He who has the gold makes the rules," and there is no gold worth more than a good lead.) You can direct where your VARs go, if you need to; and if they balk, you can simply give the lead to someone else, or go direct. (Actually, just having the option will usually keep them motivated.)

But more importantly (and especially when the relationship is positive) by providing leads from LEADGEN.COM for your reps, you will be the ideal strategic partner - one that is deeply committed to your mutual success. It is the single, most important investment you can make in the relationship. (In fact, it is more important than product training.) The reps will make more money, you will increase your sales, and your partners will show their appreciation in long-term loyalty, attention, and performance.

From a "channel management" perspective, LEADGEN.COM can help you with the critical communications challenges of running a program. This is because we can deal directly with each rep on your behalf, help set schedules, call-backs, and follow-ups, and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. It's win-win, with little cost and effort.

We've done this many times. And unlike a stand-alone repping program, it is nearly impossible to fail.

Do you want your Manufacturers Reps, VARs, distributors, and channel partners to perform? Do you want them to ring your cash register? Reach out to us for help today!


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Magical Thinking: Guessing What’s Going to Work


It's remarkably simple. If there's a gap between "where you are" and "where you want to be" with respect to your company's sales, you need to change what you're doing. 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 repeatedly - if it isn't moving the needle - isn't going to get you there.

So, what should you do?


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 genuinely want to close your sales gap, you must look at your whole sales and marketing plan.

At LEADGEN.COM we pioneered the development of Strategic Market Planning as a tool for growth 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. We will even talk 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.

The approach we use is straightforward and time-tested:

• 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) isn'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.


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In-House vs Outsourced Marketing


Many companies wrestle with the question of whether they'd be better off hiring staff to do their marketing, or to outsource it.

Hiring arguably gives you more control, and it may save you some, but it limits your talent pool and flexibility. Outsourcing gives you a lot more options, but management can be tricky.

But neither of those arguments matter if your marketing plan isn't working.


You see, here's the thing. What really matters most in marketing is strategy. And that doesn't just mean picking a target market and a bunch of marketing mix elements. Strategic market planning is a science. And if you hire a Marketing Manager who doesn't understand it, you might as well just throw darts.

The reality is that if you hire people for a critical function like marketing, and they don't succeed, then they'll just go on to their next job - leaving you holding the bag.

That's why you should call LeadGen.com. At least we know the right things to do.


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Liar, liar, pants on fire


Have you even gotten one of those pitches from a call center where they brag about the high number of dials they can make each day, and it sounds high but reasonable?

And then as icing on the cake they tell you that they can generate lots of great leads too, and it sounds even better?

Run the math, though, and you may find out you're about to get snockered.


Let's assume that it takes three minutes to dial someone - because you have to familiarize yourself with who they are and what they do. Otherwise, of course, it will sound like you're reading from a script, and they'll just hang up on you.

So that 100 dials/day will take about 300 minutes, or 5 hours - assuming no bathroom breaks.

Then ask yourself: If the caller actually gets someone on the line, how long do you think it will take for them to persuade a prospect to agree to a meeting? Ten minutes? (Ten if you're lucky, but probaby more like twenty. But let's run with ten.)

And how many of these ten minute conversations would the caller have to have to get one person to say yes? Five? (Again, five if you're lucky, but probably more like ten.)

So here's the math: Five appointments required 25 conversations, each of which took ten minutes (not counting the time it takes to write notes), for a total of 250 minutes. Add that to the five hours from before, and you have a 9 hour day.

Do you know what a "blivit" is?


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Any Idiot Can Make Phone Calls


Desperate times call for desperate measures. That's why so many marketing firms are getting into the telemarketing business these days. It's also why so many companies use them.

And it's also why so many of these programs fail.


At LeadGen.com we've offered professional B2B telemarketing and lead generation services for over 20 years, and so we know a thing or two about it. For example...

First, you can't just hand someone a script and a telephone and expect them to get past gatekeepers and voice mail.

Second, you can't put someone on the phone who doesn't know what they're doing and expect them to persuade a busy executive - someone who may be running a $50 million business - to grant an appointment.

And third, doing this wrong doesn't just waste money, it wastes time, and it can ruin your company's reputation. And if you think that opting for pay-per-lead is going to help, wait until you see the blowback from bogus appointments. Or worse, what it does to your bottom line.

But go ahead. Go with that vendor who says they can make 600 dials-per-hour and guarantee 47 qualified leads per day.

Then watch them make a monkey out of you.


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Want to Generate Leads for Free?


Are you frustrated with expensive marketing solutions that fail to deliver? Do you need real sales leads?

LeadGen.com has just introduced a new tool that can help!

The Lead Generator is a powerful platform where you can generate qualified sales leads, while saving money on everything you buy.

Go to the Lead Generator now! https://tinyurl.com/y2babxt5



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Why Your Leads Aren't Converting


If you're generating lots of hits, traffic, clicks and visits, but none of them convert to actual qualified leads, what good are you doing?

With all the things you can do, and all the money you spend to promote your business, it's pointless if you can’t engage with a decision maker who has a need for your product or service, and who wants to talk to you about how you can help.

Put another way, if Marketing says it's doing its job, and Sales says "the leads are no good," you have a conversion problem.


To be clear, everyone's situation is different. So if you want to fix your conversion rate, we're going to have to dig into the problem and figure out exactly what's wrong in order to fix it. But there are a couple of consistent themes.

First, you need to make sure that the people you're reaching are decision makers, or at least decision influencers. Otherwise, you're wasting your marketing dollars.

Second, providing information, if there's no intent or ability to buy, is another a waste of time and money. So don't do it. You don't get paid to educate non-buyers.

Third, improving metrics that don't connect directly to sales is delusional. Marketing must be accountable for the conversion rate. Otherwise you're just shouting into an empty room.

And putting the burden on your salespeople to convert "junk" leads into opportunities doesn't solve the problem either. It merely shifts the cost to them - sometimes perniciously so.

In short, if your Marketing department designed a program that doesn't generate qualified sales leads, they're failing. If you want to fix it, call LeadGen.com Generating qualified sales leads and getting you in the door - whether we do it ourselves or we show your team how to do it - is what we're all about.

Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today!


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Everything Has Changed


Whether it's due to the pandemic, the economy, or advances in technology, channels, media, buyers, markets and entire sectors have totally changed in the last few months.

And so more and more Marketing and Sales Executives ask us, "How can I accomplish my goals? Because what worked yesterday just doesn't work anymore."

Or we hear "We just need more leads", yet companies get hundreds of leads - and none convert, or ever close. What's going on??


When we dig into the problem, what we find is that many companies don't just need more or better leads. What they need is a new strategy - new positioning, better targeting, and different tactics. Anything else is just a band-aid.

As the One-Stop Shop for All Your Sales and Marketing Needs, LeadGen.com does more than generate leads. We also help our clients develop the right strategy - one that enables them to stay in business, to survive, and to prosper.

Do you find yourself wondering why a strategy that used to work no longer works? Or why your close rate has fallen through the floor?

We can help.


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Creating Compelling Messages When No One Cares


Regardless of the medium you're using to communicate with prospects, your message needs to resonate. If you want your prospects to respond and engage, you will need a messaging strategy that builds value to be effective. To accomplish this, you must demonstrate the capability to address the challenges your target audience is facing. Remember, it’s not about you. Nobody cares about how great you think your company is. Instead, your company needs to be relevant and your communications need to demonstrate that consistently.

So, what does it take to create compelling messaging?


To create an effective messaging strategy, you will need to:

1. Plan your strategy to disseminate the right information, to the right person during the right stage of the buying process.

2. Build on previous messaging to establish credibility.

3. Demonstrate to your prospect’s that you understand their experience in detail.

To achieve this, keep in mind that your messaging strategy is always “discovery” work in progress. As you engage your target audience, listen and make sure you are constantly doing these 5 critical things:

1. You will have several different target audiences. Tailor your messaging so that it resonates with specific job functions of the prospects you are engaging.

2. Understand the challenges and objectives your prospect is concerned with or is looking to improve. Your solution will involve different people interested in different sets of benefits. Take time to know each prospect’s unique pain points, in addition to common challenges and shared results desired.

3. You current customers are a crucial source of information and value. Engage with your existing customers and make sure you fully understand their experience, and the context of their experience with your solutions. Turn that experience into stories that paint a compelling picture for your prospects.

4. Let your prospects impose a time frame for the sales cycle. Imposing you own time frame is likely to create frustration on the part of the potential customer. You can of course accelerate the sales cycle by helping prospects define the consequences of delaying the right solution, but you must let your prospects answer the question of timeframe for themselves.

5. Experiment with messaging within and across target audiences to uncover the full range of needs and wants, rather than focusing on the most obvious.

If you do these key things when developing, deploying and refining your messaging strategy, you will find that your more and more prospects will view your messaging as relevant, rather than just more noise and clutter in the market.

If you find that your prospects just simply aren’t not responding no matter how hard you try, or if your prospects stop engaging after entering the sales cycle, contact LeadGen.com today, reach out us and we will help you turn it around.


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The Performance-Based Catch 22


When you engage with a pay-for-performance marketing or sales vendor, you have to ask yourself: How many other deals have they accepted?

If yours is the only one, you have to wonder what kind of business model they have that puts all their eggs in your one basket. And if not, you have to wonder just how much time they're really going to put into you.


The real problem, of course, is that, despite what they tell you, they don't believe in you. They have no idea if your product will sell. And they don't even care. Why should they? They just take every gig that's offered, and if they happen to trip over an opportunity, they'll be happy to put it through.

But if you think they're going to invest their money in your dream, you're delusional.

You get what you pay for.


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Blog Post 321

Mark Your Calendar: December 07th 2020
Announcing: A LeadGen.com Workshop

Develop the Most Powerful Weapon in Your Sales and Marketing Arsenal!

Tired of waiting for potential clients to call you? Are leads from marketing failing to provide you enough opportunity to meet your revenue objectives? Does it seem all your potential prospects are hiding away due to the recession?

For business owners, CEOs, sales leaders, and sales reps – learn why cold calling it NOT dead! And, learn how you can put it to work for you, IF done correctly.

Most, importantly, equip yourself and your team with the right skills that will close the gap between marketing and sales by:

getting you past gatekeepers, stimulating REAL INTEREST in your products and services and, positioning you to close more sales, faster, less expensively and with half the risk!

Learn More and Pre-Register Today at https://tinyurl.com/y5axyb7m


***Link Leads Directly to Workshop Page***


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Good Intentions Gone Bad


Being organized is fundamental to effective sales. It helps you prioritize. It prevents opportunities from falling through the cracks. And it helps you generate the most revenue, in the shortest amount of time, with the least effort. Contact Management Systems should have been a boon.

So, what went wrong?


The problem arises when other people get a say in how the CRM should work. Marketing wants the data to help them target their promotions. Finance wants it to help them forecast revenues. And management simply wants to know what's going on.

The problem is that each of these requirements creates more work for the salesperson who has to enter the data. More accurate contact information! Structured notes! Record-keeping for every dial, contact and email! And accountability for the quality of the data - taking even more time and effort away from selling - instead of for sales.

Discover how you can make cold-calling work, minus the tyranny of CRM with our Cold Calling Workshop!


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Lead Generation: The Missing Link between Marketing and Sales


Do you need to increase your sales? Do you need to grow your company’s revenue, profitability or market share?

If you compete in the business-to-business (B2B) market, you know that companies typically develop and implement marketing and sales initiatives that are designed to achieve specific revenue, profit and market share growth objectives. But you’ve probably also seen that many companies are either not meeting their objectives. Or worse, they’ve lowered their expectations. This happens because their marketing and sales programs simply aren’t delivering the results they need. But these are the kinds of problems that LeadGen.com is uniquely positioned to solve.

Take an in-depth look at how we do it.


Introduction

As it turns out (for many companies we’ve helped) it wasn’t because of increased competition, or even because of decreased demand, that their results fell short. And it wasn’t because their sales or marketing programs didn’t work, as most worked exactly as advertised. The reason that most companies didn’t achieve their objectives was because there were incorrect assumptions underlying their sales and marketing programs, and unforeseen gaps between them, that doomed them from the start. And it was only after they called LeadGen.com – the missing link between marketing and sales – that these barriers to success were identified and fixed, and their goals were achieved. For example: A division of a Fortune 500 company had recruited dozens of channel partners to bring in new sales, based on the partners’ incumbency in the geographic market. But when the partners were asked to go after new customers, they balked because they didn’t want to leave their “comfort zone.” And so the initiative failed to achieve its growth goals. Only after LeadGen.com was brought in to find deals and set qualified appointments for the partners in their target verticals were they motivated to go after the opportunities, and reach 100% of their revenue objectives.

In another case, a mid-sized financial services company sent its salespeople to attend a popular sales training program in order to increase their close rates, and shorten their sell- cycles. But when the close rates went down after the training (instead of up), and the sell- cycles got longer (instead of shorter), they knew they had a problem. It turned out that the sales technique, which the salespeople had only grudgingly embraced, was alienating their prospects. LeadGen.com solved it, though, with remedial training and field coaching that ultimately led to the company going from less than 4% market share to more than 15% in less than two years.

And in yet another case, a Fortune 500 client had implemented an elaborate Contact Management System that was designed to improve management control, and get a better handle on their sales funnel. But the system, which otherwise functioned flawlessly, quickly became packed with bad data, lost opportunities and misleading reports because they didn’t have a process to insure the integrity of the data. LeadGen.com quickly cleaned up the system. And then we focused their sales teams on profitable opportunities that added more than 6% to their sales in the first year on a base of over $500M.

As you can see, while each of these marketing and sales initiatives was executed well, they all had hidden – but wrong – assumptions, and therefore a gap in the overall sales/marketing process. (In the first case, they selected channel partners who were in the right geographic markets, but who weren’t willing to go after new business. In the second case, they purchased an ineffective sales training program. And in the third case, they forgot to prioritize the functionality in their CRM.) And so when these otherwise reasonable strategies encountered real-world market conditions, they failed to achieve their revenue goals. But it’s at this intersection of marketing and sales where LeadGen.com can turn disaster into success. For example:

A regional tech company had implemented a comprehensive social media/email marketing program to complement their networking and trade show activities that, together, they hoped would generate significant new sales. Despite meeting all of their production KPIs, however, their conversion rates were far below expectations. So they called LeadGen.com for help. Quickly recognizing that the promotional initiatives were actually failing to reach their intended audience, we re-designed the programs. And within less than two months we had identified, and the client had closed, enough new business to exceed 100% of their revenue objectives for the next two years.

A PR firm had some notable successes under their belt. But their own PR was unable to get to the attention of their target prospects: consumer products CEOs. Combining research, direct mail and telephone follow-up, LeadGen.com was able to get them in front of several dozen interested prospects, however, and fill their book of business for a year.

A manufacturer of an innovative piece of mechanical equipment was having trouble breaking into a new market because of entrenched competition, despite dominating the trade show circuit. To close the gap, we realized that they could go around the competition, and approach the architects and engineers who were designing the systems, thereby getting the client specced in before the competitor could even be selected.

A Fortune 100 manufacturer of fiber optic cable had saturated their market, and was facing a declining revenue stream. Using an innovative data mining technique, though, we were able to identify several major new market opportunities that ultimately delivered over a billion dollars in new sales, and created several new markets in the process.

A metals manufacturer had a small slice of their addressable market, a slice that was getting smaller due to unethical practices of a competitor. We engineered a turnaround for them, though, by guiding them through a price war, and building them a new sales team that gave them the #2 market share in the business.

As these examples illustrate, despite the wide array of tools and tactics available to support B2B marketing and sales today, many initiatives ultimately fail to deliver on revenue for two primary reasons:

Marketing programs that fail to produce qualified sales leads, and

Sales programs that actually prevent sales from closing

As you’ll see, these problems happen because a critical piece is often missing from the marketing/sales process. So if you (or someone you know) are facing this “tactical success/ strategic failure” conundrum, call us. We can close the gaps, and help you reach your goals.

Why So Many B2B Marketing and Sales Initiatives Fail

While each company’s situation is different, there are seven common reasons why so many B2B marketing and sales initiatives fail today. Not surprisingly, many of these fall under the heading, to paraphrase Mark Twain, of “It’s not what you know that’s the problem. It’s what you know, but that just ain’t so, that gets you into trouble.” That is, when your assumptions are wrong, failure is likely to follow – especially in marketing and sales. Thus:

1. When is a “Lead” Not a Lead?

By a considerable margin, the #1 reason for the failure of many B2B marketing and sales programs was because of the soft, if not wholly inaccurate, definition of a “sales lead.” Ever since the list vendors rebranded their mailing lists as “sales leads” in the 1990’s, everyone has used a different definition for the term. This results in confusion, and often disaster. And with the advent of social media marketing and Web 2.0, things have only gotten worse. For example:

To a mailing list vendor, a “name” is a lead.
In a social media marketing program, a “click” is a lead.
In an advertising program, an “impression” is a lead.
At a trade show, a “booth stop-by” is lead.
In a telemarketing program, an “appointment” is a lead.
In an email campaign, an “open” is a lead.
In a content strategy, a “download” is a lead.
In a networking group, a “referral” is a lead.
In an inbound program, an “inquiry” is a lead.
And with a Webinar campaign, an “attendee” is a lead.

While any of these definitions (and there are many others) might be valid in isolation, there are two problems. First, you can’t compare the cost-per-lead from one program to that of another if the definitions are different. It’s like comparing apples-to-oranges. So you can’t make a rational business decision about what to invest in. And therefore you make bad decisions.

Compounding the problem, when you attempt to convert these so-called leads into sales, you get confusion and rejection by the sales team. This is because it takes a lot more time, effort and money to convert an “impression” into a sale, for example, than it does to convert a confirmed “face-to-face meeting with a decision maker” to a closed sale. Telling your sales team to convert poorly qualified sales leads into revenue produces the Glengarry Glen Ross Syndrome (i.e. “These leads are terrible!”) And they end up throwing out the good with the bad, if not simply quitting.

Normalizing the definition of a sales lead, and modeling the activity needed to convert (i.e. re- qualify) it, in your business plan (which we can show you how to do) is the first step towards fixing your marketing strategy. Only then can you design and implement an effective marketing plan. But it was a missing link that was ignored in almost every failed marketing initiative.

2. The Marketing Zombie Apocalypse

The second most common reason for the failure of many of the B2B marketing and sales programs was because, while the initiative’s chief advocate may have been an expert in the particular promotional or sales solution being used, most advocates were vague, if not deliberately ignorant, about how to convert the investment into actual revenue. We call this “The Marketing Zombie Apocalypse.” But examples abound, including:

The Social Media Marketing expert who can show you how to post to LinkedIn, but shrugs when your connections don’t buy.
The email expert who can send out thousands of emails a day, but measures response rates in thousandths of a percent.
The Sales Manager who asks for more resources.
The list rep who guarantees the quality of their list by giving you a replacement list that has an even higher bounce rate.
The Channel Manager who can recruit VARs and channel partners, but who blames competition when they don’t produce.
The Marketing Manager who sees his job as “making the salespeople happy,” but who doesn’t understand that the salespeople may not be any smarter than he is at finding new sales.
The Salesperson who looks great in a suit, but asks for price concessions.
Or the technology expert with the “next big thing” who claims to not be accountable when it’s time to judge sales results.

At LeadGen.com, we refer to employees (and vendors, for that matter) who dodge revenue accountability as “Marketing Zombies.” They proselytize with conviction, but it’s their process they’re selling, not the ROI. As a result of this missing link, you get a lot of activity, but no results.

On the other hand, forcing accountability – as many owners do in response – doesn’t solve the problem either. This is because guarantees, back-ends, skin-in-the-game, pay-for-performance and high commissions only serve to drive creative contracting and excuse making, rather than performance. Better is to design a process correctly in the first place (which we can show you how to do) whereby accountability doesn’t become a hammer, but rather is a byproduct of the process.

3. What’s the Definition of a Camel? A Horse Designed by a Committee!

While they’re great tools, Contact Management Systems are fundamentally slaves to many masters. Salespeople use them to track opportunities. Management uses them to forecast revenues. Marketing analysts use them for data mining. And Sales Managers use them to exert control. What you often end up with, however, is an expensive, over-engineered mess filled with duplicate data and missed opportunities – and the third most common cause of failure.

Any CMS that doesn’t have a Data Integrity Czar with authority over development and processes is a huge missing link, and an accident waiting to happen. But even that might not be enough. Many systems have slow response times, and most over-complicate the steps in the sales process. But the one problem almost all of them have is that they force salespeople to tag records with attributes, phases of the decision process, and other ephemera that waste their time, and actually do nothing to help them close more business.

As much as it pains people, we find that “less is more” when it comes to Contact Management Systems. For most B2B companies, the focus should be on what makes the sales job easier – a design goal we can help you achieve. Everything else, though, should be challenged.

4. Market Research Is Too Expensive, Except When Compared to Not Doing It

In one of the most glaring examples of a missing link, in a recent survey we could barely find one B2B company that conducted valid market research, either primary or secondary, before launching any marketing or sales initiatives. It was amazing (to us, at least,) that a company would rather spend a million dollars to fail than spend $30,000 to find out that there’s no opportunity, or to learn that the method they’re using to tap into it won’t work.

It turns out that market research (which we can design and implement for you) generally has the highest ROI of any marketing tool in the toolkit. It’s fast to implement. And it can save many times its cost in speed-to-market, risk, wasted investment, and low close rates.

Interestingly, for those companies with failed marketing initiatives the most common refrain was, “If I’d only known then what I know now...” Unfortunately, most couldn’t wait.

5. Recruiting Violations

Having the wrong skill set on your sales team is an easy gap to hide. Who would know? Surprisingly, many companies in our sample recruited salespeople using tests and decision criteria that were wholly unrelated to success in sales. (Did you know that the most popular testing regimen has never been correlated with success in sales?)

Once on board, salespeople are usually given “product training” that’s been mislabeled as “sales training” – with actual “sales training” never really being provided (which is a huge gap!) But even when sales training is offered, it is often in an ineffective, albeit widely available, technique.

Making matters worse, many salespeople are asked to do things for which they are unqualified or unwilling, like cold calling (which we can do for you, by the way). And when the company attempts to remediate their salespeople by investing in better sales aids, performance plans, or modifying the compensation plan – none of which can really solve the problem – the finger pointing begins.

Compounding the situation, most B2B companies don’t train their Sales Managers in Sales Management either. How does that make sense? (At LeadGen.com we can help you recruit, train and coach salespeople who’ll perform, and Sales Managers who’ll actually add value to the process.) But sales team problems were at the root of dozens of failures we observed, especially among SMBs.

6. Confusing Strategy with Tactics

A cause of missed objectives that often points to the C-suite, many of the issues that we found were the result of conflating strategy with tactics. Most people know that strategy is not just a bunch of tactics strung together, but management needs to insure that the whole will derive from its parts by carefully looking for missing links and assumptions in the process. That is, there’s many a slip between the lip and the cup – and that’s where many of the failures came from.

The best solution to this problem is still the old “GOSPA+M” approach (developed by IBM,) balanced by the “OODA” approach (by John Boyd) to keep things timely. But a set of “fresh eyes” that have an understanding of what it takes to be successful in B2B, which we can offer, is also often all that’s needed.

7. Modeling Madness

Finally, the dictates of financial accounting often conflict with effective marketing and sales management. In the real world, revenue production starts with an investment in marketing, which generates leads, which are then worked and closed by the salespeople. But marketing budgets are often mistakenly based on past sales (which can cause you to over- or under-invest). And marketing is generally viewed as an expense (which causes people to cut it just when it should be increased).

While we would never argue with GAAP, when the accounting format, or the need to close a month or quarter, dictates the sales and marketing process, we often see bad decision-making. Best is to integrate an investment-based marketing module into the overall budget (a gap that we can help close), and create a reporting process that doesn’t require manual intervention.

The Bottom Line

With the proliferation of so many new marketing and sales tools on the market, it seems that everyone has a solution. But so few seem able to deliver actual revenue results, no less turn around a bad situation. For many companies, achieving revenue, margin and market share gains in the B2B market always seem to be just out of reach. And the “hockey stick” just keeps moving inexorably to the right. At LeadGen.com though, we’ve seen – and solved – just about every B2B marketing and sales problem in the book, and then some. We have the perspective to identify the missing links, and the skills, objectivity, integrity, resources and tools to fix them. And so if you need to increase your sales, margin or market share, call us. We can help, as we’ve done in hundreds of situations like these:

A company that makes equipment for police cruisers was losing market share to competitors with inferior products. With a small market research effort, however, we were able to identify a gap in their customer support strategy, and turn around all their losses within less than two months.

A roofing company was a small, “also-ran” in their local market, competing on price to get new business. And when the recession hit, things only got worse – because less work meant more vendors competing, further driving down prices. For less than the cost of their Yellow Pages ad, however, we were able to turn things around for them, to the point where they’re the only vendor in their market working six days a week.

A company that specializes in bank regulatory compliance couldn’t free up their consultants to look for new business, and their marketing programs were falling flat. So revenues had stagnated for years. We showed them how to find them new business. And within six months revenues were on the upswing – and they kept rising until the company was bought out!

A Chamber of Commerce was losing members to both online and offline networking groups. So they asked LeadGen.com to build a customized networking site that enabled them to add over 100 net new members in just the first month online, and stop the bleeding.

A manufacturer of an innovative industrial fan just couldn’t get traction for their product. It saved energy, but no one wanted to be the first to try it. We helped them model the customer economics, and used it to help them find their first batch of sales. And then we kept finding them customers until they became the leading brand in their market.

And a start-up manufacturer of an innovative new IP-based surveillance system was in danger of failing at the starting gate. We showed them where to find new business, and brought them their first $6M in new sales.

We could go on and on, but if these are the types of challenges you face, and the kind of results you, or someone you know, would like to see, we would very much like to talk. We can identify the gaps in your marketing and sales chain, and bridge them. Because we understand what works in B2B sales and marketing better than anyone else in the business, and we have the track record to prove it. And while we can’t guarantee success – there are real risks, and not every venture is destined to succeed – if there’s a chance for success, we can help you find it.

To that end, we’d very much like to speak with you, at your convenience, about the challenges you’re seeing in the market, and to see if and how we might be able to assist. In the meantime, you can learn more about us by browsing our website. Or you can reach out to us anytime.


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Cold Calling Isn’t Dead. It’s Just Resting.


While it is frequently derided as being “dead,” cold calling – or, more accurately, the process of developing an effective cold calling campaign – is the fastest, simplest, least expensive, least risky, and most reliable way for any company – B2B, B2C or B2G – to build a successful marketing program. And, even more so in an economic recession. This is because, more important than even its pure lead generation application, developing an effective cold calling campaign also provides the foundation on which any company can build an effective and profitable sales, pricing, channel, customer service, funding, market research or even new product development program.

In other words, rather than being dead, cold calling is quite simply the single most important weapon of your marketing arsenal, even if you never actually pick up the telephone!

Let's discover why!


Background

Anyone who has studied marketing has heard of the “four Ps” of marketing: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. The product, of course, refers to what you’re selling. Price is what you charge for it. Promotion is how you let prospects know it’s available. And Place is where and how they can buy it. These elements of the “marketing mix” are the basic tools that every marketer has to work with in order to prime the revenue pump.

Over the years since the concept was introduced, most people have also come to recognize that there’s a fifth “P” in marketing, Positioning, that represents how a product compares to its competitor’s products, or at least how the vendor wants it to be perceived competitively or strategically. While positioning can be considered to be a subset of promotion, it’s generally more convenient to associate promotion with media selection and message formatting, and use positioning to understand and articulate the actual content of the marketer’s messages, as well as the product’s attributes those messages are promoting.

The particular challenge that positioning addresses is that different customers can have different needs, and competitors eventually emerge to serve them. Thus, for a somewhat apocryphal example, when Ford was virtually the only manufacturer who was building cars for the mass market, you could have yours in any color you wanted, as long as it was black. But once other manufacturers evolved to compete for the business, and who could offer different features and prices, the market segmented according to those needs and preferences. That’s how we ended up with Cadillac peeling off high-end buyers, Volkswagen peeling off low-end buyers, Corvette peeling off sports-minded buyers, Volvo peeling off safety-conscious buyers, and so on. Positioning is what these marketers did to identify market segments that were vulnerable to be targeted, and then to differentiate their products and appeal to those segments.

We’ll discuss, in a moment, exactly how you can position your product competitively – not by the seat-of-the-pants or “gut feeling” methods that many businesses use that often results in failure, but deliberately and in a structured manner – and what any of it has to do with cold calling. But it first helps to note that a key element of positioning is the product’s “value proposition.” A product’s value proposition is a statement describing how, and how well, the product (at least theoretically) meets the segment’s needs better than the competition. And in doing so, how the product provides greater value in return for the cost. Thus, if we identify a segment as having a higher need for speed, we can sell more Corvettes to these buyers by positioning our cars as faster (even if not necessarily building them to go faster) and telling prospects – i.e. positing a value proposition – that you can get more speed and excitement for your money if you buy a Corvette. Or if we identify a segment as being more safety conscious, we can show our cars stacked eight high to get their attention and interest. Such representations, even if sometimes humorous (e.g. “I’m a Mac” vs “I’m a PC”) attempt to answer the question: Why should I buy from you (or use your product) as opposed to your competitor? And if the positioning exercise is done well, it can mean the difference between failure (e.g. Google Glass) and success (e.g. the iPhone).

Our goal here is not to write a treatise on positioning, of course, but to show how developing an effective cold calling program can solve the positioning problem. That is, how can you come up with an effective positioning and value proposition for your products by developing an effective cold calling program?

The Secret Sauce of Successful Marketing

What makes cold calling unique as a sales tactic is time or, more accurately, the lack of it on the cold call. Specifically, when making a cold call the telemarketer usually has less than about ten seconds to get the prospect’s attention and interest; otherwise the prospect (at least in B2B) is going to hang up. And while, if you’re advertising on a billboard you also only have a few seconds to get the prospect’s attention and interest, it’s more likely then that you’re counting on the repetition effect to make up for it. This also holds for other approaches, including pay-per-click, banner advertising, SEO/SEM, radio and TV; while trade shows, networking and PR additionally leverage the venue or media for credibility. Cold calling, however, is pure. You either hit the ball on your first pitch, or you’re out of the game. You don’t usually get a second chance.

This one-bite-at-the-apple nature of cold calling forces the telemarketer to script something – specifically, to put forth a value proposition – that is so relevant, interesting, compelling and succinct that the prospect will want to stay on the phone with you and talk about it. But this is what makes developing a cold calling program the secret sauce of successful marketing: If you can articulate a value proposition well enough and quickly enough to get a cold prospect to want to stay on the phone with you to talk about it, and ultimately to meet or buy, then you have a winning foundation on which you can build any other promotional or sales technique.

Articulating Your Value Proposition

At LeadGen.com, we’ve developed a structured process can enable you to script an effective pitch quickly, inexpensively and reliably, and that can be used by any business, not only for cold calling but for any other type of marketing or sales program. To be sure, we’ve found that it’s virtually impossible to come up with a call opening that’s relevant, interesting, compelling and succinct, and that’s going to get a cold prospect to want to stay on the phone with you, and to do so on campaign after campaign, through brainstorming, intuition or traditional content development methods. (Canned scripts are, by definition, not relevant, nor generally very interesting.) But the process we’ve developed can do it every time.

Obviously the process of articulating a company’s value proposition is fraught with challenges. Some of the most ridiculous examples found on the Web don’t even answer the question of why someone should buy from the vendor. But most companies are challenged to answer it in less than ten seconds, as even most “elevator pitches” are thirty seconds long, and most that we’ve heard are horrible.

An effective process starts with understanding how customers use (or would use, in the case of new products) your products to do some function, and how they could do it better with your product than with the alternative. Since “better,” by definition, usually has a metric (e.g. faster, cheaper, safer, more fun, etc.,) the difference (i.e. between doing that function without and with your product) can generally be quantified, and from this quantification you can derive a relevant, interesting, compelling and succinct way to represent your value proposition.

From Analysis to Success

Depending on your product, the process can be a bit more complex than just these three steps. In fact, our workshop to learn the process at www.leadgen.com/workshop has over 30 lessons you could take if you need them. It can take anywhere from one day to several weeks to implement what you learn. And if you want to apply it to other programs such as sales, advertising, customer service or new product development, it does take a little additional effort. But if you want to take the guesswork out of your marketing, and be able to develop consistently successful marketing and sales programs, building an effective cold calling program is the place to start.

Discover how you can make cold-calling the foundation of your sales and marketing program with our Cold Calling Workshop today!


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Case History: Ad Agency Partnership for a Racetrack

A horse-racing venue's revenues had fallen flat. So, they called in an ad agency to reposition the track in the market after revitalization. The problem was, this only went to so far and the return on investment needed for the track owners just wasn't materializing. So, the ad agency call on LeadGen.com.

Find out how we help them solve the problem, while turning a repositioning campaign into an ongoing client!


Background

A mid-Atlantic advertising agency that specializes in sports marketing was working with a horse-racing venue that had fallen on hard times. New owners wanted to revitalize the track and make it a family-friendly destination, and so they invested heavily in the facility and in marketing, and added events, fine food and other entertainment based around their core horse-racing offering. They called in a regional agency to develop a new look, a marketing strategy, literature, a Web site, and a full media campaign; and attendance started to rise in the first year of the program. For the agency, it was a mid-sized project, but because it had a limited geographic appeal, it had limited long-term potential for ongoing business. There was some ongoing media, but the re-positioning was a “once-and-done” affair, and results flattened out soon after the launch.

Problem

Despite the advertising campaign, horse-racing had a limited appeal in a crowded entertainment market. The campaign attracted the traditional racing fans, but most attendees came once, and although they enjoyed the day, didn’t see a reason to return more than once a year. Filling the stands every week was the key to success for the track, however, and for the agency to give the owners the ROI they needed.

Solution

Searching around for options, the agency decided to consider telemarketing, and contacted LeadGen.com. Having had experience in filling corporate events before, LeadGen.com suggested telemarketing to businesses to persuade them to hold corporate outings, picnics and teambuilding events at the track. The program was approved by the client, and ramped up in only two-weeks’ time.

Results

The agency’s media program had created awareness in the market, so when LeadGen.com called the corporate event planners to solicit their companies’ interest, many people were already familiar with the track. And the suggestion to hold their annual picnic, a customer outing, or a teambuilding meeting were all enthusiastically received. LeadGen.com was able to lock up dates for hundreds of companies, each with anywhere from 5 to 500 attendees.

As a result of the B2B telemarketing program, the track was able to sell out almost all of their special event days, and generate enough repeat corporate business to meet their financial goals. And the agency, by subcontracting the telemarketing to LeadGen.com, was retained by the track to implement the program annually, with a tidy mark-up for their efforts.


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Case History: Publicity Company

When a publicity company needed to break through the clutter in a crowded B2B Market to engage with C-level executives and close some news deals, they called LeadGen.com.

Discover how we helped them get it done, fast!


Background

The client was a small, but extremely “energetic,” publicity firm that knew how to get exposure for their consumer product manufacturer clients. They had a long track record of success – not just getting their clients in print, and on radio and TV, but making sure that that exposure translated into real sales. As a result they had many examples of how they helped their clients make money – and a lot of it.

The Problem

The problem for the company, however, was that while they were very good at getting exposure for their clients among consumers, they didn’t have the time to get exposure for themselves among the mid-sized and large manufacturers they wanted to sell to. It wasn’t clear that publicity would work as well in the B2B market as it did in the consumer market. And to make matters worse, it’s a very crowded market.

The Solution

Having heard about LeadGen.com, they called to see what we could do. Preliminary discussions suggested that the best approach would be LeadGen.com’s Executive Appointment-Setting solution – designed to break through the clutter and politics that exist at large companies. The method combines research, direct mail and telemarketing, so it’s a little expensive, but results tend to be extremely favorable.

Results

Out of 30 large companies they targeted with the initial campaign, LeadGen.com managed to get them C-level appointments in at least 10 – a 33% appointment rate. And the client had three signed contracts before the campaign was even over.


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Why Your Sales Close Rate is So Poor


If you have a lot of leads, but you're just not closing enough of them, there can be several reasons why your leads aren't closing, so the first thing you have to do is figure out why.

Here are the top 5 reasons why sales close rates are often so poor.


1. The Leads Are No Good

Whether your salespeople tell you or not (and they usually do), it could just be that the leads are no good. They may be stale, they may be weak, or they may not be qualified. If your leads aren't closing, though, you can't just look at what happened in the late stages of the sell cycle, you have to wind the clock back and see how they were generated. That's where the problem usually starts.

2. Poor Positioning

In this case, the leads are good, but your offering may not be aligned with the prospect's needs. Just as there may be many a slip between the lip and the cup, you may have been able to generate initial interest, but converting that to commitment and action could be being prevented by a bad fit that you don't know about.

3. Channel Issues

If you sell through independent reps or distributors, while unlikely, it may be that they aren't being compensated adequately to close your leads. More likely, though, is that they simply aren't paying attention. They could also be substituting on you. They may not be trained properly. Or they may just have other priorities. You will need to go into the belly of the beast to find out what's going on, and not going on - so you can fix it.

4. Sales Team Issues

There are dozens of skills needed for effective B2B sales, and dozens more ways a sale can fail. You will have to ride with your sales people, and find out what's going on - right from the horse's mouth, so to say.

5. Decision Issues

Sometimes the answer is hidden in the prospect's decision process. You will have to interview your prospects and find out why they didn't buy, and how you could have made it turn out better.

The bottom line is that B2B sales is a contact sport. So, you will often have to go out in the field and figure out what it's going to take to carry the ball over the goal line. So you can win every time.


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Why Digital Marketing Fails to Deliver


Digital marketing, when deployed for the right reasons can prove advantageous. All too often, however, digital marketing is approached from a tactical perspective (let’s try some SEO or let’s get on LinkedIn), rather than as part of a broader sales and marketing strategy, when and where it can enable that broader strategy. And, making matters worse, a lot of so-called marketers in the industry take advantage of this. They will make bold claims about how well their chosen tactic can solve your challenge without ever attempting to understand the root causes. This is not to mention determining whether or not their chosen tactic is appropriate for your situation.

I guess, though, if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail!

If you need results that will actually grow your business, then be very suspicious of those making the following claims, or very similar ones. And, you will hear them, if have not already heard them, over and over again!


1. We will get you a Page 1 Ranking on Google!

The promise of a Page 1 Ranking on Google is enticing. Everyone uses Google. So, what could be bad if your company came up at the top of the search results?

The problem with this promise is that the search terms that you need in order to get a Page 1 Ranking are probably so esoteric that no one ever uses them. Either that, or you have to pay so much to get the ranking that you couldn't afford it.

2. You’ll only pay for results

Paying only for results is the holy grail of business. After all, you're not in it for a Participation Trophy, right? So why should your vendors?

Your definition of results and theirs are probably not the same. For example, you might want to pay on revenues. But they'll say that, since they have no control over what happens after they generate the lead, they can't do that. So, you compromise, and agree to pay on Lead Quality. And then the arguing begins.

3. All your decision makers are on LinkedIn

Networking on LinkedIn seems like a great idea. So, what's the problem?

Everyone is there, either selling themselves or something. Messaging is better than email. The contact information is great. And LinkedIn provides you with an easy, 10 Step cookbook for creating brand awareness and generating leads.

The problem is, do you really think your decision makers are sitting around looking at LinkedIn all day, waiting for your content to show up? Hint: They have a job to do. That's why they're called Decision Makers.

4. Cold Calling is Dead

One of the main rationales justifying Digital Marketing is that cold calling is supposedly dead. But, is it really?

No one likes to receive cold calls. And, in the words of a so-called "study" justifying Digital Marketing, "57 Percent of the Decision Process is Done Before the Customer Ever Talks to a Salesperson."

Setting aside the fallacies underlying the study, cold calling is anything but dead. It may be tough to get direct dial numbers. And it may be challenging getting past gatekeepers and voice mail. But consider this: How many of your prospects even know they need your solution, such that they would search for it? If you believe the lie that cold calling is dead, you're walking away from everyone in the market who doesn't know they have a need for your product or service. Good luck with that.

5. There is a correlation between followers and revenue

Pick your metric: Likes, hits, retweets, connections, followers, subscribers, traffic, engagement, stickiness - it's all nonsense. Why is that?

If you're not getting paid per-whatever, someone else is, but you're the one paying!

Digital marketing is all too often a con, especially if you put all your eggs in that one basket.

6. Social Media Marketing is free

If you're a small business, you might value the time you spend nurturing your social media at $0, but what's the opportunity cost?

If you could be spending that same time doing something that was actually productive, would't you do that instead? Therefore, setting around on social media all day is not free.

7. Social Media Marketing is the answer

When you think you've tried everything else, and nothing seems to work, the siren song of social media marketing can be loud.

What we've found is that, for most companies that are struggling, the problem isn't the medium, it's their strategy and their positioning. So, applying the same strategy and positioning in social media is likely to have the same catastrophic results as it did with traditional media, or other digital marketing tactics.

8. Digital Marketing takes time before you get results

Anyone who tells you that it just takes time before you see results from any digital marketing tactic is probably floating their resume.

As soon as you get antsy because the followers - no less the orders - aren't rolling in, you're guaranteed to hear this lie. The problem isn't that it might not be true. The problem is that, by the time the results come in, you might be out of business!

Are you tired of people telling you that you should try this, or that, only to find nothing works?

Do you need someone who can tell you exactly what you need to do, then roll up their sleeves and make it work for you so you get the results YOU need?


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Why Your Competition is Cleaning Your Clock in the Market


At LeadGen.com we've been helping companies build their "Sales Engines" for over 30 years. And while a lot has changed over those 3 decades, two things remain the same, the fundamentals of what goes into creating a reliable sales engine, and what it takes to keep it humming. So, what are the 9 things you need to do to keep from getting wiped clean by your competition.?


1. Start with Market Research.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur with the next big thing or a grizzled road warrior trying to figure out how you’re going to make your numbers next quarter, start building your sales engine by figuring out what market you want to go after, and how best to go after it.

Market research is not optional, or expensive. And it’s a lot better to find out that you’re pushing a rope before you get tangled up in it.

Do some research, either online or in-person, to make sure there’s really an opportunity. Some of the questions you need to answer are:

• Who are we going to sell to, and why should they buy from us?
• What problem are we going to solve, and what’s the willingness-to-pay for a solution?
• How are people solving it now, and how are we better?
• What is the competitive environment, and why should someone buy from us rather than a competitor?
• How can I reach my market effectively and efficiently?

At LeadGen.com we can design and implement your research plan, and make sure you don’t fall victim to your hopes.

2. Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance

If you don’t write down your plan, don’t ask anyone for money, time or effort to support it. (If you’re funding it yourself, you can do whatever you want, of course.)

While no plan ever survived the first encounter with the enemy, trying to compete successfully in today’s market takes conscious competence. So, writing down your business plan lets you challenge your assumptions, and avoid costly mistakes - at least the ones you can anticipate.

There are lots of formats for creating marketing plans, sales plans and business plans available on the Internet, and we can help. The one you choose should just ensure that you don’t miss any critical variables.

After all, you know how to spell "assume", right?

3. Tell Your Story

Answering the question of why someone should buy comes down to your telling a story - the story of how your customer’s life will be better by buying from you. So you need to translate that story into a Web site, a brochure, sales aid, cover letter, blog posts, banner ads, skywriting, or whatever format you’re planning on using to communicate with your prospects.

While B2B and B2C materials can differ in appearance, they both have to answer the same question: Why buy?

For example, at LeadGen.com we tell people that the reason to buy from us is so you can achieve - and maybe even exceed - your sales goals. It’s that simple.

We may have 300 different ways to say it. But it all boils down to the same message: If you want to make your numbers, call us.

4. Get the Word Out

If no one knows you’re there, they’re probably not going to buy from you. So, you have to get their attention.

Considering the clutter in the media today, however, that can be a big ask, but we can show you how.

The bad news is that, just because you get people’s attention, it doesn’t't mean your cash register is going to ring. (That’s where lead generation comes in.) But getting people’s attention is a necessary, albeit insufficient, condition.

5. Generate Qualified Leads

It doesn’t matter whether you’re in B2B or B2C, if you can’t turn suspects into prospects who have a qualifying need, and a willingness to pay you to fulfil it, you might as well take your ball and go home.

The problem, of course, is that many people confuse creating awareness with generating real, qualified leads. That’s why we talk to so many folks who have been burned before. They've fallen victim to the siren song of digital marketing (i.e. If you build it, they will come). Nonsense!

You can have all the traffic you want. If you’re not getting paid, it’s a hobby.

6. Close Deals

For many companies, converting a qualified lead into a closed sale requires the involvement of an actual human, and some degree of actual skill - which can only be acquired through training.

And, oddly enough, even automated systems need training.

So, let’s be clear: Product training is NOT sales training. The former involves understanding features and benefits. The latter involves learning how to persuade a prospect to buy. Are those things even related???

Making matters worse is that there’s a lot of bad sales training out there. But what do we know? We only make our living at it.

7. Manage Your Way to Success

Knowing how to get the most out of your sales team takes a combination of people skills and technical skills. You have to know how to manage your salespeople as people, and you have to know what they should do as salespeople to be successful.

Funnel management is the process of developing a reliable forecast of revenues, and then putting in a work plan to achieve it.

At many companies we talk to, the Dunning-Kreuger Effect is in full bloom when it comes to both of these issues.

At LeadGen.com we can show you how to get the most out of your people, and how they can get the most out of their territories.

8. Resells and Upsells

Once you've closed a piece of business, the next step is to create a repeat customer. If your product is a one-time purchase, then the equivalent is to earn a recommendation (and, of course, you should also do that if your product is subject to repeat purchase, too).

In many cases, it's all about service and relationships.

When someone buys from you, they are agreeing to engage in a relationship. And so your job, whether you're in sales or marketing, is to use your customer's willingness to engage in a relationship to continue to uncover needs that you can fulfill.

Which brings us right back to research and planning.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

9. Earn a High NPS

Getting a high Net Promoter Score is the cat’s meow in business today. But how do you actually get there? And is it really always a good thing?

Many people assume that a high NPS comes from high customer satisfaction. But in B2B, many very satisfied customers would be loath to recommend you for fear of losing to a competitor the competitive edge that you gave them.

Instead, we like to look at "account control" as the key metric, measured by your ability to sell additional products and services to your current customers, and influence decisions related to your applications.

When you have account control you can then ask the NPS question the right way: How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague, provided they weren't a competitor of yours?

Does your sales engines keep stalling? Is it simply not firing on all cylinders?

Do you need someone who can take a look under the hood with the right diagnostic tools, and then be able to make a lasting fix?


[more]

Why You're Failing Miserably to Grow Your Business


Taking your business to the next level first requires that there is a next level to take it to. Wanting to be bigger doesn't necessarily make being bigger possible. So, what can you do to make it happen?


Step 1: Identify a market where you have a clear differential advantage.

The first thing you have to do is identify a market where you have a clear differential advantage over your competitors. Let’s set aside the fact that it’s counterintuitive to most entrepreneurs that the market has to exist before you can claim a differential advantage. If you don’t have a clear differential advantage in it, you are wasting your time.

Step 2: Make sure that prospects agree you have the advantage.

The next thing you must do is market research. Get off your butt and talk to people. Confirm that your advantage is real, and that it would definitely motivate them to buy from you.

Remember that you’re taking your business to the next level, so you’re not ploughing new ground. Talking to people who don’t already buy from you, and asking them if they would buy from you, enables you to confirm that your differential advantage isn't just a vanity.

Step 3: Make sure you can actually reach your decision makers.

Kottler defines "access" as the critical path item in any marketing initiative. So, what does this mean?

If you can’t communicate with your prospects - and get their attention - you'll never be able to stimulate their interest.

More money has been spent on not reaching decision makers than on anything else in marketing (See John Wanamaker, 1932). Take the time to design your marketing and media plan so it actually puts your message in front of the people who you need to see it. Otherwise, you'll never see a positive ROI.

Step 4: Develop effective messaging.

Articulating your value proposition is one of the hardest things for companies to do when scaling. But why is this?

This is because what worked in an opportunistic market rarely works at the next level.

This is where market research is, once again, critical. Understand your value from the customer’s perspective. Brainstorm ways to articulate it. And test your messaging to make sure it works. Then rinse and repeat.

Step 5: Set-up a few good ways to get the word out to your decision makers.

What you learned in Step 3 is never enough to enable true scaling. It only helps establish the case; it doesn’t close it. So, what else do you need to do?

You now need to come up with three or four more ways to reach your decision maker.

The misconception about the repetition effect is that your six touches can come from the same media. In fact, once the prospect sees the pattern, they can easily avoid you. You have to go in through a window, a door, and a crack in the floor.

Step 6: Execute and Checkpoint

Taking your business to the next level implies that your marginal costs (e.g. for the acquisition of new business) will go down. But that doesn’t mean they go to zero. But, what does it mean? You still have to spend money to make money. And you also have to check to make sure that what you’re doing works.

Scaling is particularly challenging once you decide to pull the trigger. How long do you let something run, if you think it’s not working, before you pull the plug? (And do you really have the resources to stay in the game?) And then what metrics are really reliable to give you accurate feedback from the market? Hint: Do not believe your Marketing Manager!

Step 7: Scale and Recalibrate

Now that you’re growing your market share, remember that, as you add resources to acquire and fulfil on new business, you should create a Red Team to challenge all your assumptions.

Positive feedback in terms of increased sales and profitability can mask missteps in the market, so reserve some resource for second-guessing your strategy. A good function here doesn't cry wolf, though; they should be smart enough to tell you everything is okay, too.

Are you getting stuck trying to get your business to the next level?

Are you looking for someone that can help you overcome the barriers holding you back?


[more]

Case History: Payroll Service

Learn how LeadGen.com and a major regional payroll service provider worked together to implement a process that shortened their sales cycle, increased their sales close rates and their average deal size!


Background

The owner of a Southwest area payroll company had put together a service with a difference: a staff of highly trained and educated payroll experts who really knew payroll. They knew where and how the traditional vendors were overcharging, and where and how in-house solutions fall short. So there was hardly anyone for whom he couldn’t save money and improve quality. The challenge was breaking through the clutter of this very crowded market – one where people are very reluctant to change, and are loyal to their current solution.

The Problem

Having used telemarketing successfully before, he had already worked out the process, the scripting, and the training, and only needed to find the right company to implement it. But because he knew the telemarketing business, he knew the good and the bad. Done well, it can be the fastest, best and least expensive way to generate leads; but done poorly, it can be a complete waste of time and money. What he knew for sure, however, was that the call center model couldn’t possibly work, since good people are very hard to find.

The Solution

Searching for a boutique shop that matched his technique, he quickly found LeadGen.com. But just dropping his methodology into LeadGen.com’s process wasn’t quite enough. It was clear that we had to get just the right positioning, and just the right people on the job. Working through his material, though, and doing a little homework, together LeadGen.com and the client came up with a winning formula.

The Results

Replicating a process that works once is never a sure thing. There are just too many variables. And so it was here: While the new program generated slightly fewer leads than anticipated, the ones we got had a higher close rate, a shorter sell cycle, and a larger size, making the program a huge success.

Are you looking for a reliable provider to implement a marketing program you already know will work?

Are you looking for results like this?


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Case History: Neonatal Services

A medical entrepreneur with a transforming neonatal service was having an impossible time getting into hospitals, consequently stalling company growth.

Find out how LeadGen.com solved the challenge and put the company back on track!


The Problem

A medical entrepreneur – who also happened to be a board-certified Neonatologist – had developed a service whereby he could provide licensed Neonatologists to hospitals onsite 24/7 on a turnkey basis. This had a potentially significant value to many hospitals with large number of births, because they often have to transfer at-risk infants to Level III hospitals when there is a problem, losing patients and revenue, while increasing the risk to the infant. And having a Neonatologist on call meant potentially significant delays waiting for him or her to come in when needed. But it was expensive, and almost impossible to arrange for 24/7 coverage.

What They Tried

Introducing the concept of an onsite neonatologist group to upper management was extremely difficult. Many hospitals were comfortable with the on-call model despite its drawbacks, or simply accepted the transfer problem as a cost of doing business. So they ignored the company’s direct mail. Networking was sometimes effective if they could make contact, but produced barely two good leads per year. As a result, growth was stalled, and the company was missing the market.

LeadGen.com’s Solution

With extensive experience prospecting into hospitals for a number of products and services, LeadGen.com understood the bureaucratic and political issues involved. So we developed an Executive Appointment-Setting campaign that enabled us to understand the hospital’s needs, as well as the decision process, before trying to get in. Using a strategically drafted and customized letter, and using extensive research and follow-up calls, LeadGen.com was able to generate high-level appointments as often as 40% of the time on a base of scores of hospitals.

Summary

With several dozen qualified leads, the company was able to close six deals in the first year of the program for over a million dollars each.

Are you struggling to get a valuable product or service due to barriers in the market?

Are you looking to break through those barriers and get results like this?


[more]

Case History: Metal Fabrication

An expert manufacturer found its potential to be acquired at risk when their business took a sudden downturn. Even more frustrating was the fact that, in order to make up for lost sales, they were trying to penetrate a new market. But, they kept coming up empty.

Find out how LeadGen.com helped them solve the problem and create the cashflow needed to ensure a smooth sale of the company.


The Problem

A 100-year-old Philadelphia-area manufacturer was an expert in “building large round things” like pressure vessels, tanks, and high-end storage equipment for food processors. But their business had taken a downturn, and they needed to penetrate some new markets. This was complicated by the fact that the company was in the process of being acquired, and the lack of new business was jeopardizing the sale.

What They Tried

Leveraging their experience in high-pressure processes, they tried targeting the power generation market, but they couldn’t get in the door. They went after the utilities directly, who told them to call the systems manufacturers. But when they went after the system manufacturers, they told them to call the utilities. So the company ended up spending six months and thousands of dollars for nothing.

LeadGen.com’s Solution

Through a mutual friend, the company asked LeadGen.com to take a look at the problem; and several things became clear. First, the company was positioned poorly. They were trying to sell on the basis of what they did, instead of what it meant for the customer. And they were giving up way too soon in what turned out to be a very complex prospecting process. LeadGen.com re-positioned the offerings, and developed a multi-pronged approach to go after the systems manufacturers – targeting planning, manufacturing, resource management and sales.

Results

When you’re selling large, complex industrial items, it doesn’t take a lot to have a big impact. And when you find one need, you often find a lot of problems behind it – which is exactly what happened. LeadGen.com got the company into two of the largest power gen manufacturers, both of whom had critical shortages, and both of who placed large, early orders for equipment.

The campaign assured cash flow for over two years, and insured that the sale of the company would go through.

Is your business experiencing a sudden downturn and you need to find a way out?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Mergers and Acquisitions

Finding acquisition candidates can be time-consuming and expensive. For one M&A Specialist, this meant that everything they tried netted little to nothing in return. So, they called on LeadGen.com for help.

Discover how we created a scalable process that dramatically reduced the cost of finding viable acquisition candidates!


Overview

With business values increasing, mergers and acquisitions are on the rise. More companies are seeking to buy market share when the acquired company has it. But weeding out the “princes” is no easy task when there are so many “frogs” around. Many companies that want to sell don’t qualify, and most of the ones that would tend to hide. So how do you find the truly qualified acquisition candidates amidst the hundreds – or even thousands – of unqualified ones?

What They Tried

For one M&A specialist in the health field, finding qualified candidates was simply taking too much time and costing too much money. Spending thousands of dollars on direct mail returned on a few responses; and by the time the respondents were screened out, months had gone by and none had met their criteria. Trade shows were similarly expensive: Over 90% of the people who expressed interest really weren’t in a position to be acquired, and the ones that were had many other suitors already.

The Solution

Turning to LeadGen.com was counter-intuitive; B2B telemarketing didn’t seem to fit with the acquisition model, at first glance. But a good salesperson is a good salesperson. Qualifying an acquisition candidate is basically the same as qualifying a prospect. And convincing someone to be interested in selling their business, it turns out, is the same as convincing them to grant an appointment. LeadGen.com developed, with the client, a discrete process that wouldn’t make employees suspicious, a brief telephone presentation for the owner, and a series of qualifying questions that was quickly able to pre-qualify thousands of potential candidates – and stimulate high levels of interest among the good ones.

Results

While there were still a lot of calls to be made, they took a lot less time – and cost a lot less – than direct mail. And in only a short time, numerous deals have resulted, along with a dramatic drop in the cost of finding, and generating, good deals. Most importantly, the process is scalable, enabling the company to ramp it up and down at will.

Is it costing you too much time and money to reach and engage your target audience?

Are you looking for results like this?


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Case History: Logistics Company

Discover how Leadgen.com helped a logistics company take a new service to market by directly targeting the C-Level Suite.


Background

The trucking industry is as competitive as any in business in the world, so companies must constantly add value while minimizing costs. One way to do this is to provide additional, value-added services that also save their customers money, but when the beneficiary of the service wasn’t their typical transportation department buyer, it became a “non-starter” for their sales program.

The Problem

We can’t reveal what the service was – because it would betray a confidentiality – but suffice to say that the service could enable customers to save millions of dollars per year, as well as increase their revenues and market share. But the logistics company/client didn’t know who to talk to, didn’t know how to uncover the underlying need, and basically had no way to get in the door. To make matters worse, it was a new service, so even the potential decision makers didn’t know they had a need, or that they could benefit from it.

The Solution

LeadGen.com is an expert at getting in the door at high levels, even (or especially,) among the Fortune 500 companies the client wanted to target. So first, we identified the key attributes of the service that would attract interest, and then we identified the key decision makers we needed to target. We put together a pilot program targeting 27 companies based on our Executive Appointment-Setting Solution.

Results

Although it took a while to do the research, and another while to implement, the client ended up with seven (7) solid leads (a 26% appointment rate,) with key, C-level decision makers among the target companies – and that’s as of this writing. The follow-ups are continuing, and we will probably get at least 3-4 more before we go on to the next round. And at least two or three of the leads look like they’re going to turn into real business.

Do you have a new product or service you are trying to take to market?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Local Area Network Products

When a Fortune 1000 Manufacturer found itself being let down by its distributors and channel partners through substitution and price concessions, resulting in falling margins and failing to meet their sales targets for two years running, they needed to stop the bleeding, fast.

Discover how LeadGen.com solved the problem while giving the manufacturer control over its channel and its sales force again!


Background

The client was a Fortune 1000 manufacturer and marketer of specialty wire, cable and cord products for the electronics and electrical markets. These high-tech systems provide the critical backbone and distribution infrastructure for Local Area Networks, security systems, video networks and a wide variety telecommunications and data systems.

The Problem

While owning a highly recognizable brand and excellent technology, the company had failed to achieve its revenue targets for more than two years. With a sales force that sold primarily through independent distributors and channel partners, the company had little control of the product that the end users ultimately selected. As a result, they were frequently substituted - when they weren’t forced into making substantial price concessions. Worse, though, was that their market share and, therefore, margins were falling, with no sign of recovery.

What They Tried

The company fielded more than 40 sales reps to call on their distributors, as well as contractors, engineers, designers and end users to get specced in. But with large territories and little market intelligence, coverage was too thin to have an impact. But adding more sales reps cost too much, especially considering their already-thin margins, so the downward trend continued.

The Solution

Bringing in LeadGen.com’s professional B2B telemarketing solution quickly turned things around. Keying off of McGraw Hill’s Dodge Reports, LeadGen.com was able to identify active funded projects worth over $700 million, and got the client’s sales reps in the door with more than 2,500 decision makers who had a specific need, and wanted to talk to them about how they could help.

Results

Near-term incremental sales was over $60 million on an investment of less than $500,000. The company now has far greater control over its channel, and its sales force has a backlog of hundreds of qualified leads – enough to last an additional full year.

Are your channel partners and distributors letting you down?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Janitorial Services

For one building maintenance firm offering janitorial services, their business had become self-limiting and as well, they simply couldn't get in the door with the big national retailers.

Learn how LeadGen.com solved both challenges and positioned the company to establish itself as a leader within the market!


The Problem

Commodity offerings like janitorial services tend to be purchased on the basis of price. Most prospective customers think that all vendors are the same, or at least they think that there are enough of them, and they are so competitive with one another, that they (the potential customers,) can ignore the differences in quality and service and simply beat the vendors down on price. The reality is, though, that there really are differences in quality, service and value. So how do you get people to acknowledge the differences? And even if you can’t get them to pay more, how do you separate yourself from the low-price/low-quality pack so they’ll want to consider you for their cleaning and maintenance?

What They Tried

For one national vendor of janitorial and maintenance services, networking was the key to getting started in the retail market. Exhibiting at trade shows, making contacts, and developing a personal relationship gave them a chance to differentiate themselves, and start to establish a value proposition among the large national retailers. The problem was that there weren’t enough shows, they took a lot of time to prepare, and decision makers usually weren’t in attendance. And worse was the fact that once the business started coming in, account management took up all the salespeople’s time. The business became self-limiting, and they couldn’t grow, and they certainly couldn’t get to the big national retailers.

LeadGen.com’s Solution

Getting in with large retailers is quite different from getting in with small retailers. The large ones have complex hierarchies and detailed vendor qualification processes, while small retailers are harried, cost-conscious and parochial. In both cases, though, the challenge ultimately is the same: getting the decision maker on the phone, getting his attention, and getting him to see the value. And nothing works better then B2B telemarketing. So when LeadGen.com started targeting large retailers for this janitorial services company with B2B telemarketing, it took just a little while to find the right person, and just a little longer to educate them, but it was worth it. We got them into dozens of accounts, at high level; we uncovered needs before the first meeting, and positioned them to win the business.

Summary

Even when you’re selling a commodity service like janitorial services, people can be educated about the differences and the value. And nothing works better then B2B telemarketing.

Has your business become self-limiting, preventing you from reaching your goals for growth?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: IT/Database Company

Sometimes, acquisitions work out well, but all too often they come with problems and challenges. And often, those challenges can present problems when trying to find new business and increase sales. This is what happened with one Fortune 100 firm when they acquired a Value-Added Reseller.

Discover how LeadGen.com helped them solve the problem and fill their pipeline again!


Background

A Fortune 100 IT firm went on an acquisition binge in the 1990s, which gave it a position in many new markets. One company they purchased had been a Value Added Reseller (VAR) of theirs that specialized in bank back office applications, a market the IT company sorely wanted to develop.

The Problem

The acquisition brought with it several dozen new accounts, gaining the company a solid foothold in the market. But because of the way the deal was structured, the new division was burdened with the cost of the acquisition – which depleted their sales and marketing resources even as their sales goals were increased. Making matters worse, the name recognition of the acquirer was perceived to be a negative in the market, further ham-stringing their program.

What They Tried

The initial effort focused on having their division’s small sales staff make cold calls. But they weren’t comfortable with it, and had difficulty selling outside of their traditional money center market. And as soon as they found an opportunity, their time was consumed following it up – so their pipeline just cycled through boomand- bust phases. And most of the deals never closed.

What Worked

Allocating $10,000 to an experiment with outsourced telemarketing, the company called LeadGen.com for an emergency infusion of prospecting. With many years of experience selling to financial institutions, LeadGen.com brought them into ten new banks in less than three months. Their pipeline was full, and they were on their way to making their numbers for the year.

Are sales results from a new acquisition not panning out as you hoped?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Industrial Filters

A manufacturer of industrial filters found themselves in a several catch-22 situations which caused prospecting for new customers to take a backseat, leading to a steep sales decline.

Find out how LeadGen.com solved the problem and enabled the manufacturer to directly engage with every buyer in the market!


Background

A nationwide distributor of industrial filters covered the market with five regional offices. But because his salespeople had large territories, they had little time for prospecting. Visits to customers to solve filtration problems took up most of their time, as the product was highly technical and used in complex industrial processes. Salespeople could either work with customers or make cold calls, but not both. And as a result, they could either hold their market share, or try to grow it and lose their base.

The Problem

Making matters worse, one of their principal suppliers had decided to go around them and sell directly to the end users. The company found some new lines, and even started manufacturing filters they could no longer get, but they often found themselves having to convince customers to change product in order to keep them as customers. Prospecting took a back seat, and the sales decline steepened.

The Solution

Bringing in JV/M meant that the salespeople could keep to their routes, but have a lot more prospects to talk with along the way because JV/M was able to schedule appointments near customers the salespeople were already scheduled to see. And although the product is fairly technical, a little training in how to use the manufacturer’s documentation enabled the Lead Generation Specialists to find applications, uncover needs, and set up a true value-added sale.

The Results

As the campaign progressed over more than a year, with three Lead Generation Specialists working full-time, the company was able to meet virtually every potential buyer in the market. In addition to adding hundreds of new customers, they were able to push back successfully against the manufacturer that had gone around them, and convert most of their major accounts to the new lines. And because of the excess leads generated, the salespeople were able to cherry-pick the business, extending their margins throughout the program.

Is your sales team caught in a catch-22 between prospecting and other vital priorities?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Insurance

Learn how LeadGen.com helped one small insurance brokerage, become the leading broker in their region!


Background

Selling health insurance in the nineties was extremely competitive. It’s very profitable, but the barriers to entry for brokers are low. Prices are fixed by the carriers, so there is no obvious price differentiation. So in many cases, sales were based on relationships.

The Problem

The owners of a small health insurance brokerage that had been handed down from father to sons wanted to grow, and believed that they could differentiate themselves on the basis of service. Despite investing heavily in a service operation, though, they were faced with an indifferent market that had been trained to focus on relationship. If they couldn’t unhook the incumbent broker, they would have an uphill battle gaining market share.

The Solution

Professional salespeople can make a world of difference when you’re trying to articulate a value proposition, so the company called in LeadGen.com to recruit and train a new sales force, and develop arguments as to why a company should buy from them. To maximize the efficiency of the sales team, LeadGen.com also recommended that the company hire a professional telemarketer to set appointments, and keep the salespeople out on the road.

Articulating the value proposition, however, took a little extra work, but focusing on customer needs guided the way. They were easily able to advance the sales process, while quantifying the benefits, resulting in a high close rate.

Results

The sales strategy was so strong, the company was able to unhook competitive brokers in mid-year, instead of at the traditional renewal time. Sales efficiency soared because of the telemarketing support. And the company became the leading broker in the region.

Do you need to turn around a sales decline?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Gift Baskets

When small gift basket companies have a hard time striking the balance between looking for new customers and fulfilling orders for existing ones, they call on LeadGen.com. Learn why!


Background

Sending a gift basket to a client, vendor or employee is a nice, and very personalized, way to say “thank you.” With good service by the gift basket company, it takes virtually no effort on the part of the customer to generate a lot of good will. Consequently, it’s also a business with good margins, and relatively low start-up costs.

The Problem

The challenge for gift basket companies, however, many of which are small, entrepreneurial ventures, is that finding new business is time-consuming. If you’re looking for new business, you can’t be filling orders; but if you’re filling orders, you can’t be calling for new business. As a result, either the business stagnates, or service suffers.

The Solution

For several gift basket companies, LeadGen.com provided a cost effective way to break out of the trap: professional outsourced B2B telemarketing. To start, LeadGen.com understands that the key decision maker is often the Executive Assistant to the President of the company. LeadGen.com also knows how to get past gatekeepers, and get you in the door so you can “show your stuff,” and generate orders.

The Results

LeadGen.com has done nearly a dozen campaigns for gift basket companies. One generated 59 leads in only 65 hours of calling, and another generated 45 leads in 80 hours - a typical cost-per-lead of less than $80. More importantly, the close rates were in excess of 75%, with significant ongoing business, enabling the gift basket companies to achieve their annual growth and profitability goals with only one or two campaigns.


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Case History: Offshore Engineering Services

An offshore engineering services firm couldn't penetrate the US Market, until they leveraged LeadGen.com. Not only did they penetrate the market, learn how LeadGen.com has been finding them new business for years!


The Problem

Design and engineering are highly technical functions, and companies live and die on the quality of the products they produce; so most are extremely cautious about outsourcing. But for an offshore firm specializing in engineering and design for manufactured goods (using tools like SolidWorks,) the challenge was even greater – they had to overcome the natural bias against an off-shore solution.

LeadGen.com's Solution:

There are really two keys when generating qualified leads for highly technical solutions, whether you’re a domestic provider or an off-shore provider. First, you have to learn enough about the applications to know how to ask the right questions, and be credible on the phone. But you don’t want to know enough (or, at least, let on that you know enough,) to be able to provide answers – because then the prospect might make a decision (usually a negative one,) without really understanding the value of the solution.

The other key is to create enough of a comfort-level so that the prospect will be willing to work with you to move the process forward. This is more than credibility; it’s a matter of creating trust. And at LeadGen.com, that requires engaging the prospect in a conversation, one that could conceivably take place over a matter of weeks, but one that isn’t rushed – or scripted.

Results

For over two years, LeadGen.com has been finding new business for an off-shore provider of engineering and design services in a manner that has been far less expensive, and less risky, than it would have been if they did it in-house. And the level of trust with the market is so high that contacts that we made many months ago call LeadGen.com when they’re ready to start their engineering projects!

Are you finding it challenging to enter North American markets?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Energy Management Company

When an Energy Management firm found itself in a position to take advantage of government incentive programs during the Great Recession, but no way to reach their target audience to turn that capability into sales revenue, they knew just who to call.

Find out how LeadGen.com helped them strive in the recession, even while their core business dried up!


Background

The Great Recession put many people out of work. And with companies cutting back on staff and expenses, a mid-west energy management firm was watching their consulting practice quickly dry up.

To help counter the recession, the government – as it often does – came out with a program that offered companies financial incentives for improving energy efficiency, and for investing in energy efficient technologies. Like many programs at the time, they were of short duration. And you had to have some expertise in the field to be able to take advantage of them.

Why They Called Us

The good news was that the energy management company had the expertise. They knew the technologies that qualified, and they knew how to navigate the paperwork. The bad news was that there was no way for them to cover the market, or even make a meaningful dent in it, before the incentive program ran out. So they called LeadGen.com.

Our Approach

The key to capitalizing on a short-term opportunity is to do your research, and do good research, up front because you don’t have time to waste. If you work for three months, and miss the market, you don’t get another chance. So we blitzed the research, and then we blitzed the market.

The Results

In three months, we got them over 70 face-to-face appointments, virtually all of which closed successfully. They were able to capitalize on the incentive program and survive until their consulting business returned.

Do you find your company operating in a market downturn with a decline in sales revenue you need to somehow make up for?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Educational Systems

When an Educational Services Company spent money like it was growing on trees to support its network of distributors without any concrete sales results, they turned to LeadGen.com to solve the problem.

Discover how LeadGen.com helped their VP of Marketing take the bull by the horns!


Background

An educational systems company makes curricula for primary and secondary schools for science, business, computers, technology, and family and consumer science. The products are normally sold through distributors who call on school systems selling a variety of solutions including furniture and fixtures, supplies and services.

The Problem

When selling through distributors and dealers, manufacturers must compete for their time and attention against other manufacturers whose products the dealers carry. Dealers generally set their priorities based on what is going to make them the most money, in the least amount of time, and with the least amount of effort. So if you aren’t the most profitable line, you’re likely to get short shrift – which was the case for the educational systems company.

What They Tried

Like most companies, the firm spent thousands of dollars creating sales aids and support material designed to help the distributors understand the product so they could sell it better. But this only added to the burden, reducing the incentive to promote it. The firm also participated in local trade shows, but manning the booth also had a negative effect, since it took the reps out of the field where they would otherwise be selling.

The Solution

LeadGen.com provides marketing, lead generation, and executive appointment-setting services for companies selling in the B2B market. On a hunch, the Marketing VP surmised that the education market wasn’t that different, and invested in lead generation with Leadgen.com. In a twist, though, he decided to give the appointments directly to his distributors, rather than to his small direct sales force.

The Results

There is one thing that distributors’ sales reps value more than anything, and that’s a qualified lead. If you can introduce him to a qualified prospect who has a need, and is interested in talking to him about how he can help, most reps couldn’t care less that the volume or margin are a little less. You’ve already done the “heavy lifting” of sales, and he’ll follow you to the ends of the Earth – which is how the client generated a 600% return on their investment.

Are you in Educational Services with a sales challenge you need to solve?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Direct Mail Company

Sometimes, in a recession and the new economy that emerges on the other side, changing your business model is the only option if you want to survive.

Learn how LeadGen.com helped one Direct Mail company do just that!


Background

If there’s one thing you can guarantee in a recession, it’s that some businesses, and some industries, won’t survive, But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go down fighting. What matters is that: 1) you do whatever you can to survive, and 2) you figure out what kind of business you need to become in order prosper when the recession is over.

The Challenge

Surviving a recession and prospering on the other side is tricky. You have to keep generating revenues using your old business model, while you figure out a new business model that’s going to work in the new economy. Some say it’s like trying to get to second base without taking your foot off of first. Or like changing the tires while the car is still moving.

The Solution

For one company that happened to be in the direct mail business – which was basically the 2008 version of selling buggy whips – making that jump took a lot of hard work, and help from LeadGen.com, but it paid off. The most important element in the company’s survival and ultimate success was the owner’s recognition that, while their historic strength was in producing direct mail, that was just a medium. Their ability to write effective content (which, in the direct mail world was referred to derisively as “copy”) was a hidden and latent strength that could be leveraged in the emerging digital world.

The Results

The strategy we created was to reach out to their traditional prospect base, but also to simultaneously look for the nascent digital departments and try to get in there, too, which we did over 100 times. Bringing the two groups together not only provided an added value to the prospect, but it opened the door for the client to position themselves successfully in a growing market.

And that’s where they are today – a leading content provider in their industry.

Are you with a Marketing Company facing a sales challenge you need to solve?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Country Club

When the owner of a country club found his catering schedule had far too many open slots, he had a hunch that LeadGen.com just might be able to solve that problem for him.

Discover just how we did it!


Background

While a country club might not seem like the typical user of business-to-business telemarketing services, it turns out that one creative owner was on the right track when he called LeadGen.com. His semi-private golf club had too many openings in their catering schedule, and he thought – hoped – that local businesses might want to use the facility for golf-and-dinner outings.

What He Tried

Prior to calling LeadGen.com, the club owner had invested heavily in marketing. He regularly sent out direct mail to companies, organizations and wealthy individuals to promote both outings and memberships, and advertised heavily in the local newspapers. But nothing he did had an impact on his catering business, and his golf outing schedule had more holes in it than, well, his golf course.

The LeadGen.com Solution

LeadGen.com has implemented lead generation campaigns for a number of “products” like events, outings and catering. And while they’re not the typical commodities that companies buy, or high-end services like IT or consulting where demand is latent, the fact is that companies do hold customer appreciation golf outings, have off-site team-building exercises, and company picnics and holiday parties. And, of course, many sales teams live and die by “customer golf.”

Having had previous success selling company outings at a southeastern racetrack, we knew who the real decision-maker was – the Executive Assistant. So we called several hundred local companies, introduced the club and its offerings, and “started” the relationship. Scores of Executive Assistants expressed initial interest, and asked for more information, which we sent out. We then followed each one up with phone calls, giving them time to discuss it with their bosses. And for those who were interested, we set up a meeting or conference call with the catering or golf manager, whichever was appropriate.

The Results

Even though we started a little late in the season, we ended up generating 22 events, including filling up every available golf outing and holiday date.

Do you have a venue, or a membership organization facing a revenue slump you need to get out of?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Selling Copiers to Law Firms

Sometimes, market practices turn value-add products into mere commodities, when in reality, they are so much more. That was exactly the situations a copier manufacturer faced when failing to penetrate the legal market.

So, they called in LeadGen.com. Discover how we de-commoditized the products, created value and dramatically increased sales all within the first month!


Background

Major manufacturers of copiers and office equipment utilize Value-Added Resellers (VARs,) to market their products to local businesses. And over the years, VARs have gotten so competitive, and so aggressive with their tactics, that some have bordered on the unscrupulous. It is not uncommon, for example, for a copier vendor to put his company’s service tags over his competitor’s installed equipment’s tags, or to buy out a competitor’s lease with a product that has a low initial cost but higher consumables. But basically, they’ve turned a high tech product into a commodity.

The Problem

When LeadGen.com was approached by a copier VAR to penetrate the region’s law firms, we were a little reluctant. We didn’t want to participate in marketing practices that would reflect badly on us, or on the client. Based on projects we had done prior in the market, though, we knew how decisions were made at law firms, and thought we could apply it here without making matters worse.

The Solution

Calling into the Office Manager, we designed a pitch that targeted her latent desire to contribute to the growth of the firm. By focusing on improving document management capabilities, we showed how the product could enable the law firm to provide more services to their clients, and better service than their competitors.

The Result

De-commoditizing the product resulted in a rapid acquisition of appointments – over 40 in the first month alone, and numerous quick new sales for the VAR. And the Office Managers looked like heroes.

Are you looking to target the legal industry

Do you need results like this?


[more]

Case History: Contractor Software

During the Great Recession, a contracting software developer watched its sales swiftly plummet to zero as construction projects ground to a halt. After nearly every avenue to reach their audience closed shop, they found their own business at risk. So, with everything on the line, they called LeadGen.com.

Find out how we not only got revenues flowing again, but positioned the company as a leader in their field, a position which they cashed in on as the economy recovered!


Background

A software company had developed a system for plumbers, builders, electricians and other contractors to better manage projects, bids, and payroll. They had started to market it broadly when the Great Recession shut down virtually all construction. As a result, the company’s new sales ground to a halt. And they ran the risk of not being able to recover their development costs.

What They Tried

At the time, trade magazines were still a popular way to reach contractors. So they pumped up their print budget, only to see it wasted when the books went out of business. Trades shows, too, were being canceled, closing off their other main way to reach the market. With these additional expenses, and without a way to reach their contractor market, they were soon in jeopardy of themselves going out of business.

LeadGen.com's Solution

In a last-ditch effort to save their business, they called LeadGen.com. And during a brief test, we recognized that we could reach the contractors in their offices, early in the mornings and late in the evenings by phone, so we put together a calling campaign.

The Results

In three months of calling we generated over 50 qualified leads for the company, over a third of which closed successfully, and profitably.

As a result of the campaign, the company was not only able to jump-start their revenue flow and recover their investment in development, but they were able to position themselves as a leader in the market. They prospered through the recession, and continue to thrive more than a decade later.

Do you have a software or IT solution you need to bring to market?

Are you to gain looking market share and position yourself as a leader in an industry?


[more]

Case History: Consulting Services

What works in one market, often does not work in another. This is what a prominent European Consulting firm found out when it tried to enter the US Market.

Discover how LeadGen.com solved the problem, almost overnight!


The Problem

Generating leads for a consulting service is among the most difficult challenges in sales. Unless you already have a widespread reputation as a problem-solver, most people simply reject the idea of using a consultant that they don’t know – especially if they don’t think they have a problem in the first place. And few executives like to admit that there’s someone out there who’s smarter than they are. So for a European-based aviation industry consultant, there were two challenges they faced in trying to penetrate the US market: no one knew who they were, and their potential prospects weren’t eager to admit they needed help.

Problem Description

Working from a base in Europe, traditional techniques like advertising, direct mail and asking for referrals simply fell on deaf ears. And despite having saved their clients millions of dollars in the past, the company couldn’t gain any attention and interest with their key target market – senior executives in the Maintenance and Engineering divisions. But without new engagements, their growth plans would fail.

LeadGen.com’s Solution

LeadGen.com has been prospecting successfully into the highest levels of the Fortune 500 for many years. We know how these people think, and what they respond to. Applying the lessons we learned, LeadGen.com designed a combined research, direct mail and telemarketing program to identify needs and problems that not only justified the engagement, it gained the attention and interest of the key executives, and secured numerous high-level appointments to position the client as the solution.

Results

The program has been, and continues to be, a great success. Producing better than one high-level appointment per week. Significant new business has resulted, and the company has gained the firm the foothold in the US it sought.

Do you have a Consulting Service, but having a hard time helping your target audience understand your value?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: College Football Stadium

In College Football, nationally known teams dominate and, that can make it hard for other teams to attract a crowd. And, that was just the situation for a team one of our Ad Agency Partners bought to us.

Discover how LeadGen.com helped them break through the clutter and fill their stadium!


Background

A mid-Atlantic sports marketing agency had previously worked with LeadGen.com to successfully promote a regional horse-racing track to local businesses for customer outings and corporate teambuilding. So when they were faced with marketing a college football program, they knew who to call.

The Problem

In some parts of the country, certain college teams are so dominant that other teams can’t break through the clutter in the market. The nationally-known teams will have a waiting list for tickets while the other teams play to empty seats – while often presenting much more exciting games. The problem was with getting the message through but, in this case, there was also confusion over the name of the team, the quality of play, and the availability of tickets, not to mention its appropriateness for a corporate outing.

The Solution

Once again turning to LeadGen.com, the agency pitched a B2B telemarketing program to introduce businesses to the team’s games as a family-friendly – and available – event that could be used for teambuilding, corporate outings and customer entertainment.

Telemarketing was great at reaching the decision makers, explaining who the team was, the excitement of the games, and the availability of tickets. And persuading the event planners to buy tickets turned out to be easy because most were frustrated about not being able to get tickets to the “name” team’s games.

The Results

Despite having started the program in August, the program resulted in a near sell-out of the team’s skyboxes, and a large number of season tickets, to local businesses. The agency looked like a hero, and was able to mark-up the work and pocket a tidy profit. The team generated significant repeat business, as well, further enhancing their ROI for the campaign with virtually no additional effort or cost.

Do you have a sports team, or a venue, but having a hard time filling seats

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Marketing IT Solutions to Law Firms

An IT Developer with a solution that could potentially help law firms increase their revenues and profitability without adding staff, just couldn't gain any traction with their target audience.

Learn how LeadGen.com helped them not only get in the door, but become a major player in the legal market first regionally, and then nationally.


Overview

Only a few years ago, IT solution vendors were a dime-a-dozen, and law firms tended to be as far from the leading edge of technology as possible. So getting in the door with a Case Management solution was a huge problem for one NJ-based IT developer.

The Problem

Back before every law firm had a Web site, most had very limited IT capabilities. Most files were manual, and IT consisted of word processing, and a few spreadsheets and billing applications. New database systems, however, were coming online that could dramatically increase the productivity of the practice, enabling them to grow their revenues without increasing staff. The problem was, not only did the firms not understand the application, there wasn’t even a real decision maker available who was concerned with the issue of how IT could help.

The Solution

Recognizing that educating the prospect was part of the problem, LeadGen.com targeted the Managing Partners at hundreds of mid-sized law firms with a professional cold-calling campaign. The goal was to pitch the concept on the basis of how a Case Management system could help them do more with less – growing their revenues without adding staff. Using case histories provided by the client that showed specific, real-world volume increases that were enabled with no additions in staff, LeadGen.com was able to convince dozens of the targeted firms to open their doors to the client.

Results

Within eight weeks, the project had generated five new clients for the IT firm, and ongoing efforts established them as a major player in the regional legal market, which they have since expanded into as national player in the foreclosure segment.

Are you having a challenge getting law firms to notice you?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Business Process Outsourcing - Banking Services Industry

A major player in the banking services industry could save potential customers millions of dollars annually, but they were being shut-out of the market in North America. More importantly, they couldn't figure out why, putting them in danger of failing. So, they called LeadGen.com.

Find out how we solved the problem, fast.


Overview

Back-office operations at a typical community bank consists of manual checking of documents, like checks, and confirming deposit totals at the end of the day. But because it is so labor intensive, and requires off-hours effort, it tends to be very expensive. But when a major offshore business process-outsourcing provider tried to enter the US market with a service solution, they consistently got rebuffed.

Problem Description

Many banking and other business functions can be economically outsourced to offshore providers, but companies are understandably reluctant to lay off their friends and longterm employees. Even if the vendor can save their customers millions of dollars per year on operations, and has superior technology, unhooking the status quo can be difficult, especially without local representation.

So when a major player in the banking services industry approached LeadGen.com, they had already encountered a lot of resistance, and the venture was in danger of failing.

LeadGen.com's Solution

LeadGen.com had previously done a lot of prospecting in the banking industry, and knew how to talk to high-level bank executives. We knew that they were concerned with their bottom lines, but also with their perception in the community, so we devised a prospecting program that focused on how they could re-purpose their operations staff to increase their revenues, while cutting costs through outsourcing their back office operation.

Results

In less than 40 hours on the phones we had generated 8 qualified leads – appointments with high-level decision makers who had a need, and were willing to talk with the client about how they could help.

Are you looking to break into the banking or financial sector, but having a hard time breaking through the clutter?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Bank Owned Life Insurance

Discover how LeadGen.com helped a marketing consultant reposition a client's esoteric offering so they could capitalize on an under-served market.


Background

A marketing consultant had a client that specialized in designing and selling life insurance programs for executives of commercial banks. Quirks in the law make it a very inexpensive way to increase compensation for bank executives while actually increasing net profits and enhancing retention, but it’s an esoteric product and most bank executives don’t know about it.

The Problem

The marketing consultant had developed several new sales aids, and implemented a direct mail program and an advertising campaign that stressed the security aspects of the product. But by week 8 there were no sales leads coming in, and a lot of money going out. So she put together a telemarketing program that the client could implement in-house, but then they just couldn’t find the time to make the calls. And when they did, they couldn’t get past the gatekeeper, no less persuade a decision maker to meet.

The Solution

Bank executives are an unusual breed. They are usually well-protected by gatekeepers, but they are very bottom-line oriented – especially when it comes to their own bottom line. After bringing in LeadGen.com to develop and implement a telemarketing program, we re-positioned the offering to focus on its financial benefits, and applied our executive appointment setting solution to get in the door, and generate qualified leads.

The Results

In 112 hours of calling over less than two months, LeadGen.com generated qualified appointments with senior executives of 11 large banks for the client. Over half resulted in formal proposals, and sales, and the client was able to effectively bring the program in-house.

Do you have an innovative insurance product, but are having a tough time getting anyone to listen?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Asset Management Systems

A systems manufacturer had a great product, a strong value proposition and penetration into their local market. The problem was, they could not generate sales beyond the reach of their direct sales force and everything they tried, failed.

Learn how LeadGen.com solved the problem, quickly.


The Problem

A developer of an innovative Computerized Maintenance Management (CMMS) and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system for manufacturers was having trouble expanding its sales beyond its initial beta customers. They had successfully penetrated their local market through personal selling and cost-sharing, but couldn’t generate sales beyond the reach of their direct sales force, despite the fact that they had an excellent product that saved their customers tens of thousands of dollars per year. As a result, they couldn’t capitalize on a growing market opportunity. And worse, they had invested heavily in generalizing the software, but couldn’t hope recover their investment without additional sales.

What They Tried

The company decided to implement an extensive electronic and print advertising campaign, bolstered with exhibits at critical trade shows, but to no avail. The media were cluttered with non-competing ads. And decision makers, which necessarily included both IT and maintenance managers, rarely attended the trade shows, and never attended together. As a last-ditch effort, they tried to recruit Value-Added Resellers to market the product, but couldn’t find any who could actually deliver sales.

LeadGen.com’s Solution

The challenge with a product like Asset Management Software is that demand is usually latent, and widely dispersed. As with many IT products, people don’t know they have a need until and unless they can be educated about the application; which necessitates personal interaction. But because potential customers are spread all over the country, putting a salesperson in the field would incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses – potentially without a payoff. But professional B2B telemarketing from LeadGen.com easily identified and targeted likely customers throughout the US. LeadGen.com was able to quickly locate and connect with both the Maintenance and IT Directors at the target list, uncover their needs, educate them about the solution, and get them to buy into its value on a joint conference call that led directly to a series of over 60 face-to-face appointments within twelve weeks, and a close rate of over 20% – and a successful national roll-out that met all the client’s sales goals.

Summary

Effective lead generation for complex, new products often requires you to educate the prospect about the problem before you can stimulate his interest in your product. For a leading edge Asset Management software maker, only professional B2B telemarketing from LeadGen.com could educate the market efficiently, and solve the problem fast.

Are you a systems manufacturer with a sales challenge you need to solve?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Affinity Marketing Programs

Learn how LeadGen.com helped a consortium of consumer marketing experts get in the door of Fortune 500 firms, turning what was originally a response rate of zero, into money in the bank almost overnight!


The Problem

Affinity marketing programs are more than fancy credit cards. They involve complex data mining, integrated marketing, and dozens of program elements to draw in new consumers and keep them buying. Often requiring multiple skills and talents, a consortium of companies asked LeadGen.com to generate leads for their affinity marketing capabilities with large, national sports equipment manufacturers.

The problem with selling these complex programs (or even just getting in the door,) is that the potential beneficiaries extend far beyond the traditional sales and marketing organizations – which are usually already committed to the company’s advertising agency. Often the Channel Manager, CFO, Supply Chain Manager and others don’t understand their role in the process, or the tremendous savings they can achieve.

What They Tried

The group had originally formed while developing a successful campaign for a common client, and so they direct-mailed the example as a demonstration of their capabilities to hundreds of suspects. With a response rate of zero, they quickly realized they were out of their element. While they were clearly experts in consumer marketing, they just as clearly had no idea how to break into the executive tier of the Fortune 500.

LeadGen.com’s Solution

Successful high-level prospecting is a lot like a military campaign. You have to put a lot of assets into position before you fire your first shot. LeadGen.com put together a program that combined research, direct mail and telemarketing that achieve a 40% appointment rate, and enough successful deals to keep the group going for over two years – all in about eight weeks.

Summary

Effective prospecting isn’t just a matter of picking up the phone. You have to know who to call, and what to say. And sometimes you have to do a lot of homework before you go into battle. But if you’re going after the Fortune 500, it can be worth it.

Are you a Marketing Company with a sales challenge you need to solve?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

Case History: Bringing 3D Printing to Market

3D printing was an unknown technology when an early entrant asked LeadGen.com to help develop the market, which we did by getting them into dozens of Fortune 1000 manufacturers.

Discover how we did it!


The Problem

An Israeli company had invented a powerful new technology that could actually “print” plastic items in 3-dimensions. Used for rapid prototyping (such as for product development and marketing purposes,) they offered a quality and resolution far beyond their competitors, but they couldn’t get traction in the US market, chiefly because of coverage issues.

What They Tried

With a limited sales force, the company invested heavily in trade shows and advertising. But while they got some leads, the close rate was very low because the leads weren’t with the decision makers. Most leads were for information gatherers, and competitors who could follow-up better were outselling them at every turn.

LeadGen.com’s Solution

Doing an end-around, LeadGen.com identified the companies that might need the product, and went directly to the chief designers and engineers. But getting to the right person wasn’t enough. We also had to persuade them to consider changing from outsourcing their prototype work, for which many used service bureaus, to doing it in-house. And we had to overcome objections about price, and buying a foreign-made product.

Results

The initial pilot campaign demonstrated that outsourced B2B telemarketing was far superior to trade shows and advertising in terms of cost-per-lead, quality and quantity of leads. By the time the campaign ended a year later, we had gotten the company into nearly 100 new prospects, with an expected close rate nearing 50% on a $60K item, for less than the cost of one trade show.

Do you have an innovative solution you need to bring to market, but having a hard time identifying and getting in front of the right people who could benefit?

Are you looking for results like this?


[more]

You're Kidding Me, Right??


Evidently, sending repeated text emails to LinkedIn contacts - using something called "click funnels"- is a popular technique for generating leads today.

But does this crap really work?


You actually have to follow the whole thread to see the humor. Mind you - this thread is from someone who supposedly knows what they're doing, as they work for a lead generation company. But this has to be one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.

Here we go: First, he sent an introductory email. It told me what he does, and he even included a metric for credibility. He asked me if I have some time to talk, and provided me with his calendly link. So far, so good. Assumedly, if I was interested (and some people must be responding, because I see these several times a day), I would click the link to set something up.

Since I didn't respond, his system fired off another email five days later. As one would expect, this one had a slighly different benefit, told me his purpose, and asked me to send him a referral if I don't have a need myself. He seemed to be trying to make it look casual by suggesting we might "hop" on a call, but I don't "hop" on calls, as I take my communications a bit more seriously. So again, I ignored his email.

So six days later, I got another email. This one was shorter - apparently out of respect for my inbox. But it included an implicit promise that this was going to be the last time he emailed me.

Oh, but I wasn't that lucky. I got the same email two weeks later. Apparently, respecting my inbox doesn't include leaving it alone.

When I got the same email again two weeks after (why does he keep forwarding the thread!?!) I saw what's really going on when he asked: "Perhaps there's a better way of getting in touch with you?"

Knowing that his technique wasn't working, and knowing that we at Leadgen.com are experts at marketing, could it be that he just wants to be a client?

P.S. Hey, Derik. If you're listening, if you're looking for a better way to get in touch with someone, why don't you try using the phone?


[more]

The "Burned Before" Series, Episode 7: We Understand


You’ve been burned before - and we understand.

We’ve seen it all before: You have a vision of where you want to take your business. You build it, and you get it off the ground. But as you grow, you realize that you have to go outside for Marketing help because what you’re doing isn’t working, or you can’t do it all. And that’s when they’ve got you. They promise the world, but they deliver less, or nothing, or worse. And now your vision is shaken, you’re running out of money, and you’re on the brink of losing it.


Funny thing about Marketing; the problem isn’t that they were being dishonest, or even incompetent. Really. The problem is that “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” And most Marketing problems simply require more than one tool to solve. But if that’s all they have, that’s all they can sell you.

Sure, the barrier-to-entry in Marketing is absurdly low, so any idiot can claim they’re an expert. And it’s tempting to buy the latest shiny object as the last piece of the puzzle. But ask yourself, did you get burned by the vendor? Or did you get burned by the assumption that that was all you needed to solve the problem?

We built LeadGen.com because we know, after decades of working and solving Sales and Marketing problems, that often - not always, but almost always - it takes more than one tool to build an effective Marketing program and win the market share you’re after. That’s why we offer over 50 different solutions, along with the experience to know how to use them. And it’s why we approach each program objectively, without bias as to what the best way is to solve the problem.

Because we don’t want you to get burned again. And again. And again.


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Too Little Too Late?


We talk to many companies that are under stress. Revenues are down. Prospects are disappearing. And so there's a lot of pressure to turn things around. Many of these companies naturally decide to shed their marginal performers (in Sales and/or Marketing in particular) which is the right thing to do. And then they'll try to reinvest some of the money they saved by outsourcing some of their Marketing, which is also the right thing to do; i.e. filling the funnel, and figuring that management can close it.

The problem is that the strategies they're using won't work.


For example, many companies will turn to cold calling to beat the bushes, and try to scare up whatever business might still be out there. But then they run into the problem that the markets have shrunk. (Remember what we just said, above?) So while they may find some business that would have previously fallen through the cracks, there won't be much of it. And it likely won't close at anything near a compensatory margin, assuming it does close. In the meantime, you'll have wasted months of time and a few thousand dollars, and not saved your business or your job.

(By the way, if you're like most people, you'll of course try to do it as cheaply as possible, further decreasing the chances of success. But that's another story altogether.)

You might also try to be creative with, say, social media marketing or LinkedIn. But with the economy shrinking at 33% per year, how likely do you think it will be that your message will even be seen? We recently determined that over 35% of our non-owner contacts on LinkedIn are now unemployed. (Remember what else we just said above?) Anyone who's active on LinkedIn is either looking for a job, or looking to sell you something. So trying to pitch them will result in more time wasted, and - once again - you'll not have saved your business or your job.

So what works? First, as you can imagine, good targeting is more important now than ever. Knowing where to fish is half the battle. But you have to be willing to invest in market research. Call it what you want: data mining, list research, intent marketing, or reading tarot cards. If you're not willing to invest in doing the work it takes to find the opportunities, you might as well adopt Brownian Brain Movement as your go-to-market strategy.

Second, you have to be really creative as to how you reach out to prospects. They're out there. But getting your message in front of them, and having it be perceived as relevant and helpful, is a huge challenge - one that most companies fail at miserably. And if you don't know how to do it, good luck to you.

Anyway, how do you know that we know how to do these things?

You're reading this, aren't you?


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Case History: Investing in Relationships Saves Lives

A division of a Fortune 100 company that serves the healthcare industry has been getting over 75% of their revenues through LeadGen.com for nearly ten years. So when Covid-19 hit, their product was perfectly positioned to help address the emergency.

With so many people working from home, however, an inability to reach contractors and facility managers not only threatened to deprive the company of their near-term opportunities, it threatened to deprive the hospitals of a critical solution to a critical problem.


Fortunately, because of the extensive network of relationships that LeadGen.com had built in the industry, we had the cellphone numbers of virtually all the decision makers - who were either in the field or working from home - that we needed to reach. Not a step was lost in responding to the crisis.

The hospitals got the products they needed on time, and the client has dramatically increased their market share.


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You've Fired Your Marketing Director. Now What?


The coronavirus recession has already cut into your revenues, and your funnel has run dry. So you decide to fire your Marketing Director to conserve cash.

Now what do you do?


LeadGen.com is a resource multiplier. What that means is that we can do more - generate more leads, create a greater impact in the market, and drive more revenue - with the same, or even less, resources than in-house can.

In the case of a cold calling campaign, for example, we can make better quality calls than the typical salesperson (and much better quality calls than a call center), and we can maintain a level of discipline on the task that an inside salesperson - someone who’s constantly being pulled from one task to another - ever possibly could.

We can also put out more, and more effective, content. We can get you more and better exposure. And we can stimulate more, and more appropriate, demand.

As a result, we can uncover more opportunities, while also dramatically increasing the likelihood that those opportunities will close successfully.


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You've Fired Your VP of Sales. Now What?


The coronavirus recession has already cut into your revenues, and your funnel has run dry. So you decide to fire your Sales VP to conserve cash.

Now what do you do?


Trying to do everything in-house is no longer an option. It's time to get outside help.

LeadGen.com can do everything your old Sales and Marketing team can do - and we can do it faster, better and cheaper than they ever could.

What are you waiting for?


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The King Has No Clothes


If it weren't for the FAANG stocks, the Dow would be in the tank. And the S&P 500 is so overvalued you can already hear the bubble pop.

But what does this mean for your business?


We talk to hundreds of businesses every day. And what they tell us is that people are cancelling orders. Projects are being put on hold. And investors are bailing out.

If you think that lame-ass Marketing program is going to save you, think again.

It's time to put your Big-Boy Pants on.


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All Hat and No Cattle


If you've done everything you can possibly think of with your Marketing program, and you're still not moving the sales needle, maybe the problem is your Marketing Department.


For years the industry has been talking about how, if you pour money into Inbound Marketing the business will just show up. And so you poured your heart out.

Well, now that push has finally come to shove (with respect to the economy), that little charade has finally been exposed.

Anybody hear the phone ringing?


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You Can't Spell Squeal without SQL


If your Marketing program idealizes "Sales Qualified Leads," you're already on the wrong track.

The big clue is: Why does the term even exist?

After all, why would you want to produce anything else???


The concept of a Sales Qualified Lead grew out of lead scoring systems, which themselves attempted (ineffectively) to separate the good leads from all the junk that Marketing typically produces.

All SQLs did was ask the Salespeople for their opinion, instead of having the Marketing department grade their own work.

But it doesn't change the fact that most Marketing departments produce junk.


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Blog Post 276

Marketing is a powerful tool. It can create awareness, stimulate interest, and enable you to engage with your target market.

But if it doesn't cause your prospect to invest time or money to move the sales process forward, it's nothing more than a shiny object.


Marketing without LeadGen is like a car without an engine. It might look nice, but it isn't going to get you anywhere.


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Blog Post 275

If Marketing without LeadGen is like a car without an engine, then Sales without LeadGen is like a racing driver without a functioning racecar.

What's the point of spending all this money for a good salesperson, and then not providing them with qualified sales leads to close?


LeadGen is the missing link between Marketing and Sales. It turns your positioning into appointments with decision makers. And it turns your investment into ROI.

So if you don't have LeadGen in your process, you might as well go home.


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What's the Point of Marketing?


In fact, it's worse. Marketing without LeadGen is not only like a car without an engine, it's like a car without wheels, or a transmission, either. It's just a pretty shell.

If you want to actually get somewhere - and, by that, we mean with your business - you need LeadGen to be part of the plan.


LeadGen is all about getting traction. It's all about converting potential energy into results. And it's all about getting you from "where you are" to "where you want to be".

Without that, frankly, all you have is a pretty Web site.


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What Good Is Marketing without Lead Generation?


When the economy is strong, businesses can afford to invest in Marketing. And a good Marketing Department can certainly take sales up a notch. It can increase awareness. It can define your brand. And it can create compelling content and sales aids.

But when things go south, if it doesn't generate actual sales leads, all that other stuff becomes jetsam.


The difference between Marketing and Lead Generation isn't that Marketing does everything except generate qualified sales leads.

It's that a good Lead Generation program does everything that Marketing does, plus it generates leads, and holds itself accountable for revenue.

So if your Marketing program doesn't include Lead Generation, maybe now's the time to make a change.


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Get Ready for the Collapse


With the Dow being propped up by the FANG stocks, and loose monetary policy drawing to an end, it's time to seek shelter from the coming storm.

Demand is down across the board. And only those companies who know exactly where and how to find new business will survive.


The first thing you need to do is reduce payroll. That in-house Marketing staff that's now working from home? How does that square with your decision not to outsource because you wanted more control?

Now it's time to let them go, and put someone on the job who can generate actual sales leads.


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The Coronavirus Apocalypse Business Plan


As it appears we have lost the battle against the Coronavirus, and the economy is on the verge of collapse, it's time to start thinking about what you can do to insure that your company will survive.

So here is your Official Coronavirus Apocalypse Business Plan:


1. Fire your Marketing Manager (i.e. the person to whom you pay $60,000 a year plus benefits to post content that no one reads, work on your Web site that no one visits, and make plans for a trade show that will never happen).

2. Pay us $35,000 a year to generate actual sales leads that will actually close - and make you some money.


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Zombie Companies Arise


The government has been propping up businesses with PPP. But with coronavirus cases increasing geometrically, there isn't enough money in the world to save the economy.

Get ready for World War C.

We talk to hundreds of companies every day. And it's shocking the number that are living from day-to-day, or getting ready to shut down operations altogether.

They're truly the Walking Dead.


Do you want to avoid joining the undead? Call us.

Or your next call might be to Unemployment.


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The End Times Are Here


With our societal failure to stop the coronavirus epidemic, we are now on the verge of a geometric increase in cases. And that can mean only one thing: Economic collapse.

Investors are already abandoning equities, and pulling their funds out of new ventures. If 50,000,000 people lost their jobs with a 1% penetration of the virus, how many businesses do you think will fail when 20% of the population has it?


There is only one strategy left, short of closing up shop: Trim costs to the bare essentials, and focus all your resources on sales.

That Marketing Associate? We can do twice the work, and get better results, for half the cost.

You sales rep? We can make five times as many calls for half of what they're costing you. And we don't require benefits.


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The End Is Near


If you don't think the economy is about to collapse, you're not paying attention. The government can't print enough money to save us from the upcoming collapse, as coronavirus infections skyrocket over the next few months.

The question is: What can you do to keep your business from failing in the process?


We've previously written about the wisdom of firing your low performers and giving us the work. Now it's time to fire that good-for-nothing, over-paid Marketing Associate - because we can get more new business for you, for half of what you're paying him or her, than they could get in twice the time.

Which, by the way, is the one thing you no longer have.


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E Pluribus Victoria


When it comes to Marketing, you simply can't get as much experience, expertise, resources or talent with an in-house operation as you can when you outsource to LeadGen.com.

In fact, one client recently told us that they felt they couldn't get in-house what they get from LeadGen.com for five times the cost.

So why do some companies still try to do it themselves?


One reason is that many business owners feel they have more control with an in-house operation. But our process gives clients direct visibility into our activities and access to our people. So that objection simply doesn't hold water.

More importanly, we can put a dozen people on your problem for less than the cost of one in-house Marketing Associate.

Given social distancing and the fact that your Marketing Associate is probably working from home, how does in-house even make sense?


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Timing Is Everything


We often get calls from multiple companies that are in the same business asking us for help - which is what happened last week when we heard from two companies in the Augmented Reality business.

As an "arms dealer," we're happy to sell to anyone, as long as their offering is ethical. But we typically won't work with direct competitors at the same time, so our policy is to usually go with whomever pays us first.


Interestingly, both companies have the exact same barriers-to-success. They are both going after the exact same markets. And they both have very similar products.

Where they differ is in management. One team knows how to make a decision, and the other is hesitant.

Guess who's going to win the battle for Market Share?


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Another One Bites the Dust


We had been talking to a company about helping them with their marketing. They had a great offering, a solid competitive position, and an excellent value proposition.

But they couldn't make up their mind about moving forward.

And now they're out of business.


The problem was that the owners couldn't agree about the need to spend money on marketing, especially in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. It just seemed too risky.

And so now there's an opening for their competitors to exploit.


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IQ Before AI


Artificial Intelligence is all the rage in marketing today. Digging deeply into masses of data to gain insight is seen as the key to taking strategies to the next level.

The problem is that if you don't start with a solid educational and experiential foundation, and apply AI using real marketing expertise, all you'll get is junk.


At LeadGen.com we have years of training and decades of experience. We've solved thousands of different problems, and helped hundreds of different companies. And we have scores of experts who can weigh in when you have a challenge.

So when we bring AI into a strategy, it's not just because it's cool - which it is. We bring it in so it can enhance otherwise sound decision making.


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The Clock Is Always Ticking


We just got an email from a company that was considering using our services. They were having trouble launching a new product, and had recently asked us for help.

Unfortunately, before we could start working the problem, the investors decided to shut down the operation. And so they wouldn't be needing us after all.


One of the things about capitalism is that investors aren't typically very patient. And with renewed pain on the economic horizon, this venture was deemed too risky.

The question you should be asking is: If the consequence of not making your numbers is getting shut down, why are you waiting to fix the problem?


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Whatever Gets You Through the Night


One of the questions we often ask new clients is why someone should buy from them.

They typically respond by describing their better service, or their higher quality, or their lower price.

Since these are all relative measures (assumedly vis-a-vis their competition), we then ask to see their competitive analysis. Needless to say, it doesn't exist.


If denial is just a river in Africa, delusion must be the whole ecosystem. Do people just make this stuff up? Or do they try to cherry-pick data that makes them feel good?

Setting aside the fact that these things are probably not why people would buy from you, how much money have you spent promoting benefits that don't exist?


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Unknown Unknowns


When it comes to Marketing, solving the problem is often easier than figuring out what the problem is.

That's why so many so-called solutions don't actually work: The real problem is figuring out what the problem really is.


You can track KPIs until the cows come home. But if all they do is report on symptoms, and you don't identify the underlying problem, you might as well not bother.

Maybe we need fewer "solution providers" and more "problem analyzers".


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Now's the Time to Buy Market Share!


If you want to make money in the stock market, buy when everyone else is panic-selling.

And if you want to pick up massive amounts of market share on the cheap, advertise - right now - like your life depended on it.


Opportunities like this - when your competitors are scared, hurting, or just waiting - happen only once in a generation, if that.

Now is the time to swoop in and take their customers. Starve your competition of media exposure. And grab market share, before it's too late, and more expensive.

What are you reading this for??? Call now!


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If You Think the First Wave Was Bad...


Everyone is hoping that the pandemic goes away - either because it burns itself out, or we get a treatment or a vaccine.

But what if it comes back? How do you think the economy will respond?


People and businesses are remarkably resilient. But thus far barely one percent of the population has been infected. What happens if 25% of the population gets it?

Can your business withstand that kind of hit to demand?


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Another Offshore Caller Lied


We got a call the other day from a company that was selling a service we actually need. The nice woman - who had pleasant Asian accent - said her name was "Jan," and that their office was in NY.

Anticipating a need in 4Q, I agreed to a demo next week.


Not 10 minutes later I received a call from the same company, pitching the same solution. The caller, who this time was male, and who had a different Asian accent, said his name was "Jan," too.

I told him to cancel the appointment and take us off their list.


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The Siren Song of Inbound Marketing


The engineers who brought you the Internet promised that all you had to do was put up a Web site, and you could reach the world.

Then the marketing people got hold of it, and they told you that "57% of the decision was made before a salesman ever spoke to the customer."


How's that working out for you?


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Are you a marketing expert? If not, then why are you developing your own marketing strategy?


The Internet has enabled everyone to become an expert on everything.

Do you want to know how to fix your car? There are 500 YouTube videos to show you how.

Do you want to know how to create an effective marketing strategy? Ask Google, where you'll find 429,000,000 results!


By the way, there are only 200,000,000 hits on How to File for Bankruptcy.


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The "Burned Before" Series, Episode 6: Self-Immolation


How must it feel, as a business owner, to receive emails every day from companies promising you success?

For many, it mostly makes them curious about the methodology, moreso than about the vendor. So they don't necessarily respond. But many then turn to their Marketing Departments and ask, "Can you do this for me?"


The irony of doing things in-house is the higher level control is undermined by the lower level of competence.

So when you take a bad idea and try to implement it in-house, it's basically an act of self immolation.


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The "Burned Before" Series, Episode 5: A Goal without a Plan is Just a Wish


The saddest stories of where someone's been burned before are the solopreneurs who have invested their life savings in an idea, only to see it never get traction. Often they contract out their marketing to the first person who says they can help, regardless of whether the promotional technique is appropriate or not.

Such was the case with an engineer who inherited a patent from his father for an improved home heating system.


Someone told him that he needed to build a Web site, so he paid $5000 for what amounted to an off-the-shelf Wordpress site - but no orders came in. Then someone told him that he needed to do SEO, which he did to the tune of another $2500 - but no orders came in. Then someone told him that he needed to get UL certification, which would cost $25,000, because people needed to see the logo, and its assurance of safety, on his site. But even after initiating the process, no orders came in.

So he called us - to help him find investors because he was out of money.


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The "Burned Before" Series, Episode 4: You Can't Offload Your Marketing Risk


Pay-for-performance is an extremely popular model in marketing today. It's the natural consequence of the extreme price competition among solution providers

But it's not without risk, as illustrated by the case of a company that had contracted with a pay-per-lead vendor to generate appointments for their field sales team.


The problem with pay-per-lead is that, if the vendor can't generate good leads then they'll generate bad ones. So while you can comfort yourself that you won't pay for them if they're no good, it's always too late.

It wasn't until two of their best salespeople quit that the company finally figured out that wasting a rep's time is worse than actually paying a fair price for marketing work.


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The "Burned Before" Series, Episode 3: You Get What You Pay For


One of our Account Managers recently spoke to a company that had contracted with an off-shore call center to do lead generation.

The company wasn't getting them enough qualified leads, but the price was right - about $6/hour. He wanted to know if we could do a better job, but match their price.

So our Account Manager asked me what we could do.


Sometimes it's really hard to not laugh when someone says something that's unintentionally funny. If I had been on the call with the prospect, I'm not sure I could have held it in. But since it was our own rep that told me about it, I let it rip.

After I settled down, I told our rep that he had to convince the prospect that you can't get a qualified Lead Generation Specialist for a price of $6/hour, no less for the $3/hour they're probably paying the caller.

But I suspect we'll just never hear from them again.


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The "Burned Before" Series, Episode 2: Magical Thinking


We recently got a call from a business owner who was starting up a new software venture in the AI space. He proudly told me that he had spent over $300,000 on product development. He was now ready to bring the product to market, and he wanted our help.

After assessing his goals and value proposition, I asked what his budget for marketing was.


His response was that he didn't have any money left for marketing. But because the market is so vast, and his product is so good, we should be willing to work on a straight commission basis.

And besides, marketing companies have promised him great results before, and not delivered.

He was the fifth person that week to ask us to invest our money in his dream.


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The "Burned Before" Series, Episode 1: Yeah, We Hear That a Lot


We talk to a lot of business owners, and the one thing they consistently tell us is that they tried some marketing solution or other before, and it didn't work. They invested a lot of time, effort, money and - especially - hope in a strategy that, for one reason or another, didn't work out.

They tell us their problem still hasn't been solved, but feeling that they've been burned before, they're gun-shy about trying another solution.


Sometimes they understand why it didn't work, and have made some adjustments to prevent a repeat of the failure. Sometimes they blame their vetting process, and pay more attention to what they're doing. And often they simply attempt to shift responsibility to the vendor by demanding performance-based compensation, as if someone without an equity stake in the business is really going to put your interests over theirs.

Setting aside the competence of the solution provider for a moment, if you've been burned before, and you're now risk-averse, maybe you should rethink your self-image as an entrepreneur.


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Building Your Sales Engine 3: Telling Your Story


Articulating your value proposition in a manner that can be understood by your prospects is one of the most difficult things for companies to do, it seems.

Too many companies talk about what their product is and does, and not enough abut why someone should buy it.


Creating compelling collateral material, including your Web site, sales aids and proposals, seems to be a lost art.

We can help, but you have to be willing to invest the time and money to produce a good outcome.


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Building Your Sales Engine 8: Resells and Upsells


Once you've closed a piece of business, the next step is to create a repeat customer. If your product is a one-time purchase, then the equivalent is to earn a recommendation (and, of course, you should also do that if your product is subject to repeat purchase, too).

In many cases, it's all about service and relationships.


When someone buys from you, they are agreeing to engage in a relationship. And so your job, whether you're in sales or marketing, is to use your customer's willingness to engage in a relationship to continue to uncover needs that you can fulfill.

Which brings us right back to research and planning.

Funny how that works, isn't it?


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Building Your Sales Engine 7: Managing Your Way to Success


Whether you're in B2B or B2C, and whether you're in Sales or Marketing, you have a sales funnel you need to manage. That's simply the list of suspects and prospects who are somewhere between aware and closed.

The point is that if you don't have a reliable process for getting suspects into your funnel, moving prospects through your funnel, and pushing customers out of your funnel, you're going to fail at your job.


Ironically, most companies completely mangle this concept because they don't understand the classification system. The way it's supposed to work is that "C" prospects are new to the funnel, "A" prospects are closest to closing, and "B" prospects are somewhere in the middle.

Instead, many companies classify their biggest (and therefore assumedly most important) prospects as "A" prospects, their smallest (and therefore least important) prospects as "C" prospects, and the others somewhere in between.

Riddle me this: How do you move a prospect through such a funnel, from C to B to A? By making them bigger and more important?


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Building Your Sales Engine 6: Closing the Deal


No matter how many salespeople we interview, we've consistently found that 90% have never taken a professional sales training course, or even read a book about proper selling techniques.

How is that even possible?


The reason it happens of course, setting aside the old wive's tale about good salespeople being born, not made, is that most companies don't insist that their salespeople actually get sales training. Most, instead, assume that product training is sales training, although nothing could be further from the truth.

Think of it this way: Product training is appropriate if you're going to describe a car; sales training is appropriate if you're actually going to drive it.


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Building Your Sales Engine 6: Recruiting and Training


Wouldn't it be nice if generating leads was as easy as pressing a button?

Given all the people who say they provide sales leads, you would think it must be easy. What with clicks, hits, views, downloads, form fills, names, email addresses and more all being called sales leads, they must be easy to generate.

But then you find out the double-super-secret code word: Qualified!


OK. So what's the big deal? How hard can it be to understand the relationship between lead quality and price, right? Wrong! There are just too many variables. And so you're on your own trying to figure out to get what you want and pay the lowest price.

So you seek out some sort of guarantee, partly to offset your inabiity to qualify the vendor, but mostly because you've been burned before, and you don't want to get burned again.

Good luck. Maybe it's not as easy as clicking a button.


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Building Your Sales Engine 5: Generating Qualified Leads


Creating awareness is one of the hardest things to do today. There's just so much clutter in the media, it's almost impossible for most products to stand out, despite what most marketers will tell you, and no matter how much money you have to spend.


Do you really believe the old adage that, if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door? Do you really think that, if you build it they will come?

How about: If a tree falls in the woods, and no one hears it...?


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Building Your Sales Engine 4: Get the Word Out


Without a written plan, people can more easily claim plausible deniability when things go south. On the other hand, if you write down your assumptions, and map out how you're going to achieve your goals, you can at least plan to meet them.


What we often find so funny is the number of cases where companies have these elaborate KPIs they want us to hit, and they have absolutely no clue as to how to hit them.

They just assume it can be done because, because?

So then, when we tell them that we need to write a plan, they're like, why?

OK. Ready, fire, aim.


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Building Your Sales Engine 2: Prior Planning Prevents P*** Poor Performance


Most business owners have a vision of what they want to sell, and who they want to sell to. They even understand their value proposition.

But few have a realistic idea of how to go about targeting and capturing demand.

At best, most are competent at finding initial sales based on personal relationships and skills. But few know how to find opportunities beyond that point.


Market research is one of the most underutilized tools in the marketing toolchest, and it's the one that can solve that problem. It can pay for itself many times over, and save months of wasted effort. But most business owners would rather go with their gut, because they think market research is too expensive.

But, arguably, failure is even more expensive.


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Building Your Sales Engine 1: Identifying Market Opportunities


Metaphors are fine and all. But when it comes to running a business, you’ve got to get real.

Your promotion program needs to make people aware of who you are. Your lead generation program needs to generate leads. Your sales program needs to close sales. And all of the steps need to hand off opportunities properly from one to the next.


The problem is, of course, that most businesses don't come with a shop manual.

But we can create one for you - one that will rev up your revenues.


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Blog Post 240

You pride yourself on the fact that your company is unique. In fact, you tell all your prospects how you're different from your competition, even if you're just less expensive.

So why settle for an off-the-shelf Marketing program?


If your Marketing partner doesn't understand how you're different, and use that to create opportunities for you, there are only two possibilities:

Either you're leaving money on the table. Or you're just not that special.


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Blog Post 239

It's in the nature of the job that Sales and Marketing people should argue. If things are going well, they both want to take the credit. And if things are going badly, they both want to shift the blame.

Does that mean you should worry if they're not fighting?


Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Because if they're not fighting then you haven't set the bar high enough.

Or you could just go home and play with your kids.


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Blog Post 238

Having your story get picked up by thousands, or millions, of followers is the dream of every marketer. But for most, it will forever remain a dream.

That's because there's just so much room in the media, and so much more content available to fill it.


Instead of sitting around waiting for someone to retweet your post, or repost your tweet, or whatever success is called in the latest echo chamber, all you really need to do is get your message into the right ears.

And that's where we come in.


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Blog Post 237

If you're not getting the sales you need, the problem could be a broken framastat. Or maybe a clogged fuel gimcrack. Or it could possibly be a worn gadget ring.

Let's open her up and take a look.


There are two ways to fix an engine. You can just start replacing things. Or you can figure out what's wrong first.

Just sayin'.


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Blog Post 236

Has your response to the lockdown been to cut back on marketing because your audience has disappeared? Wrong answer!

Now's the time to put the pedal to the metal. Target new prospects. Create new relationships. Uncover new needs. And position yourself to be the go-to provider when things open up again.


Or, you could wait until there's no more meat left on the bones after your competitors get through with it.


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Blog Post 235

Even in the best of times, trying to fix a sales problem can involve a lot of guesswork. The market is opaque. Nothing is certain. And everyone has their own opinion about what's the right thing to do.

And today it's even worse - not just because of the economy, but because there are just too many choices.


Throw on top of that the tendency towards confirmation bias, and it's a wonder that anyone hits their numbers. But, then again, it could be worse. There could be a pandemic.


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Blog Post 234

Has the pandemic put a crimp in your sales funnel? Are you sitting around wondering when things are going to open up again?

Banging your head against a wall isn't going to solve the problem. What will solve the problem is effective marketing.


Now is the time to double, or even triple, your marketing budget. Get in front of as many prospects as you can, before your competition gets back from their coronavirus-inspred vacation.

Relationships that you create today will turn into revenues tomorrow, or whenever this thing ends.


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Blog Post 233

You can't imagine the number of people who've told us they've been burned by marketing companies before. Just yesterday someone told us about $5000 they spent for a trade show booth that had almost no traffic. And last week someone told us they spent $15000 on a marketing program that got them precisely NO new business.

If the Internet is the Wild West, Marketing on the Internet is a straight-up jungle.


The problem, in our view, is that the barriers-to-entry are just too low in Marketing. Anyone can hang out a shingle and call themselves an expert. And, of course, it's capitalism - so Buyer Beware.

The reality is that marketing entails risk. But if you think you can avoid it by going with a performance-based compensation program, just be ready to get burned again, because they're selling you the sleeves from their vest.


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Blog Post 232

Sales are down, so you turn to Marketing to stimulate demand. Maybe you decide to exhibit at a couple of trade shows for $10,000 per show. But no decision-makers attend, and the only people who do come to your booth are other exhibitors who want to sell you something. And three months later when you ask your salespeople what happened to the leads you got from the shows, you find out that none of them were ever called. (By the way, industry statistics show that 96% of trades show leads are never contacted!)

So then you decide to spend $10,000 on Search Engine Optimization. But did you get any business out of it? If you're like most companies, and you really run the calculation, your cost per lead on the Web is probably in excess of $5,000 – if you get anything at all. So you decide to create a new brochure and send out some direct mail. You buy a data base, spend $15,000 and barely get any leads, and most of them are "tire-kickers." And the money you spent on trade advertising? The typical cost-per-appointment for trade advertising exceeds $1,500!


If you think Marketing is a guessing game, or just dumb luck, think again.

There's a science to it.

You just have to believe in science.


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Blog Post 231

Time was, when you needed sales, you could go out and recruit someone who knew how to make it happen. They were unafraid. They had skills. And they knew how to bring home the bacon.

Today the typical salesperson wants all their leads prequalified (Sales Qualified Leads!!), and a big base salary to close them.


If your salespeople are complaining about your marketing program not producing enough good leads, and your marketing people are complaining that your salespeople just don't know how to close, welcome to the modern era.

Then call LeadGen.com


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The Dirty Little Secret of SEO


It turns out that there's an easy way to get a page 1 rank on Google: optimize on the most obscure terms you can think of. You get a page 1 rank, so your SEO company can claim victory; but no one sees you, so you're left holding the bag.


And in case you haven't noticed, the only one who's winning the SEO battle is Google. Are you really surprised?

Why play their game? Do you have a number to hit? We can help. #sales #marketing #strategy #entrepreneurship #LeadGen


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Too Much Quota and Not Enough Year?


A technology company was facing a revenue shortfall with barely two weeks to go in the year. Only a heroic effort could save them from missing their numbers.


A technology company was facing a revenue shortfall with barely two weeks to go in the year. Only a heroic effort could save them from missing their numbers. LeadGen Saves the Day! Most people believe that nothing happens in December because everyone's either distracted or on vacation. But that's actually the best time to blitz - because your competition has probably bought into that myth. While contact rates are usually down in December, those people who you manage to get on the phones are usually more willing to talk. And they probably have needs if they're still in the office. And that's what happened for the tech firm. We found a deal that closed their revenue gap just in time. And best of all? The prospect had to spend the money before the end of the year. So, no one had to fudge the numbers just to look good. Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today! #sales #marketing #strategy #entrepreneurship #Leadgen


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A Good Reason to Use LeadGen.com


Last week a company asked us for our input on their marketing strategy. We reviewed their business model, their collateral material, and their Web site. And then we asked a simple, four-word question.

Today they shut the business down, and thanked us profusely for the help.


If you want to know what we asked - that no one else ever thought to ask - you're going to have to pay. After all, isn't that why you hire a consultant (i.e. to ask the right questions)?


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Case History: Health Insurance Brokerage

Background
Selling group health insurance is extremely competitive. It’s very profitable, but the barriers to entry for brokers are low. Prices are fixed by the carriers, so there is no obvious price differentiation. So in many cases, sales are based on relationships.

The Problem
The owners of a small health insurance brokerage that had been handed down from father to sons wanted to grow, and believed that they could differentiate themselves on the basis of service. Despite investing heavily in a service operation, though, they were faced with an indifferent market that had been trained to focus on relationship. If they couldn’t unhook the incumbent broker, they would have an uphill battle gaining market share.


The Solution
Professional salespeople can make a world of difference when you’re trying to articulate a value proposition, so the company called in LeadGen.com to recruit and train a new sales force, and develop arguments as to why a company should buy from them. To maximize the efficiency of the sales team, LeadGen.com also recommended that the company hire a professional telemarketer to set appointments, and keep the salespeople out on the road.

Articulating the value proposition, however, took a little extra work, but focusing on customer needs guided the way. They were easily able to advance the sales process, while quantifying the benefits, resulting in a high close rate.

Results
The sales strategy was so strong that the company was able to unhook competitive brokers in mid-year, instead of at the traditional renewal time. Sales efficiency soared because of the telemarketing support. And the company became the leading broker in the region.


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Case History: Marketing HVAC Systems to Hospitals

Many manufacturers utilize Manufacturers Reps to help sell their products in local markets. Such a strategy can enable the manufacturer to avoid having to hire, train, support and pay as many direct employees, reducing payroll cost, overhead and exposure. It often gives them an easier entree into local markets and customers because the Manufacturers Rep already has the relationships. And it enables the product to be integrated in larger systems that often get specified by third parties with whom they have no relationship.

The major downside that people traditionally have with this strategy is that you tend to have to give up a considerable amount of margin. And you lose quite a bit of account control. But if you can be profitable with the split, and don't care about account control, it can be worth it.


Many companies, however, find that the strategy sometimes fails to bring victory. The lower account control can lead to substitution. Relying on Reps for market intelligence means you really don't know what's going on in the market. And you still have to train and motivate the Reps, which can be a greater burden - given what you're giving up in margin - than it's worth compared to just having salespeople.

For a manufacturer of HVAC equipment, these minor issues were adding up to major problems. They were losing market share. They were under price pressure. And they weren't hearing about many major deals they could have qualified for. So they called in LeadGen.com.

For a fraction of what it would have cost for an in-house market research, lead generation and sales force, LeadGen.com was able to identify opportunities, and generate leads and appointments that the manufacturer then gave to their independent Reps - enabling the company to dominate the hospital and lab markets they were targeting.

And as icing on the cake, they've been able to virtually eliminate substitution, and get specced in on projects - effectively locking out their competition.


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Case History: Winning a Price War

When you have a well-funded competitor, you may find that rather than them attempting to become the price leader, they try to drive you out of the market by undercutting your prices. Once you're out, of course, they raise their prices unopposed in the market, and reap huge returns. But in the meantime, you're toast.

That's what was happening to a manufacturer of copper anode, which is used in electroplating, when they called LeadGen.com for help.


Setting aside the anti-trust laws that the competitor was breaking (with temporary impunity), their investors understood the cost structure of the industry well enough to know just how low they had to drive prices, and just how long everyone could last. What they didn't count on was the power of marketing.

LeadGen.com put together a counter-strategy that not only significantly increased the cost for the competitor to win new sales, but it reversed some of the sales they had already booked. It took six months, and close to $100,000, but the company that ended up going out of business was the one that started the price war.

And LeadGen.com's client ended up with all their customers.


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Case History: Compliance Services

The Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) practice at a large accounting firm had acquired a number of smaller firms to help them increase their share of the Internal Audit market. The acquiring firm correctly assumed that the new partners would bring their old book of business with them when they merged. But the acquiring firm's faith that their new partners would be adept at expanding beyond their personal networks, and generating new business, was distinctly unfounded.


The new partners, for example, had difficulty expanding their networks geographically, because margin pressures that resulted from price competition limited discretionary travel. And while participation in events and conferences presented viable opportunities to generate new leads, there simply weren't enough of them to support the revenue objectives. Making matters worse, the company's marketing efforts were ineffective in attracting interest or generating leads.

One of the acquired companies, however, had been using LeadGen.com for many years to find new business. Expanding the program to the group as a whole resulted in over 60% of the practice's revenues being derived from the program.


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Building Your Sales Engine 8: Earning a High NPS


Getting a high Net Promoter Score is the cat's meow in business today. But how do you actually get there? And is it really always a good thing?

Many people assume that a high NPS comes from high customer satisfaction. But in B2B, many very satisfied customers would be loathe to recommend you for fear of losing to a competitor the competitive edge that you gave them.


Instead, we like to look at "account control" as the key metric, measured by your ability to sell additional products and services to your current customers, and influence decisions related to your applications.

When you have account control you can then ask the NPS question the right way: How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague, provided they weren't a competitor of yours?


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Building Your Sales Engine 7: Managing Your Way to Success


Knowing how to get the most out of your sales team takes a combination of people skills and technical skills. You have to know how to manage your salespeople as people, and you have to know what they should do as salespeople to be successful.

Funnel management is the process of developing a reliable forecast of revenues, and then putting in a work plan to achieve it.


At many companies we talk to, the Dunning-Kreuger Effect is in full bloom when it comes to both of these issues.

At LeadGen.com we can show you how to get the most out of your people, and how they can get the most out of their territories.


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Building Your Sales Engine 6: Closing the Deal


For many companies, converting a qualified lead into a closed sale requires the involvement of an actual human, and some degree of actual skill - which can only be acquired through training.

(Oddly enough, even automated systems need training.)


Let's be clear: Product training is NOT sales training. The former involves understanding features and benefits. The latter involves learning how to persuade a prospect to buy. Are those things even related???

Making matters worse is that there's a lot of bad sales training out there. But what do we know? We only make our living at it.


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Building Your Sales Engine 5: Generating Qualified Leads


It doesn't matter whether you're in B2B or B2C, if you can't turn suspects into prospects who have a qualifying need, and a willingness to pay you to fulfill it, you might as well take your ball and go home.


The problem, of course, is that many people confuse creating awareness with generating real, qualified leads. That's why we talk to so many folks who have been burned before. They've fallen victim to the siren song of digital marketing (i.e. If you build it, they will come). Nonsense!

You can have all the traffic you want. If you're not getting paid, it's a hobby.


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Building Your Sales Engine 4: Get the Word Out


If no one knows you're there, they're probably not going to buy from you. So you have to get their attention.

Considering the clutter in the media today, however, that can be a big ask, but we can show you how.


The bad news is that, just because you get people's attention, it doesn't mean your cash register is going to ring. (That's where lead generation comes in.) But getting people's attention is a necessary, albeit insufficient, condition.


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Building Your Sales Engine 3: Telling Your Story


Answering the question of why someone should buy comes down to your telling a story - the story of how your customer's life will be better by buying from you. So you need to translate that story into a Web site, a brochure, sales aid, cover letter, blog posts, banner ads, skywriting, or whatever format you're planning on using to communicate with your prospects.


While B2B and B2C materials can differ in appearance, they both have to answer the same question: Why buy?

For example, at LeadGen.com we tell people that the reason to buy from us is so you can achieve - and maybe even exceed - your sales goals. It's that simple.

We may have 300 different ways to say it. But it all boils down to the same message: If you want to make your numbers, call us.


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Building Your Sales Engine 2: Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance


If you don't write down your plan, don't ask anyone for money, time or effort to support it. (If you're funding it yourself, you can do whatever you want, of course.)

While no plan ever survived the first encounter with the enemy, trying to compete successfully in today's market takes conscious competence. So writing down your business plan lets you challenge your assumptions, and avoid costly mistakes - at least the ones you can anticipate.


There are lots of formats for creating marketing plans, sales plans and business plans available on the Internet, and we can help. The one you choose should just insure that you don't miss any critical variables.

After all, you know how to spell "assume", right?


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Building Your Sales Engine 1: Start with Market Research


Whether you're an entrepreneur with the next big thing or a grizzled road warrior trying to figure out how you're going to make your numbers next quarter, start building your sales engine by figuring out what market you want to go after, and how best to go after it.

Market research is not optional, or expensive. And it's a lot better to find out that you're pushing a rope before you get tangled up in it.


Do some research, either online or in-person, to make sure there's really an opportunity. Some of the questions you need to answer are:

•   Who are we going to sell to, and why should they buy from us?
•   What problem are we going to solve, and what's the willingness-to-pay for a solution?
•   How are people solving it now, and how are we better?
•   What is the competitive environment, and why should someone buy from us rather than a competitor?
•  How can I reach my market effectively and efficiently?

At LeadGen.com we can design and implement your research plan, and make sure you don't fall victim to your hopes.


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Let Us Build Your Sales Engine


At LeadGen.com we've been helping companies build their "Sales Engines" for over 30 years.

That's because we know what goes into creating a good one, and how to make it hum.


Just because our name is LeadGen.com, it doesn't mean that's all we do. (Lead generation happens to be a particular problem for many companies, so we focus on it a lot.)

At LeadGen.com we can help you build a Sales Engine from the ground up, or fix the one you already have - so you can drive your sales right through the roof.


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Pay-per-Lead Is Like Cheap Insurance


There was a time when everyone knew what the term "cheap insurance" meant. It meant low-price insurance that didn't pay claims.

With the lunacy that passes for marketing today, it's ironic how the term is now a benefit. But the fact still remains: You can't avoid risk.


It's one think to squeeze a carrier's margins. But it's quite another to taunt the actuarial tables; it can't be done without paying a price.

So when you try to shift your marketing risk to your vendor, do you really think it's not going to bite you on the backside?


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Your Prospect List


I'm not saying we can read faces over the phone, but you can certainly hear fear in the voices of the people we talk to on behalf of our clients lately.

They don't know if they're going to lose their jobs. They don't know if they're going to get sick. And they don't know who to believe about when to open the economy.


What they tell us, though, is that they appreciate the call. They appreciate a kind voice. And they appreciate that someone cares.

And all we did was reach out and touch someone.


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It's Not Too Late to Hit the Panic Button


Laying off staff to conserve cash may have seemed like a good idea when the lockdown killed your demand. But now you face the question of what to do next.

Should you bring your people back? If so, will there be any customers?


Many companies are caught in a bind. If you bring back employees, and the demand doesn't come back, it can put you under. But if you don't bring them back, you can't tap the demand. The solution: Outsource.

We can re-build your pipeline for a fraction of the cost of in-house. And once it's built, feel free to kick us to the curb.

Don't worry; we're used to it.


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Missing the Bus - by Waiting for the Bus


Quite a few business owners told us that they didn't want to start any new marketing initiatives until they knew what was happening with the economy.

Whenever we hear that, we immediately call up their competitors and ask them if they'd like to steal some market share.

Quite a few of them say yes.


Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?


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The System Is the Solution


John Maynard Keynes architected our modern economic system during the depths of the Great Depression. And it has proven effective at delivering prosperity for over 80 years.

And it is proving to be the solution for today, too.


Let me come right out and say it: Supply-side economics is, in good times, a pseudo-intellectual vanity. When things go south, it's revealed as a scam.


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Has the Lockdown Thrown a Monkey Wrench into Your Plans?


Even if your business had a disaster preparedness plan in place, it probably didn't anticipate a pandemic and 20% unemployment. And yet...

Here we are.


Given the resilience of people, and our polical and economic systems, the only thing we can count on is that eventually, probably, we'll get through this. Do you want your business to be one of the survivors?

Here we are.


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Been Burned Before?


Have you tried outsourcing your Marketing program, only to end up with nothing to show for it? Or worse, have you tried hiring someone in-house, and still not hit your numbers?

Maybe they're not the problem.


Marketing today is far more complex than ever before. Before, you could run print ads in a few key trade journals, and make your living closing the bingo cards. Or you could exhibit at a trade show, and there'd be enough business cards in the fish bowl to last 'til the next show came along.

Now, however, everything's changed. You're competing with everyone from the Fortune 500 to a teeny-bopper blogger for attention.

Still think you know what you're doing?


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With Pay-per-Lead, You're Asking to Fail


Pay-per-lead and performance-based marketing programs may sound appealing. But do you honestly believe that the vendor's business model won't somehow put all the cost and risk - and worse - right back on you?


If you don't think this is what's going on behind the scenes, we have a bridge to sell you.


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We Know You're Struggling, So We've Got Your Back!


The economic crisis due to the pandemic is affecting almost every business. As a result, many companies whose sales are down are caught in a Catch-22: They need to increase their marketing to attract whatever business is still out there, but there's not enough budget available to pay for it.

To help you get out of the bind, we just lowered our prices - just in time to save the day!


When it comes to marketing, you get what you pay for (see here). But at LeadGen.com, if we can find a way to deliver the results you need and still be your most cost-effective option, we're going to be there for you.

Because that's what Superheroes do.


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It's Now or Never


Just like the best time to buy stock is during a recession, the best time to buy market share is when your competitors are in lockdown. Media is at its lowest price. Prospects have nothing to do but talk to vendors. And, for many people, reading your content is a whole lot better than watching the news.

Everyday you wait to crank up your marketing program is a day closer to when it goes back to being too expensive to implement.


Classic marketing theory tells us that higher market share equates to higher profitability. So the more market share you can pick up now, the more profitable you'll be when the economy comes back.

It also tells us that the best time to gain market share is during an economic downturn. And with 36,000,000 unemployed, I think today qualifies.

Whatever is holding you back, suck it up. It's now or never.


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Getting Back Your Market


Social distancing has impacted all sorts of relationships - not the least of which are your business relationships.

The lockdown has caused customers to cancel orders, and many have even gone out of business.

But we can help you bring them back, and find new ones, too.


At LeadGen.com we have dozens of solutions designed to help clients increase their sales. And at no time has that been more important than now.

If you want to get back in the game, all you have to do is bark.


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Nobody Knows Nothing


William Goldman, the screenwriter, once said, regarding how to make a successful movie, that "Nobody knows nothing." What he meant was that there are simply too many unknowable factors that can influence the box office to be able to create a formula for success. So you try a bunch of things, and you hope they work.

The same can be said of Marketing - which is why we built LeadGen.com as a "one-stop shop."


When we recommend a solution to a client from among the dozens we have available, it's always based on our unbiased and educated analysis of their situation. But we always add the caveat that there's a risk that it might not work - because risk is intrinsic to Marketing.

If it works, great; we can scale it up. And if it doesn't work, we have dozens of other solutions we can try.

Because Nobody Knows Nothing.


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There's No Us without "U"


You've heard the saying that there's no "I" in Team. It means, of course, that a team's success often requires the sublimation of individual egos.

At LeadGen.com we have a similar saying - that there's no "us" without "u."

What it means, though, may not be what you expect.


What it means is that we're really good at sales and marketing. But since we don't actually have a product or service, we're pretty useless unless we have a client who has something to sell.

That, and, like most sales and marketing people, we're pretty bad at spelling.


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Lighting the Way to Success


When it comes to helping clients achieve success, it's not just the company's top line revenue that counts. That's because the success of a campaign is often made up of a lot of little wins - one salesperson at a time, and one appointment at a time.

And that's exactly what happened with a client in the advertising business.


The salesperson was struggling to make his numbers, and was threatened with the loss of his job if he couldn't bring in more sales. So we blitzed his territory, and got him appointments at two major pharmaceutical firms.

The bad news was that it was incredibly expensive, and incredibly hard to do, since we were just coming out of the 2009 recession.

The good news was that he landed one of the accounts, and it saved his job.

Score one for the good guys.


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Cost-per-Lead in a Recession


Back in 2008-2009 we were curious about the variation in cost-per-lead. Some clients wanted to cancel their campaigns because they were afraid it was going to get too expensive.

Those who stopped their programs regretted it.


As you can see from the graph, cost-per-lead does go up during a recession. This is primarily because contact rates (dials-per-contact) go up as people become harder to reach. However when we do get them on the phone, they're more likely to engage, and express interest. So, while the cost-per-lead goes up, it does not go to infinity.

Even more important was the observation that close rates tended to go up quite a bit, although the sell cycles protracted.

The net effect was that the profitability of the program can go down a little in a recession, or go up a lot, depending on what you're selling. But stopping was universally a bad idea.


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Need a Miracle?


We can't make the pandemic, or the recession, magically go away. But investing in marketing now can help mitigate the damage it does to your business.


Every business is unique. So while your goal may be the same as that of every other business owner (e.g. survival), how you do that is going to be unique to your situation, to your resources and to your particular market.

The fact is that what works for someone else isn't the same as what's going to work for your company.

But whatever you do, don't just sit home and watch Netfix. Ramp up your Marketing. Or at least rub a lamp.


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Now More than Ever


For most businesses, the first thing they cut in a downturn is Marketing. After all, it's easy to cut. And many companies figure they can just re-start it when things get better.

Talk about being "penny-wise and pound foolish"!


Isn't the definition of "things getting better" when sales come back? And isn't Marketing the very thing that drives demand? Therefore, by cutting your Marketing, aren't you prolonging the misery?

The irony is that most companies should increase their marketing spend in a recession, not decrease it. Go after your competitors' customers. Position yourself to get the business when they start spending again. Make new friends.

We may have taken a hit; but the world did not stop spinning. So call your Marketing expert and ask them what they think you should do. It's when money is tightest that you need to be the most creative.


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Find New Ways to Serve Customers


Despite the fact that your business is down due to the coronavirus pandemic, and you may have even laid people off, finding new ways to serve your customers is important to the survival of your business, and of theirs.

Here's where "Reach Out and Touch Someone" can come in handy, besides just expressing empathy.


Your customers and prospects may think of you as providing your traditional products and services to solve their traditional problems. But what if you engage them in a conversation where you see where and how you can help them with their new challenges?

We know that things will change. And many of your customers will have to change their own business models to survive. Ask them what they're thinking. And then see if you can adjust your business model to better fit their current and future needs.

You'll be amazed at the new opportunities that can arise - for both of you.


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Buy Market Share Now!


There's no question that the coronavirus pandemic has brought unimaginable personal tragedy and economic havoc.

But as a business owner, your ability to see through the chaos, and take advantage of the unique opportunity that it presents, will determine how your business does when the recession ends. That's because, just like the best time to buy stocks is when the market is down, a recession is the ideal time to buy market share.


Think about it: Your competitors have cut their marketing budgets to save money, making it easier for your message to get through.

Your customers and prospects are working from home - often at a reduced capacity - making them more receptive to your call.

And even the media is cheaper because fewer businesses are competing for the channels.

As a famous politician once said, "Never let a crisis go to waste." Today, the more marketing you do, the more market share you'll gain, and the more profitable you'll be when the crisis is over.


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Marketing in the Time of Covid-19


Could there be any time in the history of business more fraught than today?

With unemployment exceeding 10%, and a contraction of 25% or more in GDP predicted for 2Q20, there's no clear path back to prosperity for the economy. And for many businesses, there may be no clear path to survival either. But there is one thing you should do.


Experience tells us that the one thing you need to do in times like these is connect with people, and that includes your customers and your prospects. Call them. Find out if they're okay. Let them know you're okay. Tell them you care. And ask: Is there anything I can do to help?

Marketing is about making a connection, and it's more important now than ever. So Reach Out and Touch Someone.

So, are you okay? And is there anything we can do to help?


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The Coronavirus Survival Guide


Has your business just taken a hit from the lockdown? Just wait and see what the upcoming recession does to it!


If you think everything's going back to normal when the lockdowns lift, think again. It's like thowing a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle up in the air, and hoping it lands back on the table intact.

Too many pieces in the supply chain have been broken - and many of them are gone for good.

The good news is that recessions create new opportunities. Call LeadGen.com and we can help you find yours.


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The Government Knows What to Do


The coronavirus pandemic has obliterated demand for many products and services; and it will take months, if not years, for many markets to come back.

In the spirit of being creative, we thought we'd ask the government for advice, since they weren't very forthcoming with PPP money.

Although the EPA isn't the government agency one would normally ask for business advice, with everything else going upside down, why not consider their out-of-the-box solutions, too?


According to the EPA, there are three things they said we should do: reduce, reuse and recycle.

• Reduce - Cut your costs as much as you can.

• Reuse - Don't waste money trying to come up with new marketing content. Take last year's content and post it again. No one read it the first time, so don't worry.

• Recycle - Take all of your old prospect lists, and work them again. Who knows? You might get lucky.

Next week: We ask HUD what they think we should do.


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Lockdown Marketing


In our more serious posts, we talk about the importance of communicating with your prospects and customers during the lockdown. And we stress empathy over commerce, rapport over results.

But when you see us in our top hat, don't expect to get news you can use. Like this:


The key to Lockdown Marketing is to recognize that you have a captive audience. Many of your prospects are quarantined with their children, and they long for an adult conversation.

To help them in their hour of need, be sure to use full sentences. Allow them to vent as much as they need to. And if the call is interrupted, wait patiently until their child is done whining before beginning your sales pitch.

Finally, if your prospect starts taking to you like a five-year-old, remember, it's probably just Stockholm Syndrome.


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Closing Techniques for the Pandemic


The economic collapse brought about by the coronavirus lockdown has inspired some of the brightest minds in Sales and Marketing to develop new and innovative solutions to the problem of generating sales.

If your company needs help with top line revenues, try these powerful closing techniques.


The Assumed Close: "Since since you answered the phone, I assume you still have a job. So would you like to place an order?"

The Forced-Choice Close: "Like you, we were forced to close our office. But in case you have any money left, is there anything I can do to convince you to spend some of it with us?"

The Reverse Close: "If you buy something from us today, I promise to reverse the transaction before your payment is due."

The Take-It-Away Close: "I have Covid-19. Do you know anyone who can take it away?"

The Thermometer Close: "On a scale of 98.6 to 105, what are the chances we can do this deal?"


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Avoiding the Covid 19


While most of us are hunkered down trying to avoid catching Covid-19, we also run the risk of something almost as life-threatening: the Covid 19.


Much like the Freshman 15, the Covid 19 is weight gain brought about by a sudden change in environment, stress and proximity to junk food, made worse by the reduced opportunity for exercise.

Many people have found that, without the peer pressure that keeps them from scarfing down donuts all day, life in the lockdown has become a constant battle to stay out of the kitchen.

To regain self-control, try putting pictures of your former colleagues on the refrigerator.


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Dressing for Success


When "casual Friday" gave way to everyday "business casual," many people felt that informality had been taken a step too far. And now, with the Covid-19 lockdown encouraging sweatsuit video-conferencing, we may have reached the apotheosis of ease.

But the question for today is: how should you dress while waiting for the economy to come back?


The fashion experts we spoke to were unanimous in their recommendations.

For men, make sure that the dominant color in your N95 mask matches the secondary color of your suit.

For women, the color of your mask should match that of your shoes.

And for those with more fluid gender, you can choose whatever mask you feel comfortable with.


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Social Distance Marketing


We all know what Social Media Marketing is. But are you taking advantage of the most important innovation in marketing to date? Introducing: Social Distance Marketing!

While Social Media Marketing takes advantage of the unique ability of Websites and technologies like Facebook and LinkedIn to connect people across thousands of miles, Social Distance Marketing takes advantage of the powerful technology of shouting to reach across the gaping six foot divide now separating most of humanity.

Never before have so many had the tools they need to connect, right at their fingertips.


Social Distance Marketing requires nothing more than a modest increase of air flow and laryngeal tension to maximize the volume of your communications. Simply think of what you want to say, and say it louder.

Even when your face is protected by an N95 mask, Social Distance Marketing can still provide a powerful way to get your message out. This is because most people have become quite adept at reading facial expressions from the cues provided by your eyebrows.


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Converting Clicks into Clicks


Many Digital Marketers know the importance of hitting their KPIs. No one wants to hear that traffic is down just because the unemployment rate has hit 25%.

So what can you do to maintain the illusion that digital marketing still works?


Inserting an automatic "refresh" command into your landing pages can work wonders. It can result in a near-instantaneous doubling of traffic, thereby insuring that you can keep your job for another week.

For a more long-term solution, you can drive traffic stats through the roof simply by clicking on your page controls, right from the convenience of your home office.


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Sales Training for the Coronavirus Recession


Many companies train their employees in sophisticated sales techniques that are extremely effective in normal times. But how should you adapt your sales training when 30% of your prospects - and maybe even 30% of your own employees - have lost their jobs?

For example, traditionally, Sales Managers have encouraged their reps to "call high," because that's where the decisions are made. But what do you do when the C-Level is the one who's answering the phones?


Here's where role playing really pays off. First, when you dial the phone, and someone answers and says "hello," don't say "hello" back. Instead, say "Can you please hold for Mr. Jones?" using your best Administrative Assistant voice. Then put your hand over the mouthpiece, and sing Happy Birthday twice.

Then remove your hand from the mouthpiece, and, using your normal voice, continue with your sales call.

If the prospect agrees to an appointment, be sure to hand the phone back to your "Administrative Assistant" - because they keep your calendar, of course.


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Teaching Your Dog to Sell


Now that you've let go of most of your employees, it's critical that you put your remaining resources to work keeping the business afloat - and that includes your dog.

Experts will tell you that breed matters. Some breeds, such as those in the hound group, are simply incapable of reading a script. And others, like Chihuahua's, will tend to yap at your customers.

Best are "smart" breeds like border collies, French poodles and German Shepherds - the latter two having the additional advantage of being bi-lingual.


Also, don't ignore how compelling a puppy can be. People who would never think of doing business with you will stop by, and - at a distance of at least six feet - will tell you that they'd love to pet your dog once the lockdown is over.


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Letting Your Children Run Your Social Media Campaign


If you find yourself quarantined at home with your children, you're in luck!

Imagine being stranded on a desert island with Tom Hanks. Imagine being locked in an Escape Room with MacGuyver. Imaging being on Jeopardy with Ken Jennings talking in your earpiece!

You have THE expert right there with you - and you may not even need to pay them for their help.


If you're like most business owners, Social Media is a dark art. But to your kids, it's the Lingua Franca.

Just give them the password to your LinkedIn account, and watch your connections soar. Hook them up with your blog, and you'll have more followers than you know what to do with. Let them take over your company's chat system and watch your NPS go through the roof!

And don't worry if it doesn't produce the right kind of traffic. As long as they spell your company's name correctly, right?


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Running a Business When You have No Customers


Of all the challenges brought on by the coronavirus, one of the most difficult is maintaining your revenue stream when so many of your customers have gone to ground.

Fortunately there are numerous examples of companies that have survived for many months without adequate revenues.


The key to surviving is being able to convince investors of how great things are going to be once the threat passes. Companies such as Pets.com, Blockbuster, Tower Records and the Trump Taj Mahal all managed to persuade bankers to lend them money, while they projected an air of confidence in the future.

Just remember to wear a suit and tie when you make your funding pitch over Zoom, although pants are optional.


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Re-Starting Your Business in the Stone Age


When we come out of the lockdown, many businesses will face the challenge of finding customers who have disappeared over the last few weeks. And the economy may have taken a few steps back.

Fortunately, modern Marketing offers a number of effective techniques.


Try these time-tested methods to get people's attention:

• Blow into a conch shell.
• Send up smoke signals
• Messenger pigeons

Remember, even though it took 5,000 years to build the economy to where it was, we can do it again!


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Good vs Bad Cold Calling


One of our guys made a call yesterday to someone he had tried unsuccessfully many times to get an appointment with. Instead of hanging up on our caller, the prospect told our guy that, while he gets many calls, he hangs up on all of them. But he always appreciates our guy's call. And when he has a need for the product, we're going to get his business.


Let's unpack this. Here's a guy who probably gets a dozen calls per day from various vendors. And he's gotten really good at differentiating the good ones from the bad ones - so much so that it's become part of his business plan.

How sure are you that your callers are saying the right things, and not simply becoming phone fodder?

What you say, and how you say it, matter. And at LeadGen.com we can help you put together a talk track that's not going to put yours in the pile of "Thanks, but no thanks" calls.


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Educational Software Company - Recession Era Case History


A company that sold educational curricula and software had developed an extensive network of independent reps to market their products. But as the Great Recession took hold in 2008, the reps turned to the vendor for increased marketing support.

So the vendor turned to us.


Recessions have a way of changing channels of distribution. Budgets get shifted around and priorities change. And people - including decision makers - lose or shift their jobs. So we had to develop a whole new go-to-market strategy, because nothing the company had previously been doing worked any longer.

It took a bit of work, but within three months revenues were projected to exceed their pre-recession levels.


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Accounting Firm - Recession Era Case History


A mid-sized regional accounting firm was up against a flood of client losses and defections as the 2008 recession took hold. So they doubled down, and turned their IT guy into a producer.


Maybe he was a salesman at heart, but he instantly took to our sales training. We researched the prospects, and set the appointments, scripted his pitch, and even went out on buddy calls - until the business started rolling in.


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Blog Post 177

How I Survived the Recession (1976 edition)


I hid out in graduate school!


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Window Treatment Company - Recession Era Case History.


Bringing out a new technology in a recession may seem like a bad idea. But the alternative – holding fast – can be worse if that market is going to disappear. Here's how we helped one company make it happen.


Bringing out a new technology in a recession may seem like a bad idea. But the alternative – holding fast to the old way of doing things – can be worse if you believe that market is going to disappear. So when a company that manufactured window shades for the past 80 years decided to become a systems integrator, they were taking a serious plunge into the unknown.

To be sure, by 2008 Leed, solar, automated building controls, and other green technologies were starting to make inroads. But with new construction coming to a halt due to the recession, the retrofit market could hardly be counted on to support the training, tooling and stocking – no less the marketing – necessary to be a player. But positioning is everything in business, and first movers get the worm.

With LeadGen.com’s help, the company saturated the market with calls, brochures, promotions, events and messaging, so that if there was a decision maker out there, they’d know about the window treatment company and the new technologies they were offering. And if there was a project out there, the window treatment company would know about it, and jump on it with a proposal.

They also did their homework. Where the old way of doing things focused primarily on esthetics, the new business model focused on economics, worker comfort, and energy savings. Starting from scratch, the company redefined how the decisions would be made, assuring their account control, and their ultimate survival.

Oh, and it didn’t hurt that LeadGen.com got them almost 300 appointments.


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Social Distancing


For many of us, the coronavirus has turned our world upside down. We're being asked to make sacrifices for our neighbors, and for the vulnerable.

And many businesses are being forced to close; sadly, many never to open again.

So can we see what the world will look like on the other side, and how to make it in the new world?


It's unimaginable that things will go back to the way they were. Until we have a vaccine, we'll have to make a few more accommodations to the pandemic. The social compact may change, too. It changed after 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic (The Roaring Twenties, anyone?) And it changed after the depression.

From an economic perspective, it means that some businesses won't survive. And new ones will be created. That's just the magic of the free market at work.

From a marketing perspective, though, I don't think anything's going to change - at least insofar as what should be your guiding principle:

Provide value.


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Direct Mail Company - Recession Era Case History


Surviving a recession and prospering on the other side is tricky. For one direct mail business, making that jump took a lot of hard work, and help from LeadGen.com, but it paid off. Find out how they did it.


If there’s one thing you can guarantee in a recession, it’s that some businesses, and some industries, won’t survive, But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go down fighting. What matters is that: 1) you do whatever you can to survive, and 2) you figure out what kind of business you need to become in order prosper when the recession is over.

Surviving a recession and prospering on the other side is tricky. You have to keep generating revenues using your old business model, while you figure out a new business model that’s going to work in the new economy.

Some say it’s like trying to get to second base without taking your foot off of first. Or like changing the tires while the car is still moving.

For one company that happened to be in the direct mail business – which was basically the 2008 version of selling buggy whips – making that jump took a lot of hard work, and help from LeadGen.com, but it paid off.

The most important element in the company’s survival and ultimate success was the owner’s recognition that, while their historic strength was in producing direct mail, that was just a medium. Their ability to write effective content (which, in the direct mail world was referred to derisively as “copy”) was a hidden and latent strength that could be leveraged in the emerging digital world.

The strategy we created was to reach out to their traditional prospect base, but also to simultaneously look for the nascent digital departments and try to get in there, too, which we did over 100 times. Bringing the two groups together not only provided an added value to the prospect, but it opened the door for the client to position themselves successfully in a growing market.

And that’s where they are today – a leading content provider in their industry.


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All Hands on Deck


Many companies have reduced their staff levels in response to the coronavirus lockdown. And they've told those they've retained to get on the phones and look for new business in an effort to shore up revenues.

It's a great idea. What could go wrong?


Two things stand in the way of implementing a successful All Hands on Deck strategy. First, the people on the phones have to know how to sell. And, second, they need to have the opportunity to sell.

In many cases, the people who have been retained already have too much critical work to do - which is why they were retained in the first place. With so many hours in the day, when are they supposed to make cold calls?

And unless they actually know how to sell, they may be doing more harm than good.

If you're going to do this, at least give them some high-quality sales training. And then Sales Manage them, including blocking out time to make calls, and tracking metrics.


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Crossing the Abyss


There's no question that, for many businesses, the coronavirus lockdown represents an existential threat.

But what, for some companies, may be an uncrossable chasm, for others it's just a long jump.

At LeadGen.com we believe that, while not every business can make it to the other side, there are certain fundamentals that can give you the greatest chance of success, and survival.


Like many periods of economic trauma, the coronavirus lockdown will separate those who follow the time-tested rules of Marketing and Sales from those have been getting a free ride on the growth in GDP.

To be clear: Now is the time to get back to fundamentals. Understand your value proposition in terms that are meaningful to your customers and prospects, and make sure you talk about it. Redouble your efforts to find new business. And remember that the person on the other end of the transaction is a person, and treat them as such. Share your strength, your compassion and your talents. It costs nothing, yet it can help so much.


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A Solution to the PPP/UI Conundrum


For many companies, like LeadGen.com, who are looking for commission-only sales and marketing reps, candidates who turn down a job offer because they believe they can make more money on unemployment is a problem.

But there's a solution: Defer their commissions.


Ironically, many of these folks are understandably deferring their mortgage payments. But that's a bill that will come due at some point.

By deferring commissions until the lockdown ends, they can stay on UI, while building up their commissions - payable just in time to pay their mortgage balloon.


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What Now?


It took you years to build your business. And it took six weeks for the coronavirus to destroy it.

Your customers have vanished. Your employees have been laid off. And you're not even sure your industry will survive.

What do you do now?


We work with a lot of companies, and everyone's situation is different. But what we know from history is that, if you can stay in touch with your customers and your prospects, you have the best chance of coming out the other side intact.

Unless you can make PPE. In which case, what are you doing reading this!?!?


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PPP vs UI


Congratulations, we're now in an economic death spiral. The employees you just laid off can make more money collecting unemployment than they can make coming back to work now that you got your PPP check.


What's next? We go back to the Stone Age because it doesn't pay to work?


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How You Can Have Your PPP, and They Can Have Their UI, Too


If you had to lay off your employees in response to the lockdown, and they're now on unemployment, they may not want to come back to work - thanks to the brilliance of our bureaucrats. In some states they may actually be making more money by being on unemployment than by working for you.


While outsourcing can't replace all of your employees, it can hold the fort for some of your people, such as those in sales or marketing, until demand is there, and they're ready to come back.


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Who Gets the Life Preservers?


You're the Captain. The boat is sinking. There's you, your Marketing Manager, and your Sales person. And you have only two life preservers. Who gets them?


Hard times have a tendency to concentrate the mind. And for most companies in today's crisis, it's the Marketing Manager who's going to become shark bait.

But is that the right answer?

What if the market comes back? Who's easier to replace? Who's got the better ROI?

The knee-jerk response is to hold onto your salesperson. But we can tell you what the right answer is.


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Are Your Sales Down 40% or More?


Have your sales have fallen more than 40% YTD? What are you doing reading this? You need to call us RIGHT NOW!!!


At LeadGen.com we have dozens of experts, decades of experience, and more solutions than you can shake a stick at.

Give us ten minutes to see if we can help.

What do you have to lose?


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Misery Loves Company


We've often preached that stories sell. That's why we make such a big deal about case histories. People love stories. And a compelling case history can create interest, while getting the prospect to visualize themselves as a customer.


In case you don't know how to write one, click here.

As for misery loving company: Part of what makes a case history effective is telling the story of a customer who was having a problem (that's the misery part) - before they met you.

The "company" part is when the prospect sees, through your case history, that they're not alone.

(Let us write one for you, and we can turn your company around.)


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Our Straight-Commission Opportunity


At LeadGen.com, we offer EVERY solution known to man, insofar as solving sales and marketing problems are concerned. As part of our growth program, we are providing support to independent sales and marketing agents who would like to market or sell our services.


While the position is commission-only, the receptivity of the market for the service is very high because, as a one-stop shop we are unbiased as to what solution to recommend. It also means we're more objective than the competition, and so what we recommend usually works.

In addition, the commissions come early because because sales close relatively quickly, and the close rates are high.

If you're interested, click here


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FREE Cold Calling Training


One way to fight back against the recession is to crank up the cold calling. We made our Cold Calling for Professionals PDF book free for a while. But you may not know where to find it.


Here's the link: Cold Calling for Professionals


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Incentivize Loyalty


Even though your margins are getting squeezed to the bone, you have to try to find a way to do something extra for your customers and your prospects these days.


Remember, they're probably hurting. Maybe their job is in jeopardy. Maybe a loved one is sick. Or maybe they're just stressed out by all the craziness.

Find something you can give them to lighten their burden. If you have a discount, bump it for a month as a way to say thanks. If you have a service that you normally charge for, but that you could maybe do for free, offer it up. If you have a stress ball that you handed out at your last trade show, stick it in the mail as a way to tell people you're thinking of them.

(Quick question: Does our giving you these tips help relieve any of your stress?)


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It's the Thought that Counts


Before they're prospects or customers, they're people first - even if they're hiding behind a mask - which, actually, when you think about it, makes today not so unusual.


When you're making your cold calls, take an extra moment to build a little extra rapport. Ask how they're doing, and how their family is doing.

Showing that you care doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get the business. But not showing that you care - at a time when the world has gone crazy - can almost guarantee that you won't get the business.


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A New Definition for Viral Marketing


While the irony of a tweet or blog post going viral as being something good is lost on precisely no one, the question of how the lockdowns, and the pandemic in general, impacts marketing is a serious one.


Every company's situation is different, of course. So we'll try to cover different cases over the next few posts. (Our general response is presented here.)

The first question is: What kind of business are you in? If you're in an essential business, you face a different problem from those businesses that have not been deemed essential. And, in all likelihood, marketing isn't your biggest problem right now.

But if your business is considered non-essential, you need to redouble your marketing efforts so that people know who you are, and remember you, of course. Because if you don't, your competitor will.

Insofar as content is concerned, the most important thing you need to do is figure out what you can do to help your prospects and customers today. Then call them and offer it. If all it is is consolation, as we've said before, fine. Reach Out and Touch Someone.

But if you have something substantive you can do for them, and it doesn't cost you too much, find a way to do it.

At LeadGen.com, for example, we've traditionally charged for our Initial Assessment, which enables us to figure out how you can achieve your growth goals. But because of the current situation, we're doing it for free. You can get yours by filling out the questionnaire here.

And, like we said, no charge.


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Lessons from Experience: Engage Like Your Life Depended on It


It's hard for many of us to deal with the devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic. For example, I often have to console my wife, who's a physician, for a good 10-15 minutes each evening when she gets home from work; though I know it's much worse for the families of Covid-19's victims. And for those who've *only* lost their jobs, or whose businesses face bankruptcy, it can seem like the end of the world.

In this era of social distancing, though, there's really only one solution.


The power of human connection isn't diminshed by the lack of physical contact, it's just challenged. Sure, we have two ears and only one mouth so we can listen twice as much as we speak. But today your voice is more important than ever - because there's someone out there who needs to know you care.

One of our Lead Generation Specialists, with the blessing of a far-sighted client, decided to just start calling prospects to ask how they're doing. No sales pitch; just a hello. Most are working from home, if you can even call it that. But all of them appreciated the call. And all of them have told Audrey (our LGS) that she'll get their orders once they start buying again - without being prodded.

I guess I'm not surprised. At its core, good Marketing is all about making a connection - a human connection.


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Who's Responsibility Is the Conversion Rate?


In spite of all the many ways there are to promote your business today, it doesn't do any good if you can't ultimately engage the prospect in a dialog about his needs and problems in the context of his willingness to pay you to solve them. So, what needs to be done?


First,it would be nice, by the way, if the prospect was a decision maker, or at least an influencer.

So, providing him with information, if there's no intent or ability to buy, is just a waste of time and money. And improving metrics that don't connect directly to sales is delusional. Your marketing process must account for the conversion of the contact into an appointment. Otherwise it's just shouting in an empty room.

And putting the burden on your salespeople to convert "junk" leads into opportunities doesn't solve the problem either. It merely shifts the cost to them - sometimes perniciously so.

In short, if the marketing department designed the program, then the cost of conversion is theirs to bear. At LeadGen, generating qualified sales leads and getting you in the door - whether we do it or we help you do it - is what we're all about.

Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today!


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How to Confront a Recession


In a recession, marketing tends to take the first budget cuts, but with our experience in recessions this most often proves to be a fatal mistake. What should you be doing?


With the current economic downturn experts say we are already in a recession. This leaves many businesses wondering where they should cut costs. Studies and experience prove marketing should be last on the list, and then only surgically.

In order to survive a recession, as a business owner you need to take 3 steps.

Step 1: Understand the value in marketing and ramp it up consistently.

Since marketing is an essential function to any business it is also lifeline to surviving a recession. Through marketing, a business can reach new customers and gain sales from previous customers. Therefore, marketing is an investment not merely an expense.

Step 2: Have the guts to be more aggressive during hard times.

Being aggressive does not mean throwing money at every marketing outlet available. It is important to take a strategic approach and spend more but spend wisely. It does take guts to spend more when the outlook is gloomy but it has been proven to pay off.

Step 3: Organize budget and resources strategically.

They keys to this is doing your research, outsourcing we your can to reduce costs and risks,closely measure results to identify what works, diversify your marketing spend and focus on improving conversions.

Want to learn more about how you can take the right steps? Contact LeadGen.com today! We can help!


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The B2B Sell Cycle


Converting a prospect from someone who doesn't know you exist into a willing, paying client takes more than just putting up a Web site, or showing up at a trade show. There are specific steps that you must take the prospect through. What are they?


This is illustrated below on The B2B Sell Cycle. If you find yourself spinning your wheels, reach out to us to find out what you need to be doing and how we can customize a solution to overcome any Barrier to Success you might encounter.

Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today!


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What Is a Qualified Sales Lead?


If you sell into any market, the key to business growth - and the fulcrum between your marketing and sales programs - is the "qualified sales lead." But, what makes a sales lead qualified?


No matter what you sell, or to whom you sell it, producing qualified leads is the key to success. For while everyone thinks that "nothing ever happens until somebody sells something," we know that "no one ever sold anything until they got in the door." No matter what you sell the only thing that matters, as far as your marketing program is concerned, should be the production of qualified sales leads.

So how do we define a qualified sales lead?

A qualified sales lead is a confirmed appointment with a decision maker (or strong decision influencer), who needs your company's products or services, and who wants to talk with you about how you can help. In short, a qualified sales lead is the first step in the sales process. And so it should be the last step in your marketing process. Nothing else matters.

Not clicks. Not opens. Not impressions. Not downloads, eyeballs, exposures, inquiries, visitors, time-on-site, lead score, page rank, or names on a mailing list. If you can't convert it into an appointment, it doesn't count.

Need more sales? Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today!


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Blog Post 154

At LeadGen we are 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. So, what does this mean?


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) isn'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.

Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today!


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Blog Post 153

Not sure where your next lead is coming from? Really? What does that feel like?


Do you need more sales? Are your channel partners neglecting you? Do you even know whether there's any opportunity out there, no less how to get at it?

Let us know your challenges!

Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today!


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The Channel Partner Paradox


Channel partners such as manufacturers reps, VARs and distributors provide an appealing way for you to get into new markets. But could they do more harm than good?


The typical way that channel partners can hurt you is by asking youto cut your price - even as they stand pat on their commission rate. Most channel partners rarely bring you into new customers. And they require extremely high levels of expensive and time-consuming support. Did you really think they were just going to hand you the business for free?

Find out how to Get More from Your Channel Partners without giving away the store.

Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today!


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The Embarrassment of riches


Do you have more leads than you know what to do with? How can that be a problem?


If you're like most people, the problem isn't that you have too many leads. It's that too many of the leads are no good. Or, in technical terms: they're "unqualified."

Marketing programs that produce unqualified are a waste of time and money. And efforts made to qualify them are like throwing good money after bad.

Stop the madness.

Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today!


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Blog Post 150

When it comes to Sales and Marketing, there's only one metric that matters: Is there a gap between "where you are" and "where you want to be"? Usually represented in what's called a "Gap Report". What does that report tell you?


Whether you're concerned about your sales, your market share, or your profitability, at LeadGen.com helping you achieve your goals is what we're all about: Making sure you close your gap, and hit your numbers.

If you're like most people who run a business, at some point you'll set a goal for revenue. Maybe it's enough to make payroll. Maybe it's enough to boost your stock price. But effective sales and marketing starts with goal-setting. So let's go ahead and set a revenue goal.

Do you have a number to hit?

Tell us your revenue goal and we will make sure you hit it. Call LeadGen.com today!


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Blog Post 149

Despite the proliferation of electronic media and the micro-segmenting of markets, there is no new magic bullet for finding new business and making sales happen. What do you need to do?


You still need to: Get past gatekeepers, stimulate interest, uncover needs, and get an appointment with a decision maker who has a need, and is willing to talk with you about how you can help.

You can get more exposure online than you can with traditional print media (but the clutter is worse). Email may provide a more efficient way to get information into your prospects' hands than snail mail (but try getting around the spam filter). But to make sales happen you still have to talk to the prospect - sometimes just to reach him, often to stimulate interest, almost always to uncover needs, but universally to establish the trust, rapport and credibility to close.

That's the fundamental of sales that hasn't changed and will never change. Success in sales is still all about sales skills. And while our technological advances can make us more efficient, success is still all about finding the prospect, getting his attention, stimulating interest, and gaining a commitment to meet or to talk. Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today!


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Blog Post 148

Sales are down, so you turn to marketing to stimulate demand. But there is a problem. It seems nothing is working. What can you do?


Maybe you decide to exhibit at a couple of trade shows for $10,000 per show. But no decision-makers attend, and the only people who do come to your booth are other exhibitors who want to sell you something. And three months later when you ask your salespeople what happened to the leads you got from the shows, you find out that none of them were ever called. (By the way, industry statistics show that 96% of trades show leads are never contacted!

So, then you decide to spend $10,000 on Search Engine Optimization. But did you get any business out of it? If you're like most companies, and you really run the calculation, your cost per lead on the Web is probably in excess of $5,000 – if you get anything at all. So, you decide to create a new brochure and send out some direct mail. You buy a data base, spend $15,000 and barely get any leads, and most of them are "tire-kickers." And the money you spent on trade advertising? The typical cost-per-appointment for trade advertising exceeds $1,500!

The problem is, though, that without prospecting for new accounts, your business can fail.

Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today!


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Blog Post 147

Time was, when you needed sales, you could go out and recruit someone who knew how to make it happen. What is different today?


Once upon a time, they were unafraid. They had skills. And they knew how to bring home the bacon.

Today, when someone tells you that they can make it rain, they usually mean that they can generate a bunch of clicks, views, exposures, likes, engagement and the list goes on. Ooh, you're really going to need an umbrella for that, aren't you. Need to really make it rain? Do you have a number to hit? Call LeadGen.com today!


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Blog Post 146

The Great Recession put many people out of work. And with companies cutting back on staff and expenses, a mid-west energy management firm was watching their consulting practice quickly dry up. Discover how they turned it around!


To help counter the recession, the government – as it often does – came out with a program that offered companies financial incentives for improving energy efficiency, and for investing in energy efficient technologies. Like many programs at the time, they were of short duration. And you had to have some expertise in the field to be able to take advantage of them.

The good news was that the energy management company had the expertise. They knew the technologies that qualified, and they knew how to navigate the paperwork. The bad news was that there was no way for them to cover the market, or even make a meaningful dent in it, before the incentive program ran out. So they called LeadGen.com.

The key to capitalizing on a short-term opportunity is to do your research, and do good research, up front because you don’t have time to waste. If you work for three months, and miss the market, you don’t get another chance.

So we blitzed the research, and then we blitzed the market.

In three months, we got them over 70 face-to-face appointments, virtually all of which closed successfully. They were able to capitalize on the incentive program and survive until their consulting business returned.


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Blog Post 145

Learn how a software developer survived the Great Recession when their sales ground to a halt, directly threatening their business.


A software company had developed a system for plumbers, builders, electricians and other contractors to better manage projects, bids, and payroll. They had started to market it broadly when the Great Recession shut down virtually all construction. As a result, the company’s new sales ground to a halt. And they ran the risk of not being able to recover their development costs. So, they called on LeadGen.com to help them figure out how to handle the recession.

At the time, trade magazines were still a popular way to reach contractors. So, they pumped up their print budget, only to see it wasted when the books went out of business. Trades shows, too, were being cancelled, closing off their other main way to reach the market. With these additional expenses, and without a way to reach their contractor market, they were soon in jeopardy of themselves going out of business.

In a last-ditch effort to save their business, they called LeadGen.com. And during a brief test, we recognized that we could reach the contractors in their offices, early in the mornings and late in the evenings by phone, so we put together a calling campaign.

In three months of calling we generated over 50 qualified leads for the company, over a third of which closed successfully, and profitably.

As a result of the campaign, the company was not only able to jump-start their revenue flow and recover their investment in development, but they were able to position themselves as a leader in the market. They prospered through the recession, and continue to thrive more than a decade later.


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Blog Post 144

In periods of economic prosperity, business often forget that rising sales aren’t caused by good marketing and appealing products or services alone. What else drives those sales?


Purchases depend on consumers’ having disposable income, feeling confident about their future, trusting in business and the economy, and embracing lifestyles and values that encourage consumption. In a recession, all those things can dissipate quickly. Do you have a risk management strategy that allows you to adjust to that new reality?


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Blog Post 143

In every recession business owner’s find themselves in poorly charted waters because no two downturns are exactly alike. There are patterns, however, that drive or undercut performance. What are those patterns?


First, business owners need to understand the evolving consumption patterns and accordingly, fine-tune their strategies. As a rule, during recessions consumers establish stricter priorities and reduce their spending. In turn, as sales start to drop, businesses respond by cutting costs, reducing prices, and postponing new investments. As part of these reductions, marketing expenditures in areas from communications to research are also slashed across the board—but such indiscriminate cost cutting is a fatal mistake. While it’s wise to contain costs, failing to support brands or examine core customers’ changing needs will cripple performance over the long term. Businesses that put customer needs under the microscope, use a scalpel rather than a cleaver on the marketing budget, and quickly adjust strategies, tactics, and product offerings in response to shifting demand are more likely than their competitors to flourish both during and after a recession.


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Blog Post 142

Trying to figure out a solid plan to counter a recession is challenging. General advice often doesn’t apply to your specific situation. So, what can you do?


There is so much at risk, but we are here to help. You need to conserve cash, but what you have needs to be spent on marketing so you don't die before the economy picks up again. You need to protect your market share, and if possible, pick up more. Because, if you don’t and you manage to survive the recession, your competitors will clean your clock on the uptake. The decisions you make now are critical, doing the right things will get you through, but doing the wrong things, the situation can and will spiral out of control quickly. That is where we can help. LeadGen.com has survived, and helped many companies survive and even thrive during recessions going all the way back to the 1970’s. Tap into our experience and expertise as you plot your way forward.


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Blog Post 141

Are Recessions optional? Absolutely! But what makes the difference?


The threats to your business will be minimized by specific actions you take to deal with the threats. Do nothing, and you will fail. Do the right things, and you can survive.


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Blog Post 140

Warning signs in a Recession. STOCK: increasing levels and static sales, deteriorating age profile, returns, delays in invoicing. So, what can you about these things?


Reduce stocks - continually clear out old/surplus lines, set minimum/maximum for each stock line, refuse to accept early deliveries, consider buying in bulk, minimize level of buffer stocks. Rule of Thumb: Don’t let inventories rise. Better to be out of stock than have to write off investment.


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Blog Post 139

Warning signs in a recession. CREDITORS: increasing age, checks "in drawer", lack of long-standing relationships, final demands or writs, arrears to Federal and/or State Tax Authorities. So, what can you about these things?


Negotiate longer credit periods, get the right balance without jeopardizing suppliers, know which are key, pay on pre-determined dates, meet regularly with suppliers. Rule of Thumb here: Cash is king. Keep as much of it as you can.


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Blog Post 138

Warning signs in a recession: DEBTORS: increasing age, credit limits exceeded, increasing reliance on individual customers, increased bad debts and credit/debit notes. So, what can you about these things?


Swifter invoicing, better credit control, reviewing credit periods offered, obtaining payments on delivery, factoring or invoice discounting, use collection agencies. Rule of thumb here: Even a small increase in age can mean the chickens have come home to roost. Do not die of a thousand cuts. Recognize the problem while it’s small.


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Blog Post 137

How important is strategic planning in a recession? Very important, but with an crucial caveat.


Focus on short-term strategy that builds in a high degree of flexibility to adapt. The question is: What are we going to do to make money this month, then next month, and then the month after that? How are we going to survive?


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Blog Post 136

How important is it to solidify your team during a recession? Extremely important. So, what do you need to do?


People need to know that you have a plan that’s going to get them, and their families, through this. But don’t just say you have a plan. Build one around increasing cash flow, sales and ROI, and get your people on board to implement it.


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Blog Post 135

In a recession, should you focus on developing your management team? Investing in management development in a recession runs counter to the mission at hand. What should you do instead?


Instead, find ways to re-focus managers on increasing cash-flow, sales and ROI; and measure them on it. If that requires training, fine; but the goal comes first.


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Blog Post 134

Should you focus on improving customer service in a recession? This is a good idea, but here are some things you need to do if you want a ROI.


First, reduce its cost. Cut out people and services that do not provide a near-term ROI. Then find ways to turn CSRs into resellers and upsellers.


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Blog Post 133

Should you focus on conducting sales training during a recession? Yes, there is something you should do first. Do you know what it is?


This is only a good idea if you have the right people. First fire your low performing 25%, then train the rest


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Blog Post 132

Should you increase word-of-mouth referrals during a recession. Yes, but with a caveat.


Only if you don't have any money to do anything else to increase your market share. When times are good, people usually have more money than time, so networking is relatively expensive. When times are bad, you usually have more time than money, and valuing your time at $0/hour is harmless. Go for it! But, by the same token networking is dangerous during a pandemic. And you are going to meet more people who want to sell to you than buy from you.


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Blog Post 131

In a recession, you should use “because we care” special promotions. But, do you know why this is effective?


Because your prospects and customers are hurting; sympathy reaches them.


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Blog Post 130

Should you use “Call to Action” Marketing in a recession? Bad idea! Do you know why?


In a recession, marketing should be focused on creating awareness of your business as an option, and be very focused on high-potential markets. The message shouldn’t be a call to action, but an offer to help.


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Blog Post 129

Should you focus on reducing debt in a recession? Nope! But why?


If you have high interest debt, refinance it at the lower interest rates the banks typically offer during a recession. If you don't have debt, but you see a clear opportunity that requires more cash than you have, go for it. Just be sure it's a profitable opportunity. But debt is designed to help you weather the bad times, as long as you can pay it back.


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Blog Post 128

In a recession, it is absolutely imperative to understand your costs. But, what does this mean you need to do?


Waste creeps into the process during good times because there’s no need to pinch pennies. Now’s the time to audit yourself and cut unnecessary expenses.


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Blog Post 127

How much should you listen you your employees in a recession? It depends, but on what?


This is a good idea, but with a caveat: Only listen to the good ideas, not the bad ones; but how do you know the difference? Only do things that will pay off in the near term.


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Blog Post 126

Should you cut expenses in a recession? Yes, but very carefully. Why is that?


You should strategically cut capacity, focusing on cutting people and resources that are relatively easy to replace and rebuild. But you should overinvest in sales and marketing, as that is the only way to replace the business you will inevitably lose.


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Blog Post 125

Should you add new components to your marketing plan in a recession? This is another Good idea. This is the time to get pro-active. But, what does that mean?


Put your company out there, in as many forums and media as possible, to increase the chances of a potential customer finding you


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Blog Post 124

In a recession, should you accommodate a variety of budgets? Another very good idea. But why?


Be flexible in how you package and price your products so you can find a way to say “yes,” and make a profit – no matter how small. Remember, now is the time to focus on market share. When the market comes back, then you can focus on maximizing revenue potential.


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Blog Post 123

When facing down a recession, should you contact past clients and leads? That is a good idea. But why?


The first phone call you should make is to lapsed customers, and see if you can re-kindle the relationship, and the revenue flow.


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Blog Post 122

Should you focus on your long-term goals in a recession? While that sounds correct, this amounts to nonsense. Why? If you don’t survive the short term, there is no long term. So, what should you do?


Stay focused on your short term need to maintain a positive cash flow.


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Blog Post 121

Should you adopt cutting edge technology to help you get through a recession? Unless the investment is going to pay off in 3 months or less, don’t do it. What should you do instead?


Extend the use of your assets, to conserve cash, for as long as possible in a recession.


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Blog Post 120

Should you Intensify your Marketing in a Recession? Definitely, you need to increase your sales to compensate for lost accounts. But why else is this so important?


So you can take advantage of your competitors’ instinct to cut back in marketing by increasing your own.


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Blog Post 119

Should you be providing Outstanding Customer Service in a recession? We are not against keeping your customers happy so you can retain them, but not at the expense of profit. So, what should you do?


Figure out what it will take to keep your profitable customers and give it to them; but feel free to lose the unprofitable ones.


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Blog Post 118

Should you consider diversification in a recession? Nonsense. In a weak economy, the potential advantage to your risk profile that diversification can offer is overwhelmingly outweighed by its cost. So, what should you do?


It’s much better to find one thing that you can do that will generate a profit and stick with it. Get rid of any activity that doesn’t make money quickly.


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Blog Post 108

The philosophy of Lao Tzu is simple: Accept what is in front of you without wanting the situation to be other than it is. Learn how LeadGen.com applies this philosophy.


Study the natural order of things and work with it rather than against it, for to try to change what is only sets up resistance. Nature provides everything without requiring payment or thanks, and also for all without discrimination – therefore let us present the same face to everyone and treat all men as equals, however they may behave. If we watch carefully, we will see that work proceeds more quickly and easily if we stop trying, if we stop putting in so much effort, if we stop looking for the results.

In the clarity of the still and open mind, truth will be reflected. We will come to appreciate the original meaning of the word "understand," which means to "stand under." We serve whatever or whoever stands before us, without any thought for ourselves. "Te" - which may be translated as "virtue" or "strength" - lies always in "Tao," or "natural law." In other words, Simply be.


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Blog Post 107

Now that you're growing your market share, remember that, as you add resources to acquire and fulfill on new business, you should create a Red Team to challenge all your assumptions.


Positive feedback in terms of increased sales and profitability can mask mis-steps in the market, so reserve some resource for second-guessing your strategy. A good function here doesn't cry wolf, though; they should be smart enough to tell you everything is okay, too.


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Blog Post 106

Taking your business to the next level implies that your marginal costs (e.g. for the acquisition of new business) will go down. But that doesn't mean they go to zero. But, what does it mean?


You still have to spend money to make money. And you also have to check to make sure that what you're doing works.

Scaling is particularly challenging once you decide to pull the trigger. How long do you let something run, if you think it's not working, before you pull the plug? (And do you really have the resources to stay in the game?) And then what metrics are really reliable to give you accurate feedback from the market? Hint: Do not believe your Marketing Manager!


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Blog Post 105

What you learned in Step 3 is never enough to enable true scaling. It only help establish the case, it doesn't close it. What else do you need to do?


You now need to come up with three or four more ways to reach your decision maker.

The misconception about the repetition effect is that your six touches can come from the same media. In fact, once the prospect sees the pattern, they can easily avoid you. You have to go in through a window, a door, and a crack in the floor.


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Blog Post 104

Articulating your value proposition is one of the hardest things for companies to do when scaling. Why is this?


This is because what worked in an opportunistic market rarely works at the next level.

This is where market research is, once again, critical. Understand your value from the customer's perspective. Brainstorm ways to articulate it. And test your messaging to make sure it works. Then rinse and repeat.


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Blog Post 103

Kottler defines "access" as the critical path item in any marketing initiative. So, what does this mean?


If you can't communicate with your prospects - and get their attention - you'll never be able to stimuate their interest.

More money has been spent on not reaching decision makers than on anything else in marketing (See John Wanamaker, 1932). Take the time to design your marketing and media plan so it actually puts your message in front of the people who you need to see it. Otherwise, you'll never see a positive ROI.


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Blog Post 102

The next thing you have to do is market research. Get off your butt and talk to people. Confirm that your advantage is real, and that it would definitely motivate them to buy from you.


Remember that you're taking your business to the next level, so you're not plowing new ground. Talking to people who don't already buy from you, and asking them if they would buy from you, enables you to confirm that your differential advantage isn't just a vanity.


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Blog Post 101

Taking your business to the next level first requires that there is a next level to take it to. Wanting to be bigger doesn't necessarily make being bigger possible.


The first thing you have to do is identify a market where you have a clear differential advantage over your competitors. Let's set aside the fact that it's counterintuitive to most entrepreneurs that the market has to exist before you can claim a differential advantage. If you don't have a clear differential advantage in it, you are wasting your time.


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Blog Post 100

Anyone who tells you that it just takes time before you see results from Social Media marketing is probably floating their resume.


As soon as you get antsy because the followers - no less the orders - aren't rolling in, you're guaranteed to hear this lie. The problem isn't that it might not be true. The problem is that, by the time the results come in, you might be out of business!


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Blog Post 99

When you think you've tried everything else, and nothing seems to work, the siren song of social media marketing can be loud.


What we've found is that, for most companies that are struggling, the problem isn't the medium, it's their strategy and their positioning. So applying the same strategy and positioning in social media is likely to have the same catastrophic results as it did with traditional media.


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Blog Post 98

If you're a small business, you might value the time you spend nurturing your social media at $0, but what's the opportunity cost?


If you could be spending that same time doing something that was actually productive, wouldn't you do that instead? Therefore, social media is not free.


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Blog Post 97

Pick your metric: Likes, hits, retweets, connections, followers, subscribers, traffic, engagement, stickiness - it's all nonsense. Why is that?


If you're not getting paid per-whatever, someone else is, and you're paying.

Social media marketing is a con, especially if you put all your eggs in that one basket.


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Blog Post 96

One of the main rationales justifying Social Media Marketing is that cold calling is supposedly dead. But, is it really?


No one likes to receive cold calls. And, in the words of a so-called "study" justifying Social Media Marketing, "57 Percent of the Decision Process is Done Before the Customer Ever Talks to a Salesperson."

Setting aside the fallacies underlying the study, cold calling is anything but dead. It may be tough to get direct dial numbers. And it may be challenging getting past gatekeepers and voice mail. But consider this: How many of your prospects even know they need your solution, such that they would search for it? If you believe the lie that cold calling is dead, you're walking away from everyone in the market who doesn't know they have a need for your product or service. Good luck with that.


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Blog Post 95

Networking on LinkedIn seems like a great idea. So what's the problem?


Everyone is there, either selling themselves or something. Messaging is better than email. The contact information is great. And LinkedIn provides you with an easy, 10 Step cookbook for creating brand awareness and generating leads.

The problem is, do you really think your decision makers are sitting around looking at LinkedIn all day, waiting for your content to show up? Hint: They have a job to do. That's why they're called Decision Makers.


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Blog Post 94

Paying only for results is the holy grail of business. After all, you're not in it for a Participation Trophy, right? So why should your vendors?


Your definition of results and theirs are probably not the same. For example, you might want to pay on revenues. But they'll say that, since they have no control over what happens after they generate the lead, they can't do that. So you compromise, and agree to pay on Lead Quality. And then the arguing begins.


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Blog Post 93

The promise of a Page 1 Ranking on Google is enticing. Everyone uses Google. So what could be bad if your company came up at the top of the search results?


The problem with this promise is that the search terms that you need in order to get a Page 1 Ranking are probably so esoteric that no one ever uses them. Either that, or you have to pay so much to get the ranking that you couldn't afford it.


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Blog Post 87

What do you think your marketing firm will do if they guaranteed that they'd get you good appointments, and they can't deliver?


The answer is simple: They'll get you bad ones.A guarantee in marketing is like cheap insurance: It's there until you need it.


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Blog Post 86

You know where you want to go with your business, but how do you get there?


Today, there are no easy answers. Sure, there are lots of people telling you what to do, but how do you know if anyone is right? That's why we crowd-source the answer, especially if we're playing with the client's money.


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Blog Post 85

When it comes to marketing, if someone offers you a guarantee, run away. There is simply no way to guarantee a specific sales result in something that naturally entails so much risk.


When we talk to people who claim to have been burned before, most of the time it was because they had unrealistic expectations that they imposed on their solution provider. In other words, if you get burned, it's not necessarily the fire's fault.


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Blog Post 84

How many emails do you get promising that they can get you a page 1 listing on Google? Of course you're too smart to fall for the obvious scam.


If you're like most people, though, you then turn around and try to do it yourself. How does that make sense?


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Blog Post 83

Attracting traffic is a key to an effective Inbound Marketing strategy. It's a prerequisite for capturing contact information, and for building a following. But what if much of your traffic comes from Russian spam-bots?


It turns out that the quality of traffic is just as important as the quantity of traffic. Unless, of course, you're just being measured on hits.


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Blog Post 81

When considering your go-to-market strategy, do you ever write down all the things you know to be true, and those you don't?


Just because you don't understand all your assumptions doesn't mean you can't pull the trigger. It just means you need to create some contingency plans.


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Blog Post 80

Turning your vision into a reality shouldn't be a roll of the dice. But what defines a good strategy? Can you only know what it was in retrospect? Or is there a way to develop a strategy that has a high probability of working without devine intervention?


Oddly enough, there is a formula for success in business. Of course, we've rarely encountered people who are willing to employ it. Most just want easy answers.


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Blog Post 79

What's the true test of whether a strategy will work or not?


If your test of whether your strategy is any good is the crucible of the market, get ready to fail.


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Blog Post 78

It's conventional wisdom that it takes more than a good idea to be successful. It takes, they say, great execution, too. But execution of what?


Too many great ideas fail to result in success - not because the tactics employed in going to market were executed poorly, but because of a bad strategy.

Just in case you didn't have enough keeping you up at night.


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Blog Post 77

Sun Tzu famously wrote: "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, while tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." The problem is: How do you know if something is a strategy or a tactic? Because, clearly, Sun Tzu thinks the difference is important.


For most people, the only way to really know is in hindsight, but being wrong can be fatal to your business. So what do you do to know before? The answer is: Ask someone who knows.


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Blog Post 76

I don't know why they call it "cold calling" when you usually wind up in "voice-mail hell." To add insult to injury...


How does it make sense that the two most important attributes of a good caller are: (1) sensitivity to a prospect's needs and (2) insensitivity to rejection?


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Blog Post 75

The Moving Hockey Stick is a classic Sales Management tool used by professional Sales Directors all over the world to manage the expectations of senior management. Why is it so useful?


Critical to justifying the front-end loading of resources, the January View confidently projects a linear delivery of sales results, culminating in a stress-free year, and the ultimate achievement of the company's sales objectives.

The May View, however, reflects both the late-spring reality, where perhaps as little as 15% of the annual goal has been achieved, despite more than 40% of the year have flown by, as well as the urgency of, once-again, the front loading of additional resources.

The Moving Hockey Stick can be deployed to exhibit monthly sales forecasts, as well as annual sales forecasts - which is especially useful when senior management is seeking additional funding from banks or shareholders.


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Blog Post 74

According to Campaign Monitor, people send over 290 billion emails per day. The average office worker gets over 120 emails a day. And it's growing by more than 10% pr year.


Good luck standing out.


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Blog Post 73

Today, no one is delusional enough to think that all you have to do is come up with a better way of doing something, and success will fall on you like rain.


Everyone knows you have to promote your product. Appeal to influencers. Advertise. And get out there and sell! And then maybe you'll get lucky.


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Blog Post 72

Prior to the passage of the Clean Air Act, breathing could be hazardous to your health, because industry pumped tons of toxins into the air.


Today's companies, however, produce only clean, healthy bits designed to enlighten, entertain, and engage. See how far we've come?


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Blog Post 71

When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, he embued the King with dark cynicism about life. Today, however, we know that life is wonderful.


Except for Marketing. Marketing still lights our way to dusty death.


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Blog Post 70

Marketing today is a wonderland of opportunity. So many tools. So many options. It's amazing that anyone can fail.


Of course, keep your resume polished, just in case.


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Blog Post 69

Finger-pointing comes naturally to kids. But who'd have thought that Marketing and Sales couldn't agree on who's at fault for your not making your numbers?


More importantly, who do you think is going to pay for it?


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Blog Post 68

It turns out that there's an easy way to get a page 1 rank on Google: optimize on the most obscure terms you can think of.


It also turns out that the only one who's winning the SEM battle is Google.


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Blog Post 67

Time was, when you needed sales, you could go out and recruit someone who knew how to make it happen. They were unafraid. They had skills. And they knew how to bring home the bacon.


Today, when someone tells you that they can make it rain, they usually mean that they can generate a bunch of clicks. Ooh, you're really going to need an umbrella for that, aren't you.


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Blog Post 66

When does having too many options become a problem?


There are literally millions of Websites where you can advertise, thousands of promotional venues, scores of different media, and hundreds of thousands of people willing to help. But you only have $[fill in the blank] to spend.

That's when.


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Blog Post 65

Do you have more leads than you know what to do with?


If you're like most people, the problem isn't that you have too many leads. It's that too many of the leads are no good. Or, in technical terms: they're "unqualified."

Marketing programs that produce unqualified are a waste of time and money. And efforts made to qualify them are like throwing good money after bad.

Stop the madness.


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Blog Post 64

Are you guilty of ineffective marketing?


Are you trapped behind the impenetrable clutter in the media? It's not your fault. The problem is that the Internet has made marketing cheaper, so anyone can do it. But when everyone does it, what you get is clutter in the media.

But you can break out - with LeadGen.com.


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Blog Post 63

Was your last marketing initiative DOA?


Traffic that never arrives. Links that never get clicked. Landing pages that never get eyeballs. And orders that never get placed.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play?


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Blog Post 62

Search marketing is great - if you have a ton of money to spend. But just like everywhere else in life, there are winners and there are losers.


In the case of Google AdWords, though, it's not your competition that's winning. It's the arms dealer.


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Blog Post 61

If you can't get him to say "yes," how are you going to pay your rent?


Closing shouldn't be so hard. But the fact is that most people don't close 100% of their opportunities successfully. In fact, close rates of 20% are more common. So why don't the other 80% close?

The Sell Cycle is complicated. With multiple steps and multiple parties, there are lots of ways for it to get derailed. But, then again, you can always complain about the quality of the leads.


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Blog Post 60

Surprisingly, horseshoes and hand grenades aren't the only areas where "close" can be good enough. Do you know what the other one is?


It's not that you wouldn't want perfection out of your marketing program, but you can make a lot of money with less than a 100% market share.

Go for the proximity shot. You can always plan your improvements while you're celebrating your gains.


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Blog Post 59

In marketing, as in life, time is the enemy.


When it comes to building your business, you can always find more money, but you can never get back time that you've wasted.

You don't have to be perfect. But make sure it's at least going to be a proximity shot.


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Blog Post 58

Anytime your solution-provider gives you a plan - to say nothing of implementing it - without really understanding your needs, you're begging for trouble.


Marketing is too expensive and risky to launch a program without customization. But, hey, who has time for planning?


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Blog Post 57

Have you ever felt like decision makers are just a little too protective of their time? After all, you're just trying to make a living, right?


But ask yourself: Do you react any differently when you get a cold call?

Oddly enough, there are some cold calling techniques that actually work. Just don't expect to find them on a script.


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Blog Post 56

You know the insult: "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" Of course, today it's harder than ever to break out of the middle class. And, of course, some people work because they love doing it. And then there's the matter of luck. But maybe their ideas about how to grow a business just don't work - for you or them.


The fact is that it takes more than good ideas to achieve success in today's markets. It takes being in the right place at the right time. It takes good execution. And yes, it takes a little luck, too. So don't blame them for trying. At least they're in the game.


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Blog Post 55

Marketers today have lots of options for what to do. The problem is that once you start down a particular path and it doesn't work, you may not be able to go back. And then you're stuck.


Maybe that's why Marketing has the highest turnover rate of all job categories tracked by LinkedIn


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Blog Post 54

If it weren't for the finger-pointing between Marketing and Sales, what fun would staff meetings be?


Oh, yeah. If you actually made your numbers, they could be celebrations instead of arguments.


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Blog Post 53

Don't you just love stock photography of happy customer service reps? You'd think that the mindless drudgery and pain of listening to angry and frustrated customers all day would create a few winces. Or maybe a furrowed brow or two.


Who are we trying to kid? Dealing with the public is hard. If your CSRs are smiling, something's very wrong.


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Blog Post 52

Digital marketing is easy. Just ask the people who own the big platforms, and they'll show you how to do it. And if that's still too hard, you can just hire someone to do it. See? Easy!


The problem with digital marketing, though, is that it's too easy. And as a result, because anyone can do it, everyone will. That's why the media are so crowded. And why your message doesn't get through. And why, if all you lose are your toes, you should consider yourself lucky.


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Blog Post 51

Did you know that coaching your salespeople to talk about the features and benefits of your products can actually hurt your sales efforts? But, why is that?


It has been scientifically proven that talking about features and benefits actually reduces your close rate, as well as forces you to make price concessions.

Sales training is all about technique, while product training is all about features and benefits. And if your salespeople aren't laser-focused on their sales technique, it's a guarantee that they'll be working for someone else pretty soon.


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Blog Post 50

Forget about "the check is in the mail." The biggest lie in sales is when a candidate tells you that they can close anyone, as long as you can get them in the door.


The problem with sales isn't just closing. An inability to close sales is usually a symptom of a deeper problem - one that's often closely tied to an inability to generate qualified sales leads. So if you think that by hiring Mr. Confident you've solved half your problem, think again. You've just highlighted the other half.


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Blog Post 49

Are you going to run out of year before you run out of quota?


Being a day late or a dollar short can mean failure in today's hyper-competitive economy - whether you're wearing out shoeleather or looking out the corner-office window.

At LeadGen.com, we can't create more time. But we can help you get the most out of the time you have.


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Blog Post 48

Why does it seem, when it comes to marketing and sales, like everyone knows where they're going, and how to get there, but you?


Don't let the hype fool you. There's a reason why more than half of all new businesses fail in the first five years. And it's the same reason why marketing and sales positions have the highest turnover, and why there are no guarantees in the stock market.

It's not you. You just can't see their blindfolds.


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Blog Post 47

Have you ever felt as though, when you need help growing your business, solution providers seem to come at you like Zombies? They don't necessarily understand your goals or challenges, but they're so convinced their product can help that it seems like they'll eat your brains to make the sale.


The thing about Zombies is that you have to cut off their heads in order to stop them. Otherwise they'll just keep coming.

It makes you wonder how they can hear you breathe, but they can't hear you talk.


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Blog Post 46

Once upon a time, back before everyone had 3D printers, if you wanted to make a prototype you had to mold it from clay, plastic, metal or even wood. It was time-consuming, expensive and prone to errors. So the inventors of 3D printers knew they had a great market opportunity. The problem was that they couldn't gain visibility with the engineers who needed it - because the engineers didn't know it existed. And millions of dollars in development were about to go down the tubes.


LeadGen.com, however, knew how to identify companies that did prototyping, and how to reach the engineers who cared about it. Within two months of launch we had developed a backlog of meetings, demos and pilot programs for the inventors. And within a year the company had units in virtually every major target customer, and their biggest problem was hiring enough salespeople to cover the leads. And that's why we have 3D printing today.


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Blog Post 45

A brick-and-mortar retailer that sells children's toys and clothing was suffering at the hands of online retailers, and slow demand. The owner had a large following on Facebook, but cash-flow was poor. This further delayed ordering, threatening her ability to tap the critical back-to-school buying season, and ultimately putting the company's viability in doubt.


Near the end of her rope, the owner called the Tyrone Matheson Group because of their reputation for finding creative solutions to difficult business problems. Leveraging the owner's Facebook following, Matheson created a loyalty program that enabled the company to monetize the asset. And they came up with a creative pre-order strategy that eased cash-flow, and brought in inventory - virtually for free.

As a result of Matheson's program, the company made more profit in 48 hours than they had made in the previous seven years!


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Blog Post 44

A startup had created an innovative algorithm that predicts vehicle failures. But they were having trouble selling their solution - because their technology-oriented engineering team had no real business development experience. And if they couldn't generate sales, or at least build a distribution channel, they were going to quickly run out of funding.


After several failed attempts to solve the problem, they called the Tyrone Matheson Group, a LeadGen.com partner. After assessing the challenge and the opportunity, Matheson was able to successfully introduce them to a global after-market automotive company that had distribution in 42 countries, and over 450 franchises. The new channel opened up for them an immediate revenue stream, along with a global support organization, that, in addition, enabled them to attract additional investor capital to further fuel growth and development, leading to a profitable and successful introduction into the market.


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Blog Post 43

A pet products company wanted to increase their online sales, and create more awareness in its target audience. So they reached out to Gemstone Data, a LeadGen.com Partner, to take advantage of its unique geo-fencing technology, and accomplish their stretch goal of a CTR of at least .08%.


The campaign used a customized geo-fencing tactic to specifically target pet owners and pet advocates, while the client provided a list of locations to capture their target audience - focusing on humane societies, animal hospitals and clinics, pet boarding companies, and pet retail stores. With the quick learning from the campaign launch, the Gemstone team was able to optimize the client's keywords, and target specific blogs and domains to more precisely and efficiently reach their prospective customers.

As a result of Gemstone Data’s unique optimizations and geo-fence tactics, the client was able to achieve a CTR of more than .20% - more than double their original goal of a .08%.


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Blog Post 42

A financial services company needed to increase visits to their website, and break through the clutter in their heavily saturated market. And they needed to do it at a cost of no more than $4.00 per visit, or else they wouldn't meet their extremely tight profitability goals for the program.


To solve the problem, they turned to Gemstone Data, a LeadGen.com Partner, who was able to identify the right target audience, and serve them over 22.4M ads. Optimized at the keyword, day part and recency level to ensure the ads were getting to the right audience - at the right time and to prospects who were recently searching for financial services keywords - the campaign increased page views by 6,484 with a cost-per-visitor of only $2.13 - roughly half the cost of the cmpaign's original budget.


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Blog Post 41

A local travel and tourism website for a popular vacation destination wanted to use programmatic video to drive awareness among their target audience in key locations around the United States. Their marketing performance had flat-lined, and they desperately needed to improve their CTR in order to grow their bookings - or else they were going to miss their high season, and fall short of their revenue goals.


Turning to Gemstone Data, a LeadGen.com partner, they were able to solve the problem through a comprehensive strategy of search retargeting at the keyword level, category contextual targeting, new creative, and mobile geo-optimization for pre-roll video. Within 3 months, they had doubled their average video completion rate to 60%, and tripled their CTR to .24% - exceeding their goals and saving the season.


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Blog Post 40

Starting a business takes courage and fortitude. In listening to entrepreneurs, it reminds me of my mother reading "If," by Rudyard Kipling, to me as a child.


If you can keep your head when all about you
  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
  But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
  Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
  And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
  If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
  And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
  And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
  And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
  To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
  Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
  Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
  If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
  And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

If you ignore the fact that Kipling was a raging racist, imperialist and sexist, the sentiments in "If" reflect what I hear from successful businesspeople every day.


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Blog Post 39

When you receive a frantic phone call from a client, you jump. And so it was when we got a call from a long-time customer who had just gotten off an airplane, only to discover that the meeting he had flown in to attend been canceled. He wanted to know if we could book him an appointment with some other prospect while he was in town so he could potentially salvage some ROI on his plane ticket.


When you understand your client's business and goals, it becomes a lot easier to react to a crisis - even if it's a small one like avoiding a wasted business trip.

We quickly researched a list of potential prospects in the city, uploaded it to our CRM, and started calling. Before the client could even check into his hotel, we had booked two appointments - one for that day, and one for the next. And our road warrior was back in the saddle again.


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Blog Post 38

A technology company was facing a revenue shortfall with barely two weeks to go in the year. Only a heroic effort could save them from missing their numbers.


Most people believe that nothing happens in December because everyone's either distracted or on vacation. But that's actually the best time to blitz - because your competition has probably bought into that myth.

While contact rates are usually down in December, those people who you manage to get on the phones are usually more willing to talk. And they probably have needs if they're still in the office.

And that's what happened for the tech firm. We found a deal that closed their revenue gap just in time.

And best of all? The prospect had to spend the money before the end of the year. So no one had to fudge the numbers just to look good.


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Blog Post 37

The most important message you need to get across to a prospect is why they should talk to you, meet with you, and buy from you. A company that sold a highly commoditized product, however, couldn't come up with a reason - until we started writing case histories for them, and incorporating these stories into their marketing.


Everyone loves a good bedtime story. And your case histories are like bedtime stories for your prospects.

For this manufacturer of commercial ovens, telling stories about how their ovens enabled their customers to acquire more and happier customers for themselves led to major increases in their close rate, their price premium and their market share.


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Blog Post 36

An IT client was committed to exhibiting at a major industry trade show because they knew their prospects would be there. But previous traffic was light, and they never got any business from the show. So they called LeadGen.com.


The key to a profitable trade show is to pre-call your prospects, confirm their attendance, and invite them to stop by the booth at a specific time. It's also helpful to find out a little bit about what they're looking for at the show, and to offer an incentive for them to meet.

The first time we did this for the client, we set up 15 meetings, of which 12 took place. And four resulted in new business - each deal worth several hundred thousand dollars.


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Blog Post 35

A mid-sized accounting firm had grown significantly through mergers and acquisitions. But there was an uneven client load at the top. So while partners were paid according to billable hours, their very unequal contributions to overhead were creating resentment against those who weren't pulling their weight.


Selling accounting services usually involves networking and personal selling by the accountant. But some of the partners weren't good at it, and others simply didn't have time. So they turned to LeadGen.com for help.

The other issue with selling accounting services, particularly in the business market, is that everyone always already has an accountant that they like. And no one likes to change accountants. So there were significant barriers to organic growth.

Through research and cold calling, and the development if a solid business case, we were able to get them in the door at several dozen mid-sized companies that were their prime targets. And by providing coaching, were were able to get the less sales-talented partners to put on enough of a good show to add 20% to their book of business, which completely closed the contribution gap - all in less than six months.


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Blog Post 28

Another Dad Joke...


A full sales funnel is a horn of plenty!


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Blog Post 27

Another Dad Joke...


Get a grip! Get it?


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Blog Post 26

Another Dad Joke...


There's way too much to unpack here. For example, do they care about what some random stranger thinks of them? What about the possibility that the salesperson whom they just blew off could have saved her company millions of dollars a year?


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Blog Post 25

Another Dad Joke...


Branding is a nice idea, but it takes more than an identity. That identity has to resonate with your audience.


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Blog Post 24

Another Dad Joke...


If you're in Sales, this needs no explanation at all. If you're in Marketing, I'm not here right now. If you'll leave your name and number at the beep...


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Blog Post 23

Another Dad Joke...


The only winner in that fight is the arms dealer.


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Blog Post 22

Another Dad Joke...


Too much of a stretch?


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Blog Post 21

Another Dad Joke...


Search and Rescue - get it?


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Blog Post 20

Today's Dad Joke...


Does spelling really count when you're trying to make a pun?


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Blog Post 19

Today's Dad Joke...


We know we're not the first ones to think of this, but we're going to be the last ones to forget it.


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Blog Post 18

Today's Dad Joke...


Sorry. We couldn't resist.


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Blog Post 17

Today's Dad Joke...


Yeah, we get it. If we have to explain the joke, it isn't funny anymore.


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Blog Post 16

Today's Dad Joke...


Inbound marketing isn't quite an act of faith. But if its success isn't measured in actual sales, it might as well be.


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Blog Post 15

Today's Dad Joke...


For some people, cold calling is easy to do. All they need is the ability to take rejection. But it's hard to do well. For that it takes skill.


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Blog Post 14

A large state university had invested millions in upgrading their stadium to add luxury boxes. But with only a month to go 'til the start of the season, less than a quarter of the boxes were sold.


Targeting the event coordinators at businesses in the local community, LeadGen.com sold out the subscriptions, and salvaged the investment.


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Blog Post 13

The entrepreneur is the foundation of the economy, and the engine of growth.

But the failure rate is high because scaling is hard to do, especially for creative innovators.


Coming up with a good idea takes a different skill-set than what you need to grow a business. At LeadGen.com, however, we have the skills and resources you need to make your vision a reality.


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Blog Post 12

Experience is important when hiring a new salesperson. But hiring someone who comes with his own book of business can easily backfire.


Better is to hire someone who knows how to find new business, rather than someone who brings it with him - because otherwise you run the risk of him taking it with him, along with your house accounts, when he leaves.


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Blog Post 11

How is it possible for SEO firms to promise that they can get your site a page 1 ranking on Google? Can they really do it?


The answer is yes, but you may need to compromise on your preferred search terms.

Given that there are over 10,000,000 Web pages that are ranked, and only 10 organic hits on page #1, it would require over 500,000 unique 2-word search phrases for everyone to appear on page #1.

And only nine other sites can use the same terms as you.


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Blog Post 10

Wanted - Dead or Alive - for stealing market share! Calls himself "The Lead Generator"


The varmint known as "the Lead Generator" is wanted in all 50 states for unhooking competitors, rustling accounts and poaching customers.

Approach with caution, the Lead Generator is a smooth talker, and is armed with good questions that can uncover your needs and wants, and make you want to buy!

Guard your women and children!


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Blog Post 9

Market research is the cure for mistaken assumptions. But how many CEOs and business owners are willing to make the investment?


When planning your marketing programs, do you list out your assumptions? For example:

• Is your target market receptive to your message?
• Will your target market even see your message?

Then, do you estimate the cost - in time, money and missed opportunity - of being wrong?

It's actually not that hard or expensive to checkpoint assumptions today using simple market research techniques. Like Nike says, "just do it."


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Blog Post 6

LinkedIn has over 1,000,000,000 impressions per day. Do you really think anyone is going to notice your content?


The challenge for businesses operating in the social media space is that it's so cluttered. Ironically though, most businesses give little thought to what they post, and so they only add to the problem.

The good news is that there's a solution.


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Blog Post 5

Are you operating on razor-thin margins?


Price competition can be an indicator of too much competition. But it can also happen because of a failure to get the prospect to perceive your value. Fortunately, both problems are eminently solvable.


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Blog Post 92

A major metro police department wanted to try to predict where serious crimes were most likely to occur. This would allow them to better-allocate resources, and more efficiently plan for specific major events which might have an elevated crime risk. Overstaffing was too expensive, so they called LeadGen.com partner the Tyrone Matheson Group for help.


Building a model out of police reports and demographic data, TMG was abe to give the police department two weeks' advance notice of potential upticks in crime.


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Blog Post 91

An insurance carrier wanted to improve their ad targeting, and be more proactive with customer acquisition. They were also uncomfortable with the level of churn they were experiencing. So they called LeadGen.com partner Tyrone Matheson Group, and asked for help.


TMG's powerful AI system was able to sift through the client's mountains of data, and identify two important customer types. The one that could be leveraged in their advertising program resulted in a 1500% increase in conversion rate. And the one that could be leveraged in their retention program resulted in a 4% reduction in defections. Not bad for three months' work.


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Blog Post 4

The only true barrier-to-success is your imagination.


That, and maybe a lack of money. A recession. Or maybe competition. Or perhaps a teensy bit of incompetence. Or it could be that what you're trying to do is a bad idea.

Or maybe you just haven't talked to us yet.


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Blog Post 3

Is your CRM holding your salespeople back?


Too often, the demands of your CRM prevent good sales performance. Whether it’s inhibiting the sales process because of unnecessary steps, or simply taking away productive sales time to fulfill Marketing’s need for data, your CRM may be hurting more than it’s helping. But you can turn this “necessary evil” into a “fundamental good” if you know what you’re doing.


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Blog Post 90

A recruiting firm had over 75 open job requisitions, but they were struggling to fill more than 5-7 roles per month. So they called LeadGen.com partner Tyrone Matheson Group to see if they could help.


Using their proprietary AI tools, TMG quickly recognized that the problem wasn't a lack of candidates, it was inadequacies in the firm's prequalification process. The new solution that TMG implemented enabled the client to double the number of qualified candidates, increase job fills from 5-7 per month to over 20 per month, and increase revenues by over $100,000 per month - all in less than nine months.


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Blog Post 89

Despite compensating customers for downtime and other service issues, a large telecommunications company was still experiencing a churn rate of over 24%. So they called in LeadGen.com partner Tyrone Matheson Group to see if they could help.


Using their powerful AI capabilities, TMG was able to develop a model that predicted who was likely to go to a competitor with a 90%+ accuracy. As a result, not only was the company able to reduce churn by 4%, but they were able to reduce the cost of saving a customer - from an average of $750 per save to under $500. They also improved their retention probability for these customers, from a low 25% to an astounding 45%, all resulting in a $346 million increase in retained annual revenue.


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Blog Post 2

A European consulting company wanted to open up the US market, but they couldn't get any traction. Despite great credentials and references, they were hemorrhaging money, and running out of time.


By the time LeadGen.com got the call, the company had worked every contact, and tried every technique they knew. But we had one they didn't know about - and used it to get them in at C-Level with over a dozen of their key prospects.

Five 6-figure deals over the next six months assured their foothold in the US market, and an end to their frustration.


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Blog Post 1

A mid-sized metals manufacturer was getting lots of sales opportunities from their #telemarketing program. But they were losing deals left and right, because a PE-funded competitor was #bidding below cost in order to buy market share.

So not only was the manufacturer losing when they bid for new business, they were losing house accounts who demanded that they lower their price, too. With their profitability under threat, the company was on the edge of bankruptcy. What happened next:


At LeadGen.com, we know how to fight a price war. We showed the client how to announce to the world that they'd "meet comp." And every time a bid went out, we showed them how to ask for last look.

Within two weeks, the competitor backed off their price war. And by the next quarter, the PE firm had sold the competitor off - at a fire-sale price!

Prices quickly rose, and the manufacturer returned to profitability - and picked up 20% more market share following the demise of their competitor.


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Blog Post 88

An real estate agency was generating over 1,200 leads a month for their ten agents, but they could only contact about 10%, or 120, of them per month - leaving a lot of money on the table. So they turned to LeadGen.com partner Tyrone Matheson Group.


After assessing their operation, TMG recommended the implementation of an automated engagement system. This allowed the agency to contact nearly 100% of their incoming leads in real time, which resulted in a 230% increase in revenue - without requiring any addition staff.


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