All Entries Tagged With: "Chris Brogan"

You Are Losing Your Best Leads… to Your Own Company!

Written by Bill Rice, CEO/Founder, Kaleidico
[Contributing Author]

I think the biggest mistake sales people make is giving out their company website to prospects. Whether on a business card, in an email, or on LinkedIn.  You’re losing sales leads with this foolish little move.

Think I’m crazy?

Okay, answer me this: How many sales leads did you get from corporate marketing last month labeled website lead or something similar? My guess is zero.

Now answer me this one too: How many prospects did you direct to the corporate website last month? Driven into waiting and appreciative arms of inside sales reps? My guess is many.

Why did you do that? I’m not downing your marketing department, corporate website, or inside sales. But wake-up! You lost a customer you were already in a conversation with.  You need to capture your leads!

Personal Lead Generation

The first step is to think about all the ways (and places) that you point prospects away. Here are a few places to start looking:

• Business card
• Emails
• Email signature
• Cold calls
• Linkedin.com
• Twitter

You may not be able to remove your company URL from all of these places. However, you can probably make a good business case for adding Twitter or Linkedin as basic contact information in this Web 2.0 world.

This simple step will start driving your prospect traffic into your own personal blog or social profile(s). Of course, you need to make sure that you are answering your prospects’ questions and giving them a compelling reason to engage with you. Otherwise, you will lose them back to the company website or worse searching and finding the competitor’s website.

Setting Up Sales Content

The best way to make your personal lead generation work is to answer in plain English the questions and objections you get daily. If you are technically inclined this can be as robust as a blog with frequent posts and resources about your products or services. If a blog is out of your technical reach, or writing is not your thing, opt for posting brief but valuable content on Twitter or Linkedin.

These brief pieces of sales collateral will naturally attract prospects searching the Web for your company (and maybe you). It also gives you readily available material to link to in email introductions and follow-ups.

An added bonus to pointing prospects to these kinds of social resources, versus a cold and impersonal corporate website, is that it’s fresh and alive with the latest information and enthusiasm of your community (i.e., comments, Twitter interactions, or Linkedin connections).

Creating your sales content and lead generation outposts on a blog or social networks is one of the more complex steps. You might need a little more guidance. Here are a couple of resources that will guide you in more detail on building out your lead generation system:

• A Simple Presence Framework (by @ChrisBrogan)
• Linkedin for Sales: Resume or Sales Letter (by @Bill Rice)

Capturing Leads

Driving prospects to click on a link and landing them on your blog or social profiles is only half the battle.  You need to capture those leads! The easiest way is to simply ask your prospects or readers to email or call you with questions.

Make your call to action clear and direct. Never make them hunt for your email address or telephone number.

Basic contact information and a request to connect with you should be the centerpiece of all your outposts and sales content.

Don’t lose another sales lead! Take the next 30 minutes to replace your company website URL with your personal lead generation system. Start directing prospects into your lead capture system. It’s guaranteed to save you time, money, and frustration… and it will get you a few more sales every quarter!

What does your personal lead generation and lead capture system look like?

Best of the Best: Top 10 Web Marketers of 2009