“As a CEO and business owner, how do I encourage and motivate my team to see the value of Internet marketing?”
This is a common question that I frequently hear when strategizing with business owners on implementing Internet marketing. “What value will Internet marketing bring to my sales team?” “How will it keep our pipeline full?” “Will it mean more work because we don’t have the time to add more to our plates?” These are all sound and valid questions that warrant being addressed, after all both you and your sales reps spend a lot of time generating leads. You have few resources to waste on strategies that don’t bring value to your company.
How do you overcome the roadblocks of success that Internet marketing can bring?
Ultimately the biggest underlying concern is not what the Internet (Inbound, digital, online) lead generation is. The real issue is for the sales rep and others involved is WIIFM?”. “How will it benefit me? How will it make my job easier?” “Will it replace my job?” Start by discussing the influence that the Internet has on your prospects and customers today, that the company needs more qualified leads and more effective tactics to sell. This can be difficult for traditional sales reps that are entrenched in old ways of doing business to embrace.
How should you introduce Internet marketing to your team?
The following 4 considerations are worth discussing with your team.
1) Permission Based Leads
Your team spends a lot of time prospecting through purchased lists, industry directories, referrals, and cold calling. This old school method of sales is viewed as an unwelcome interruption of the prospect’s busy day, and in turn you lost the lead before you even had a chance to talk with them. Internet marketing will help your company to generate quality leads that want to talk with you, without hunting and being seen as an intrusion.
2) Filter Qualified Prospects
A good quality prospect is based around 5 characteristics. Just because someone responds to an advertisement or puts their business card in the fishbowl at the tradeshow, doesn’t mean they’re worth your time to pursue. Internet marketing will enable salespeople to filter for qualified prospects and contact the prospect when they’re ready (not when you’re ready). Prospects at that point will not only be aware of your company, they’ll have indicated an interest in considering your company as a solution. You have set the stage for a productive call based upon their readiness, interest, and willingness.
3) Sales Convince Tools
One of the most common complaints is not having quality educational based service or product sales convince tools for sales reps to use when meeting with prospective leads. Internet marketing is based upon creating and providing valuable educational content resources (blogs, free PDF’s, webinars, white papers, case studies, etc.) based upon the most common obstacles your prospects encounter. In turn they will find the content helpful, not only for doing their jobs every day, but for learning more above the value of your product or service and how it is the solution to their problem. Your website in and of itself is a sales tool, however it is only as valuable as the resources available on it.
4) Real Time Follow Up
The most common reason for lost leads is lack of timely and effective follow-up! Internet marketing will help your team work more effectively by using automated lead nurturing workflows. Regardless of the stage of the lead, you’ll be providing helpful information to them at the right time, and you won’t waste time chasing or convincing leads that aren’t interested.
Hopefully by now you’ve piqued your team’s interest and they are curious to know how Internet Marketing works. It’s actually just like traditional sales; you need leads to keep your sales funnel full!
Internet marketing is oriented around content is designed around 3 levels of the prospects buying decision.
1. Prospects first become aware of your company via “top of the funnel” content, which gives them valuable information about topics they’re interested in that related to your company. They “opt-in” for the free content by providing you with their name and email address. They don’t have to avoid talking to a sales rep!
2. Because the prospect valued your content, the leads will inevitably want more information, where they request more brand specific content, aka “middle of the funnel.” At this point, these prospects are considering your company, and they’re worthy of your time and attention, but they’re not necessarily ready to close yet.
3. Finally, when a prospect responds to an offer that’s designed to help them solve their specific problem, they are then ready to make a buying decision. This is known as a “bottom of the funnel” offer, and they are ready to hear from you immediately.
Grow Your Bottom Line!
Internet marketing will help your company work more effectively and efficiently by doing less pitching and pushing and more consulting and closing. Your prospects will not view your company as merely providing a product or service, but will see you as a respected industry expert. Qualified leads will be open to having a conversation with you, and you in turn just shortened your sales cycle. At the end of the day, your Internet marketing strategy not only helped your bottom line, but it also helped your prospective customers make sound decisions.
