Rumors can occur for many reasons:

Rumor has it your company will bring out a new product.
> Your current offering suffers in sales and you need to give additional discounts to sell.

Rumor about your company or competitors can be and is likely to have a negative impact on your sales:

Rumor has it your product is not up to competition
> Trying to prove the contrary will be an uphill battle. Still you need to try.

Rumor has it your main competitor will launch a new product or concept.
> Tell your customers your product is available now and uses proven technology

Rumor has it regulations will change requiring modifications to the current range of products.
> You can take the gamble and promise a free upgrade in order to comply with the new regulations.

Rumor has it your company is facing bankruptcy
> Will will need to show the results and balance sheet of last quarter or year and explain why it isn’t so.

Rumor has it your company will be acquired
> Deny the acquisition completely stuffed with many good reasons
> Admit and promise the current products and service will remain the same and the financial backing will be greater

Rumor has it there will be a management buyout
> Tell them that in the management buyout there will be even more focus on customer care and service.

If rumor has it
Rumors require action in order to explain or to stop them.
If rumor has it about your company or industry you will need to inform your sales, indicate or train them how to react and act. Back up the salesmen with a marketing campaign for fighting the rumor.

As Adele sings:
All of these words whispered in my ear,
Tell a story that I cannot bear to hear,
Just ’cause I said it, it don’t mean that I meant it,
People say crazy things,
Just ’cause I said it, don’t mean that I meant it,
Just ’cause you heard it,

Rumour has it, rumour,

International expansion starting with a trade show
If international expansion is part of your business plan you need to at least test the market in a foreign country. A first step could be a presence on a trade show in order to find possible partners and even first customers.
As having your own booth on an international trade show is very expensive most companies test the waters by participating in a government sponsored country booth.

However… there are draw backs:
- You have no control over the location of the country booth
- You probably have no control over the placement on the booth
- In most cases the format of the messaging is standardized in order to give a uniform look to the booth
- On a trade show People look for solutions or information, not countries
- People strolling along are less interested as the booth isn’t focused: different solutions for different markets
- Addressing passengers directly is difficult as they are probably not looking for your solution
- You have no brand awareness

What is needed:
- Clear and short messaging about:
o The problem you solve
o The solution provided
o The context/industry
- Messaging in the local language as even English is often a hurdle
- Logo’s of references that are relevant to the country. Well known logo’s draw attention and build trust.
- Speaking the local language helps, even if you just try

The main goal is:
- Collecting contacts (business cards) from both possible partners and probable customers
- Getting an impression if your solution can have customers in this country.

When running a business getting sales is of up most importance. Without sales, there’s no business.

There are 3 sources of possible buyers in B2B:

New leads

These are the most exiting, the most promising: the unknown, the big expectations.
However they will be the most expensive as:
- Leads need to be generated
- Contacts within a company need to be found
- You have to define the Influencers, the Catalysts, the Decision makers, the Gatekeepers
- Products and solutions need to be explained
- Relations need be build
- Trust needs to be gained

Finding visitors on your website is a simple solution for low cost lead generation. Qualifying visitors as leads based upon website visit information is a straight forward task these days. Finding contacts within a company is now much more feasible, thanks to the information available on the Internet.

You know the search terms they used and the pages they visited. This allows you to address the contact with the best suited message and solution.

The leads generated by the typical channels will also visit your website, revealing their real interests in your products and solutions. Using a website visitor identification service your sales people will be alerted when they visit.

Customers

Keeping relations and customers is far less expensive compared to finding new leads or making new customers.

When customers visit your website again, it is often exactly the right time to contact them.
Your website visitor identification service will notify you about this event.

And again, by the pages visited you will know what they are looking for so you can address your relations with the appropriate message and information.

Ex-customers

Although they have selected another vendor, you still know the different people involved within the company.

When such a company visits again, there must be a good reason… time to find out!

Once a lead is qualified it gets distributed to the salesmen. As all salesmen are not equal, the lead management should match the best salesman with this particular lead.
However typically a lead gets passed on to a salesman based on the geography as most sales teams have been organized by geography.

In this way a salesman will get all kinds of leads: the large and the small, the business focused and technical, the special cases and the standard demands.

A salesman is good in persuasion, convincing and selling. However he will not be able to sell all products or services of a company equally. Certain salesmen will be better in large deals having a long sales cycle, whereas others prefer fast closing deals. Some salesmen are more technical educated than other who are solely focusing on business matters with tangible and intangible benefits.

There are salesmen who can handle difficult deals or difficult customers or complex sales better, but who are not interested in making price quotations for yet another standard product with a predefined discount.

Hence lead management and distribution should not be based upon geography but related to the nature, capacities, maturity, past successes and interests of each salesman.

Do you distribute your leads based on geography?

Social Media has gained importance. Due to this you need to take care in order to avoid mistakes and missing the goal of your social media marketing.

1. Lacking content quality

The content you bring should reflect the quality of your products or services. Rubbish or junk text or video’s will have a negative effect on your business.
The aim is to publish and spread quality content.

2. Not interesting stuff

Normally quality content should also be interesting enough to drive the traffic to your content and to return visiting your content. People should have a reason to visit and re-visit from the millions of webpages on the Internet.
Your content needs to be interesting.

3. No spreading or replication

If your content doesn’t provoke the impulse to spread it, then you will miss the main benefit of content that allows you to reach out further.
The best content or information is what gets replicated, forwarded to others. Your content should stimulate the reader or viewer to take action.

4. No Call to Action

Not providing buttons to spread or ask attention for your content will decrease the effectiveness of content in social media.
Make sure it is easy and convenient to forward, replicate, share, “Like”, “Follow” or Tweet it.

5. Grammar and spelling errors

Although it seems obvious not having grammatical and spelling errors in your content this should be avoided by proof reading or at least using a spelling checker.

6. No social media scheduling plan

Shooting from the hip with content to social media will be far more less effective than planning upfront a scheduling for all of your social media.
Make a social media scheduling plan and stick to it.

7. Not targeted content

If you just write or create content for whatever comes up to your mind, it is likely large segments of your potential customers will be missed by not targeting it.
Define your market segments and then create targeted and appropriate content.

8. Missing interaction

In the event people comment on your social media content not responding is avoiding one of the main advantages of social media.
For each comment make sure you thank them, answer, acknowledge or add on to their comment.

9. Non-personal

If your write or create content like an encyclopedia it will be non-personal. As such you will miss the personal touch in social media.
Make sure your content and your interactions have a personal touch.

10. Too personal

Content or comments that are too personal or about your personal or family live will not be appreciated in a business environment.
Avoid becoming too personal in your content and comments.

11. Missing “About”

When there is no “About” or a profile available, then who are you ?
Make sure people can know who the originator of all the quality content is.

12. Not linked to your business

Even if you have the best content, driving a high number of visitors each month and getting returning visitors but missing to make the link with your business, then why all the effort ?
You content should clearly point to you business and even drive them to visit your business pages in order to generate online leads.

Gossip instead of prospecting

Sending salesmen as attendees to a conference or any other industry event has many purposes like brand presence, prospecting and lead generation.
However when two salesmen colleagues go to such an event it is likely they will stick together and start discussing their experiences with the company and remarks about colleagues. Subjects ranging from the latest gossip about other employees to criticizing management and reasons of lost deals. Budgets, bonuses, commissions and even potential customers will pass the review.

Lone rangers

This probably originates from the fact that salesmen are like lone rangers: they hardly ever meet as they are alone on the road for meeting customers or prospects throughout the year. And there is not control of management about their doings on the conference. The conference or the industry event brings them together, which happens only once or a few times a year.

These mostly negative discussions are only interrupted by attending the presentations and answering the all important telephone calls or emails on their smart phones.

Sole attendee to keep focus

Instead the salesmen should be focusing on the people present in the conference in order to tell them about the products or services of the company for creating presence, awareness and even look for potential customers amongst the audience.

As these discussions about internal matters seem to be part of their normal drive the only way to avoid these and make the presence on the conference of industry event effective for business is to send only one salesman. Then he is likely to focus on prospecting, awareness building and lead generation.

Will you still send more than one salesmen to conferences or industry events ?

The Internet revolution

The Internet is a revolution in any industry and thus for any business. It has already and will continue to effect all businesses even in B2B.

The salesmen that have changed their lead generation, their approach to suspects and prospects, and renewed their sales methods have adopted the Internet as their companion, not as their enemy. Instead of fighting the Internet they have started to use the advantages of the Internet to their benefit. They will know which companies are visiting the company website, the interest of them in the products or solutions and when they have buying intentions revealed by their digital body language.

Insight instead of functions and features

These salesmen know that potential customers have investigated into their products or solutions and also those of the competition. The probable customer is knowledgeable and informed.
Instead of educating and informing the employees of the potential customer on bits and bytes or obvious functions and features, which they all can find explained on the Internet, these salesmen will give the overall view of the industry and where it is heading too. They will also explain the total concept where the functions and features fit into.

The value of the salesman is in the insight and helicopter view that can only be obtained after several years of experience in the business.
The main goal of the salesman is to convince the potential customer of the level experience, knowledge about the industry as it is and will be in the future. All for limiting or taking away the risk that the purchase decision contains.

The salesmen who have adapted to the changes induced by the Internet are the salesmen of the revolution.

Are you a salesman of the revolution ?

Early versus qualified leads

Obtaining qualified leads requires less time to be wasted on dead-end leads and will result in more sales in less time.
Obtaining leads early in their purchase cycle has the advantage of being able to participate earlier in the discussions and influence the outcome which might result in more sales but with much more effort and time.

The dilemma is that getting early leads is getting less qualified leads.
Still all salesmen want more leads !

Lead scoring and lead profiling for the easy salesman

A lead scoring method or system can help out to filter out quicker the better leads. The same is true for lead profiling in order to increase the speed of qualifying leads.

In most cases salesmen want leads that will buy in the shortest amount of time. However if they only would obtain very probable customers then sales would have not much of challenge in the job as they just need to visit or call the lead, make a price quote and wait for the purchase order to arrive. The easy life of a salesman with hardly any challenge.

Early leads for the value-add salesman

In order to obtain very probable customers the lead qualification, lead scoring and lead profiling will be very strict and precise allowing to pass only very typical customers.

The job of the salesman is to fiddle out the real issues and problems of the potential customer and propose the best matching solution and at the same time remove the level of risk of the purchase as much as possible. This is the salesman that brings added value for the customer and probably added sales for the company.

This value-add is exactly what a stringent lead qualification, scoring and profiling won’t permit. Hence the better, higher value or more profitable leads could be thrown away before the salesman even knows about them.

So what do you prefer: qualified or early leads ?

Internet spam is different from email spam

Sending spam email message to people is not done, considered negatively and will have a negative impact on your brand.
On the other hand spamming on the Internet with content is approved by the search engines and even people.
- The more references search engines find of links your product or website the higher it will be ranked and appear in the searches.
- The more people notice your content and products or website the more likely they will find your brand name familiar. This brand awareness will even create trust.

There is a huge difference between email spanning and content spamming on the Internet.

Unique content spamming

It is important to avoid copying the same content and publishing on different places. Each content should be unique. Unique in the sense unique in the series of words and phrases used. Not unique in true unique content.
The more you leave unique content and messages on the Internet dispersed over many different websites, the more beneficial it will be for the company. The unique content doesn’t need to be really unique as variations on the same theme are good enough.

Hence Web-Spam-A-Lot seems the way to go as this will result in a better findability, resulting in more traffic to your website as people will recognize your brand and will click on the link.
The combination of more traffic and brand awareness / trust will lead to converting more visitors into leads which will eventually become sales.

Do you spam on the web ?