Small business marketing can either be active or passive…so what’s the difference? Basically it is whether you are working like a farmer or a hunter!

I felt like I have to write this post because of meetings I have had with clients lately (coaching and social media marketing). All were with favorite clients and they were very telling in how much resistance I got for my suggestions! So this is what happened at my meetings…

• Yesterday I met with two of my favorite clients and was talking with them about their marketing efforts. During the talk I suggested that they do “popbys” which is hand delivering a small gift to your customers and prospects. They said that doing that would be very time intensive and that they would rather do things that are more time-effective. Fair enough.
• Day before that, I was talking with a Realtor client and asked if she was doing open houses. She said she was too busy working on transactions to take the time to do open houses and that she wasn’t sure that doing them would be time effective. Fair enough.
• Last week I talked to a coaching client who is ROCKING it, but she needed some ideas about how to get more targeted business. I suggested she do in-person networking and sell a $97 consultation. She seemed to think that, having tried that in the past and not had too much success (before she had a GREAT product), she felt that it would not be time effective. Fair enough.

Huh. I was starting to sense a theme here…:) So what were “time-effective” strategies? Some of them were doing cold calling, a couple were doing email newsletters and one was relying on the internet for leads. NONE felt that getting belly to belly with humans would be a good idea. Sigh.

What Do Small Business Marketing Farmers Do?

DO NOT get me wrong! I love planting sales seeds and watching them grow. I DO think you should build up lists that will eventually turn into business. I DO think that consistent marketing done over time will result in consistent sales.

What I don’t think is that farming is ALL you should do (especially if you are doing it because it saves time and effort – you will get the best results from doing things that are hard which other people refuse to do!)

Farmers…

• Do one-on-one meetings with people who are not looking to buy their products right now but who could be a good referral source in the future
• Work for years on their website, getting ranked for keywords that will get them traffic and sales – my favorite!
• Hold informational seminars where they collect names of people who are in an industry for later use
• Grow large social media networks of people interested in their industry
• Start an email newsletter list and send out emails once a month
• Attend networking groups, mixers and leads groups

Now, many of you may be thinking, gee Tara, isn’t farming what you sell? SURE! I have built a highly sustainable, income producing, sellable business over the last 10 years PARTLY by farming. We have gotten clients AMAZING sales and opportunities through these methods and if you follow me at all, you know I am a HUGE proponent of growing big lists and communicating with them regularly.

BUT, if you want to sell something SOON, you need to get in front of humans that can buy your stuff NOW!

What Do Small Business Marketing Hunters Do?

• Call targeted prospects who have expressed an interest in buying their product or service – we ALL have leads that have fallen through the cracks and feel crumby about it, CALL THEM!
• Stop by targeted prospects offices with TWO popbys (small tokens of your undying affection), one for the gatekeeper and one for the prospect
• Speak at an event where you are the featured guest and sell something to the people there (I use a sort of passive approach by having a signup form for an hour long consultation, you could be more aggressive about it – selling from the stage)
• Taking a prospect to lunch
• Holding an open house or brokers opens if you are in real estate – people DO NOT stop by an open house unless they are thinking of buying or selling
• Asking EVERYONE who wants some of your time, “Are you planning on buying my product or service in the next 30 days” before agreeing to meet with them (tire kickers are not a good use of time!)

So, should you do ONLY hunting, flitting from one prospect to the next, kicking them to the curb if they do not buy in your timeframe? A resounding NO! But I will say that as far as I can tell, most small business owners are MUCH more comfortable farming than they are hunting.

I don’t know if time is REALLY an issue either. YES, it does take time to meet someone in person or get to an event, BUT people who have looked you in the eye and shaken your hand are much more likely to remember you than people who joined your email list or only talk with you on social media. Think about it, the person on the other end is busy too, they get your call and think, “yeah should call her back” and something comes up.

When I ask someone if they are busy, they say YES like it is a individual thing happening only to them. I have to say that whenever I ask it, EVERYONE is busy. You are not ESPECIALLY busy, your tasks are not ESPECIALLY hard, everyone had lots to do, is on overwhelm and doesn’t have time to waste. The difference between people who are busy and happy and those that are busy and frantic is time management, calendaring and saying no.

Hope this helps your small business marketing efforts, that you do a little more hunting, still keep on farming and get out there and SELL SOMETHING!

Related posts:

1. Small Business Lead Generating Sales Funnel

Small business lead generating is a big deal over here in our marketing world! We are really good at helping you fill your sales funnel, but if these leads never follow through to a conversion and a sale then it is a wasted effort.

While working with our small biz clients, we often hear that they have gotten “no leads”. Huh, that is weird since I see leads coming across the email, in blog comments and as requests for info on Social Media. I think what they are saying is that they have gotten no “sales” or new clients. This can happen because of a breakdown between leads and sales.

Today we are going to look at all the pieces that go in making a successful lead to sales transaction.

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel (also known as the sales pipeline) is the term for the process by which we add A LOT of leads into the top of the funnel and sales come out of the bottom, losing some along the way. The parts of the sales funnel can be called a lot of different things including prospects, suspects, and customers; leads, visitors and pre-qualifications.

We are going to look at some of the normal sales-funnelly things, but then we are going to talk specifically about where your process may be failing your conversions. It can be VERY easy to get caught up in the labeling and not look a the practical aspects of going from propects to sales.

The Practical Sales Funnel

Leads – Opportunity

Leads can look like many things. They can be a message sent through Facebook asking about your services, an email info request, a response back to your email newsletter, basically any time someone talks to you about the goods or services that you sell. THE FIRST THING you should do after getting one of these messages is to add this person to your database, CRM (customer relationship management software), or spreadsheet of prospects. Make sure to note what kind of service or product they were interested in.

This is the first step of your sales funnel and just consists of collecting their contact information so that you can communicate with them on an ongoing basis.

Sales Call – Connection

The first time that you contact this prospect (whether it be by email or phone), your goal should be to set an appointment. An appointment for a formal phone call or in-person meeting where you can talk over your offerings at a time that is convenient and when the prospect will be receptive to listening to you.

I think that this should be over the phone as you have not pre-qualified this person enough to know if they are a good fit. Can they afford your product or service? Are they ready to buy within the next 30 days? Have they researched any of your competitors?

These are all vital things to know and you are just wasting time meeting with someone who is not ready, willing and able to buy your product or service.

Follow Up – Timing

I am going to tell you something that you may find shocking. Most prospects do not buy right away, gasp. Honestly, I have asked some of our clients how many times they followed up on a sales lead and they say that they never followed up because the person did not buy after the first contact. This is what we in the business call BURNING LEADS. The prospect raised their hand and said they were interested, but probably did not have enough information to take out their credit card and buy.

You should follow up a phone call with an immediate personal note or email, thanking them for their time. You should then reach out with offers of additional info at least two or three times more over the next couple of weeks (put it in your calendar). After that, make sure they are on your newsletter list so they receive ongoing communications from you, which could remind them why they called you in the first place!

If you are a typical small business owner, you are probably a TERRIBLE salesperson. If this is the case (as it is with me) you are going to need to hire someone to follow up for you. You can pay this person a fixed rate or “spiff” them an amount for each appointment they set for you. DO NOT skimp on this, a good salesman can make you more money than you ever imagined possible!

Conversion – Obstacles

Okay, you have a lead and they want to buy BUT they have not pulled the trigger (ie paid you yet). This is the most frustrating part of the sales process and one you need to look at very closely because it is probably your fault that the sale is not moving forward!

First off, make sure it is VERY easy for your prospect to pay. Just this week we had a lady call and say she had been waiting for us to send her a link for payment. Now I KNOW that we sent that link over a week or so ago, BUT what matters is that we re-send it to her right away while she is paying attention to us.

Another great example about how a process can fall apart is one of my bookkeeping clients. She takes her prospects, sends them to her salesperson to follow up, gets them excited about her services, they say they want to buy and then…NOTHING. In my opinion, the sale is falling apart because she expects them to gather their receipts, bank statements and other financial documents together themselves. To me it feels like, if they could do all that themselves, what would they need her for?!?!?! We suggested that she make a part of her services a two hour, holding-your-hand and getting your documents together startup meeting. This way, she will get the client on board AND she will be losing less of them due to the fact that they are terrible at accounting tasks.

Sale – Persistence

Overall, sales takes persistence and can be absolutely, soul-killingly hard if you are not geared to enjoying being a salesperson. BUT, if you make it a game to see how many people you can move down your small business lead generating sales funnel, removing speed bumps along the way, you WILL make more sales. This in turn will make it much more likely that you will want to do it again and and again!

Related posts:

1. Small Business Marketing – The DISC and Your Sales Funnel
2. Lead Generating – What Is A Lead And Are You Following Up?
3. Twitter and Google Great Lead Generating Tools

We spend a lot of time talking about lead generating here. Marketing is all about getting opportunities to sell your product to someone who has a need. BUT what if your customer service is letting your lead generating down?

Last week Lowes sent me a really great email newsletter with ideas about how to make my laundry room a fun and functional place. It painted the picture so well that I trotted out this weekend in search of some paint, shelving and baskets to use on the project. Now, since the idea came from the Lowes email, I decided to visit that retailer rather than Home Depot where I normally shop for these kind of items.

Differentiating Your Business From The Crowd

As most of us know, Lowes, Home Depot, Ace Hardware and other stores have the same kinds of products, much the same way that all Mary Kay reps, bookkeepers or Florists offer the same makeup, accounting or flowers respectively. So what can a small business owner do to differentiate themselves from the competition?

Offer ridiculously good customer service – With all the outsourcing overseas, it is rare that I call a company that has its call center in America. GoDaddy has GREAT customer service who are ridiculously patient with non-techy people. Most small business owners are the ones to answer the phone and make decisions about how problems are to be handled. What if you decided that each request or problem from your customers was a chance to make that relationship better?

Note – I started going to Home Depot because of marketing. Tony Stewart (a Nascar driver) is my favorite and he represented Home Depot for years so marketing got my feet in the door. What kept me coming back was the fact that all those orange people constantly ask if they can help me and then walk me over to exactly what I was looking for, that is customer service HELPING your lead generating efforts.

Keep Your Marketing Word – If you are going to promote the “best something ever”, it better be! Many times buyers remorse comes because the marketing promise is not delivered in the actual product. My pal Seth Godin always talks about how the marketing department should be on the development team. This makes total sense for small business owners. When you are developing a product or service to offer, make sure that your company is good at doing that function and that you have systems in place to assure that the same great experience happens each time for each customer.

Set Realistic Expectations – I see more small biz owners tearing their hair out because of their unrealistic clients. Funny that, most times it is because the business owner did not frame the product in such a way as to assure that the client gets a value and the business owner makes a fair wage. Too many times small biz owners want to make the lead generating sale and worry about the implementation later. The BEST way to have happy clients is to make sure they know what they are buying and you know what you are selling!

NO One Offs – Last one! Stop changing your business to fit the needs of your clients, it won’t serve you well and it will just wind up annoying them. For example, we make small biz blogs on GoDaddy. Now is that the best host, maybe not BUT we have a 6 page document that details a step-by-step process for setting up a blog perfectly on GoDaddy. A couple of years ago someone came to us and wanted to use a different web host and said that they would not hire us unless we used their choice. It was tempting to say, “well maybe we will get more people who like that host too”. We did not take the project and in the ensuing YEARS, no one has ever asked for that host again. There was a good chance we would have done a poor job because we did not have a system in place AND I can guarantee that it would have taken twice or three times as long as usual since we would have to learn a new system.

So what does all this say about lead generating and customer service? You better make sure all of the pieces of you small biz marketing puzzle are on the same page or your efforts will just be churning and burning more unhappy customers.

PS – Because I am so happy with Home Depot, I thought Lowes would be comparable. Their products might have been, but their customer service was lacking. 3 people were at the paint station but only one (somewhat incompetent and grouchy) lady was actually help mixing paint so it took almost 20 minutes to order a gallon of paint. Then the shelving lady was barely mobile and took a 10 minute phone call in the middle of selling us some shelving. I thought I was going to have peel my mother-in-law off the ceiling, she was so mad at being ignored. Needless to say, we are back at the depot now and will just take all the great lowes ideas there!

Related posts:

1. Small Business Marketing – GREAT Customer Service
2. How DISC Personality Types Affect Customer Service Models
3. Great (and not so great) Customer Service

Lead generating is an art not a science. You need to try all different kinds of things before you will find a couple that will work for your business.

Leads come from a variety of places including referrals, websites, social media, in person networking, public relations, open houses, putting your business card on a bulletin board, teaching classes and many other places. If you are a good lead generator, your leads should be showing up from all different sources. Our current clients come from speaking, Facebook, my sphere, a referral, networking, a referral, past client and more!

Having you client base come from a variety of sources means that you can never lose all of your leads at one time. If all of your leads come from the internet and your site goes down, you are out of business. If all your leads come from your networking group and it shuts down, bam, you are back to square one.

Additionally, make sure that the contact number you use in your marketing goes to a salesperson, not the switchboard or an answering service. The warm fuzzy that sales people give them is PRICELESS!

What is a lead?

I was talking with a client today and she said she had not gotten any leads from her website. WEIRD – she had told me of at least 3 or 4 people who had called or emailed her requesting more information about her services. Well to her, a lead was someone ready, willing and able to sign up for her services with one phone call – that doesn’t happen too often to many of us!

So let us break down what a lead is – In your sales process, a lead comes in and then you take them down a progression of steps that could look this:

• A call comes in requesting information
• You send them an email with your info
• You send them a nice postcard thanking them for asking about your services
• They do not call back
• You put them on your email list and drip on them
• You call them again and leave a nice message
• They do not call back
• You call again and hit them at the right time for them to buy – cha ching!

All those steps are vital to getting the sale. If you send one email or make one phone call and do not follow up, you lead could fall prey to someone else who is more aggressive about staying in touch!

How Should You Follow Up On Your Leads

There are many ways to follow up on a lead, here are some that I have used or heard about!

• Phone them once a week until they die or buy! My friends who are aggressive prospectors say this. The best line I get from them is that they are pleasantly persistent.
• Send a card or postcard in the mail. I use a database that allows me to send out postcards for about a buck. This is a good way to make them know YOU are interested in THEM!
• Email them a personal note talking about your services.
• “Friend” them on Facebook and keep in touch that way.
• Invite them to an event you having.
• Send them your email newsletter with great information.

Basically do anything you can to stay top of mind with this person. They have expressed an interest in your services or product, do not drop the ball now!

PS – In talking further with my client, we found out that she is as bad at followup as I am. If you think this all sounds like too much to bear, hire a sales person. Many will work for commission or a stipend with bonus paid for signups. The really good ones are worth paying outright AND adding a bonus!

Related posts:

1. Small Business Lead Generating Sales Funnel
2. Crazy Goal Setting and Lead Generating Ideas
3. Twitter and Google Great Lead Generating Tools

So I had a small business marketing seminar a couple of weeks ago with a focus on real estate professionals like Realtors, Mortgage Bankers, and marketing experts. One of the Realtors who attended (Cyndee Haydon – Clearwater Real Estate Specialist) has been tracking her numbers since the seminar and she is setting the world on fire! Her leads are qualified, consistent and…holy cow there are LOTS of them!!!

Now I cannot take any credit for the number of leads or the quality of them or even how she has developed the system to manage all these leads. What I can humbly attest to – Cyndee is now able to hyper-focus on dollar productive things that she needs to do and all the rest is just fluff. She is NOT answering stray and random buyer calls anymore. She is NOT spending tons of time with unqualified buyers. She IS focusing on her strengths which are generating leads, blogging, networking and all the other things that she is good at and likes!

My heart is SO happy! Not only has Cyndee focused her business, but she tracks her stats so she knows how far she has come! She knows how many leads, where they came from, where they went AND will be following them to see the conversion to clients. If you do not track these numbers you will never know if you are getting better!!!

Just hearing that today made me want to be a better person and track my leads more! I am currently blogging between 1-2 times per day, everyday for a month (which will get ME more leads…:) but the next thing I am doing is setting goals and tracking ALL my leads!! How about you?

No related posts.

BE PART OF THIS AMAZING OPPORTUNITY TO
GROW YOUR REAL ESTATE BUSINESS!

This one-day Marketing Planning Seminar for Realtors, Title Companies and Mortgage Professionals will help you focus on the activities that will help you establish your brand, grow your business, get new clients and generate leads for your business.

You WILL leave the class with a detailed plan for how to grow your business!

SEATING IS LIMITED TO 25 ATTENDEES – Don’t miss your chance to change your business!

PLUS – As a bonus, everyone who attends will get a FREE copy of “How To Service Your Listings” AND the special report “100 Things To Do To Sell Your Listings” (A $30 Value)!

When: February 6th from 9-1
Where: Integrity First Funding Group
1237 Lady Marion Lane
Dundedin FL 34698
Cost: $25

Related posts:

1. How To Increase Your Real Estate Website Hits – What Does A Girl Have To Do To Get Noticed?
2. Real Estate Marketing To A Farm Area
3. Realtor Marketing – Real Estate Newsletters

You have a million things you HAVE to do TODAY. You need to finish your paperwork, call some clients, send a newsletter, read an article, do some more paperwork, call that icky client, start your taxes, arggg!

I can tell you that there are probably only two or three things that you HAVE to do today to grow your business, sell something or get a new prospect. Those are the only things you HAVE to do today! (If you owe money to the IRS you may HAVE to talk to them today – you have my permission!)

So if you only have a few things you HAVE to do, you must WANT to do all that other busy work you have set up for yourself, right? We humans are funny creatures, we like to keep busy, to feel needed, to do important work. If we have lots to do we can justify to ourselves not getting some vital things done.

That ends today people! Today you need to figure out the top 3 things that you need to do for your business and EVERY day, before you do anything else, those things have to be done!

For my business, my top three things are:

1. Lead generating – writing blog posts, attending mastermind sessions, writing articles, emailing prospects
2. Strategic planning – getting the systems in place so that when opportunity knocks I am ready
3. Writing Ebooks or speaking in person – this is my actual physical work!

If you are a realtor, yours may look like this:

• Lead generating – holding open houses, blogging about a neighborhood, sending out emails to your database, sending a newsletter, calling your prospects or clients and asking for referrals, attending network events
• Strategic planning – organizing your calendar, targeting neighborhoods or niches, working on your database, setting up automatic emails to your prospects
• Actual Realtor Work – taking listings, signing buyer broker agreements, showing houses, servicing your listings, writing contracts, negotiating contracts, and attending closings

Doing anything other than those things is a waste of your valuable time! You need to make sure that something from those lists is on your calendar every day!

Write these things out and hang them on the wall. Anytime something comes in that seems urgent, hold it up to your list and see if it something you HAVE to do…you may be surprised how much you have been doing that is unnecessary busywork that you just have a habit of doing.

Related posts:

1. Entrepreneur Marketing Focus and Motivation
2. Where should you spend your time?
3. Website and Blog Design – The Wrong Things

People ask me ALL the time how they can do the things that I recommend! Whether I am saying that they should comment on other people’s blog posts, read lots of different blogs or sign up for Twitter, frequently they say that they have NO TIME for all that “work” on the internet!

Well I can honestly say that Twitter is one of the easiest ways to add to your lead generating tool box! Just go to www.twitter.com and sign up.

Some suggestions:

• Pick a good name that people will either recognize (I am TARAdactyl of course) or is descriptive of your business like the MeekTeam or is descriptive of your industry like REMarketer.
• Have a good picture or avatar, I can’t tell you how many faces I see that are not recognizable but I sure knew when the bloodhound blog guys come by as they have a droopy old bloodhound as their picture.
• Fill out your profile – if someone does come by to check you out you need to make sure you sound interesting. For the meantime, just put something, you can come back and finesse this later if you don’t have time now!

To keep track of all the blogs I like I have a secret! I use Google’s free tool to have my homepage show me things that I might find interesting. If I am super busy I just hop on the regular Google search and do whatever is needed BUT if I am looking for great posts to comment on or ideas to jump off of for a blog post – nothing is better!

I have done a video to show you how to use Twitter to lead generate and how to add a site into the Google homepage reader – enjoy!

For more great Lead Generating Tips visit Thrive Client Contact System!

Related posts:

1. Twitter Tools – How To Use Twitter Effectively!
2. Lead Generating – What Is A Lead And Are You Following Up?
3. Small Business Lead Generating Sales Funnel

STOP – Think about this BEFORE you spend a ton of money on Adwords or paid search engine listings!!!

The first thing you want to think about when trying to increase your website hits is are you going for quantity or quality? You can get great traffic to your site but if it is wrong kind of traffic (ie people who don’t care about what you have to offer and who will not turn into readers or use your services) what does the number matter? I know people with HUGE numbers of visitors who don’t have the volume of sales that should go along with those numbers. Just make sure that you are fishing for the right kind of traffic.

You can now resume your reading….

I don’t pay for websites hits very often. I did when I started my site just to get going and also do currently when I am trying to sell a specific product or service (like the 33 Touch Program). But in general I use the power of the internet to bring people to me.

I get hits on my Google Analytics that say my readers come the most from Active Rain (54 in the last month), Google (53 in the last month) and triiibes (20 in the last month). I also got clicks from 33 other sources in the last 30 days.

What does all that mean to me and how does it affect my readership and business? I have great readers and quality traffic. My average time spent on my site for the last month is 3:40 (3 minutes, 40 seconds), the average number of pages per visit is 2.39 and 49.31% of the people are new visits.

I did NOT have a million visitors (I had 361) but the ones that I do have come, stay and talk to me. I am a trusted source for information about marketing to realtors and have built a strong business with good customers.

So what can YOU do to increase the hits to your real estate or small business website?

1. Name your blog and blog posts something people will search for or something you want to be known for. I wrote an ezine article about Niche Marketing For Realtors which drives traffic to MA. It ranks #2 on page 2 for google and #2 on page 1 for yahoo. Marketing Artfully ranks #1 on Google and not in the first 10 pages of Yahoo for Niche Marketing For Realtors. Which leads us to…
2. Do not put all your eggs in one basket! Spread the love around!!! Make sure you have multiple streams of traffic to your main website. You can write articles at www.ezinearticles.com, set up a squidoo lens on a certain topic like I did for Real Estate Marketing Pro, or just post your Craigs List listings with a link back to your website.
3. Join some social media websites like Linked In, Twitter or Active Rain.
4. Comment on other peoples blogs, they will visit yours and may sign up to get your emails or feeds!
5. Last but not least, be interesting! Do not make your stuff one long sales pitch. Think “what if I was reading this? Would I be interested if I did not own the company?”. Give value, link back to people you enjoy reading about. Answer readers comments, show them that you appreciate their readership. And ALWAYS talk about something you like! If you do not like your topic it will be PAINFUL to write every week, let alone every day!

 

Oh, did I mention, every one of those items are FREE!

Related posts:

1. Marketing Planning Seminar for Real Estate
2. Realtor Marketing Most Real Estate Websites Let Realtors Down
3. How Can You Get More Blog Hits

Time is money. I know, it is trite but true! I had a client ask me today if I thought she should spend some of her time on adding her real estate listings to a website. (See my response on Active Rain)

It made me think about what I spend my precious time on. Sometimes I spend time with my friends and favorite clients (good), sometimes I spend it lead generating (good), sometimes I spend it writing blog posts (good) and sometimes I spend it doing something that ultimately does not benefit my business (bad).

When I was an active Realtor I got lots of emails from companies that would “let” me post my listings on their site. They would then sell that feed to other sites who wanted real estate listings. While it did give my listings more exposure, I could have done that all day, everyday, rather than spending my time doing actual things that could sell my listings like contacting other realtors, marketing the home, attending pitch sessions, holding open houses and a million other things besides posting my listings on sites that had no traffic.

Are you doing something that you “could” do rather than stuff you “should” do? DO NOT get me wrong, I am an early adopter who likes to try new marketing efforts BUT if what I am doing does not benefit me dollar for time then I should focus on dollar productive activities and save my energy for things that have a chance of working for me!

Related posts:

1. Small Business Marketing Where Do You Find The Time
2. Time Management – As In Where Does It Go?
3. Focus Schmocus – How to get things done!