We know you didn’t start your career as a consultant so you could spend your days selling.

However, at some point, you realized that in order to advance in your career and get promoted you need to bring in your own book of business. Maybe you’ve been trying to sell but have had limited success. Maybe you’re looking to flatten out the ups and downs of the revenue roller coaster and start bringing in a predictable flow of new clients. Or maybe you want to venture out and start your own consulting business. Whatever the reason, you need to sell.

Here’s a secret: it’s not rocket science (or brain surgery). You’re probably halfway there as well. Many of the skills that make you a great consultant can help you win new business and keep the revenue flowing.

What often happens when consultants need to sell for the first time? They think, “Time to visit the used car lot and get some pointers!” They read books about sales techniques and learn about “closing at all costs.” Then, when it comes time to sell, they either end up sounding cliche and have no success, or they simply make excuses so they can avoid selling altogether.

Luckily, there’s a better way to sell consulting services and it’s not as scary as you think.

To help you make the transition from consultant to rainmaker, we’ve created a free report that lays it all out for you, Selling Consulting Services: Forget Everything You Know about Sales and Begin to Sell Without Selling.

Click the image to download the Selling Consulting Services Free Report

In this 27-page report you’ll learn:

• How the same skills that make you a great consultant can make you great at sales
• How to avoid being “salesy” (which will lead to more sales)
• A proven process that will get you started bringing in more new business today
• Whether or not cold calling is dead
• How to uncover the full set of your clients’ needs (most sales advice gives you only half of the story)
• The best-kept secret in leading successful sales conversations

After you download the report we’ll send you additional tips you can implement right away to help you sell more and sell faster.

>> Click here to download Selling Consulting Services Report: Forget Everything You Know About Sales and Begin to Sell Without Selling

Cooking and blogging -- they have more in common than you might think. When you make dinner, you take a variety of ingredients and mix them together to create a balanced meal. You should look at blogging in the same way. Create a mix of posts using text, video and more. Here are five types of blog posts you should be writing:

 1. Raisin Bran - Basic, Everyday Posts. These posts are the foundation of your blog. They should be educational and you should get good at producing them quickly. Be sure to use keywords in the title and throughout the body of each post.

2. Spinach - Healthy, Thoughtful Posts. This type of post is designed to establish you as a thought leader. Unlike your basic, everyday posts, these posts will be more in-depth and may take extra time to write. You don't need to write as many of these.

3. Roasts - Big Blog Projects. These are blog posts that involve extra research or analysis and take more time to create. This type of blog post can generate a lot of inbound links to your blog and discussion. Choose your topics wisely and this type of post will set your blog apart from the competition.

4. Chocolate Cake - Sweet Stuff. Mix some fun into your blog. Typically this type of blog post will grab the reader's attention and can lead to lots of links and traffic. Video, images and cartoons are great examples of fun posts that help diversify your blog content.

5. Tabasco - Posts That Start Fires. Make a bold statement about your industry. Just be prepared to defend yourself; this type of blog content can be polarizing. Expect to gain a lof of links and comments (good and bad). Be careful not to write too many of these, as you could lose your audience's trust.

What other types of blog content do you create on your blog?

This article was written by Shaun Pinney, a member of our consultant team at HubSpot. Check out Shaun's Bio.

Photo Credit: TiffanyWashko

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One element of successful inbound internet marketing strategy is to research and select the right keywords or keyword phrases. The obvious question that comes up from many in small businesses is how do we do this quickly and effectively. Well... you need a keyword selection process.Why a Keyword Selection Process?

This is important because; in old world marketing speak, it's really just about 'profiling & selecting the right target market'.

The keyword selection process is actually part 1 of our full SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Process. The mimosaPLANET 6 Element Growth Cycle methodology states that; in an ideal world it would be best if you can invest some time to do a quick "Plan" (or Action Plan) before you try to "Create" & "Implement" the necessary pieces of a strategy or tactic. Furthermore, to build an effective "Plan" it would be best to do some "Discovery" (or Analysis) before you "Plan".

Well, if our overall strategy is to generate more leads and enquiries by executing an inbound internet marketing strategy and thus rank highly in Search results (getting found online by those actually looking for our products/services/expertise), then one of our key tactics is to use SEO. And to do SEO effectively we really need to do some research (Discovery & Analysis) of which keywords / keyword phrases people are searching for online, and then select (Plan) which keywords and keyword phrases we will target, i.e. what search terms we are aiming to rank highly in.

Keyword Selection Process

Keyword Selection is part one of four, in the mimosaPLANET SEO process (we've researched ideas and concepts from plenty of really smart people and companies, and we're always looking for improvements. However in small business one of the keys to success is getting results fast, to ensure this happens we try to keep our processes simple. Whether it is the business owner, a team member or one of our consultants implementing and executing the process, in small & medium businesses the idea of investing 200 hours on just keyword research only is unthinkable. Get the info, get it implemented, get results = have money to invest further to become better at strategy/tactic)!

SEO Process (part 1 of 4)

1 Keyword Selection

1.1 Discover (Do some Research & Analysis)

Keyword Google Information:
1.1.1 Google Keyword Tool Search: [Profession] (e.g. "Commercial Photographer" or "Photographer" or "Business Photographer" or "Product Photographer" or "Business Profile Photographer" or "Business Portrait Photographer")
1.1.2 Google Keyword Tool Search: [Service/Product] (e.g. "Commercial Photography" or "Product Photography", etc)
1.1.3 Google Keyword Tool Search: [Profession + City/Area] (e.g. "Commercial Photographer UK" or "Business Photographer London UK" or "Product Photographer London" or "Photographer London")
1.1.4 Google Keyword Tool Search: [Service/Product + City/Area] (e.g. "Commercial Photography LA" or "Business Profile Photography Los Angeles")
1.1.5 Google Keyword Tool Search: mywebsite.com

Keyword Google Ranking Results:
1.1.6 Google Search Results: My Company Name (web results)
1.1.7 Google Search Results: My Company Name (local only results)
1.1.8 Google Search Results: [Profession/Service/Product] (web)
1.1.9 Google Search Results: [Profession/Service/Product] (local)
1.1.10 Google Search Results: [Profession/Service/Product + City/Area] (web)
1.1.11 Google Search Results: [Profession/Service/Product + City/Area] (local)

Keyword Google Information:
1.1.12 Google Keyword Tool Search: mycompetitor.com for those Ranked on 1st page of Google Search - [Profession/Service/Product]
1.1.13 Google Keyword Tool Search: mycompetitor.com for those Ranked on 1st page of Google Search - [Profession/Service/Product + City/Area]
1.1.14 Google Keyword Tool Search: Top 5-10 [Products/Services/Solutions/Enquiries/Markets]

'How To' Note: What to you do with all these individual results? I recommend exporting each of the Google Keyword Tool Search results to excel. Also perhaps, 'print screen' the normal google search results and paste into a word document and save for future reference.

1.2 Plan (Choose which words and phrases to optimize for)

1.2.1 Selection Criteria 1: Search Volume (target = high)

• Goal - Find words that have a high monthly search volume.
• Need to know - Number of people searching each term per month.
• How to find out - Google Adwords Tool or SEO Book Tool or HubSpot or similar Tool

1.2.2 Selection Criteria 2: Relevance (target = high)

• Goal - Find how many people who search a term, are likely to buy from you.
• How - Make Estimates, Track Results, Compare to PPC Ads Conv. Then Rate each keyword phrase, i.e. (1-5) or (1-10) or (1-100).

1.2.3 Selection Criteria 3: Difficulty or Competition (target = low)

• Goal - Find out the probability of getting on the first page of Google.
• How - Understand the SEO strength of existing top 10 websites. Look at google Adwords PPC competition information (the higher the price paid for clicks, the more likely your competition will be high, and thus harder to rank highly for)
• By - Page Rank of each site, Cost of Adwords for this term.

'How To' Note: With your keyword search results exported to excel, you can now; sort columns and highlight rows as you see fit. This is based on all that the information yo have now gathered and with the above selection criteria in mind. You should then select 5-20 top keywords to target, place them in a table, set the starting point.

Target Keyword Table

Use a table to record your top 5 - 20 selections.

Keyword Phrase
SC1:
Monthly Search Volume
SC2:
Relevance
SC3:
DifficultyCurrent Google Search RankCurrent Actual Monthly Visits Target Website PageCommercial Photographer
    HomeCommercial Photography Services
     Services
Product Photography     

Services/ product-
photography

Commercial Photography Resources
     Resources
Commercial Photography Company
     Company or About Us

Important Note:

Selecting the right keywords or keyword phrases is not limited to 1 or 2 words. Indeed, at mimosaPLANET we monitor over 1500 different keyword phrases. We use specialist internet marketing software to make this process a heap easier, the selection criteria & table above are taken from HubSpot methodology. The important point is... SEO best practice will have each individual page targeting a different keyword phrase. See how the home page target keyword in the example above is ‘Commercial Photographer' vs the services page which is ‘Commercial Photography Services', etc.

Action Points

The biggest challenge to execute any marketing tactic in a small business is the actual DOING of what is required. Following this above process (‘the actual required DOING') will give you vital information to ensure your marketing efforts get the return they should. Set aside the time for you to do it in your diary now or delegate to a member of your team now or engage a professional to do inbound internet marketing for you. Without setting a deadline for completion, it'll just become another task on the long ‘to do list' that never gets done. Run through the research process, then start by selecting the top 5 - 20 keyword phrases. Next, you'll then focus on optimising (On-Page SEO & Off-Page SEO) your current website, but that is another article. Get to it!

 

 

Do you want to optimize your website but have trouble communicating with the technical folks running it? Jargon alone should not stop you from making your site the powerful marketing tool it can be.

This is a list of essential search engine optimization (SEO) terms to help marketers communicate with developers, and understand how to optimize their websites.

Some of these terms overlap with our Glossary on 39 Blogging Terms to Know. These definitions are modified to have more of an SEO focus.

24 SEO Terms You Must Know! 0-9

301 Redirect – A way to make one web page redirect the visitor to another page.

Whenever you change the web address of a page, apply a 301 redirect to make the old address point to the new one. This ensures that people who have the page saved under the old address will automatically get to the new one.

A

ALT text/tag or attribute - A description of an image in your site's HTML.

Unlike humans, search engines read only the ALT text of images, not the images themselves. Add ALT text to images whenever possible.

B

Blog - A part of your website where you should regularly publish content (e.g. commentary on industry/company topics, descriptions of events, photos, video etc.).

Each blog post on your website is a new page that a search engine sees, and therefore a new opportunity to get found online.

Make sure you keep your blog within your own domain.

Bookmark - A link to a website saved for later reference in your web browser or computer.

Social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us let users share websites they like with each other. Having links to your site in del.icio.us is a sign that your website content is interesting to people.

C

Conversion Form - A form in which you collect information on your site visitor.

Conversion forms convert traffic into leads. Collecting contact information helps you follow up with these leads.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - The part of your code that defines how different elements of your site look (examples: headers, links).

D

Directory - Just like directories for people and phone numbers, there are directories for websites.

Submitting your site to a directory gives you more than just an inbound link - it helps people find you. The most popular web directories are Yahoo! Directory and Dmoz.

Domain - The main web address of your site (example: www.yoursite.com).

It's good to renew ownership of your domain for several years. Search engine rankings favor websites with longer registrations, because it shows commitment.

H

HTML - The code part of your website that search engines read.

Keep your HTML as clean as possible so that search engines read your site easily and often. Put as much layout-related code as possible in your CSS instead of your HTML.

I

Inbound Link - A link from one site into another.

A link from another site will improve your SEO, especially if that site has a high PageRank.

Indexed Pages - The pages of your website that are stored by search engines.

K

Keyword - A word that a user enters in search.

Each web page should be optimized with the goal of drawing in visitors who have searched specific keywords.

L

Long tail keyword - An uncommon or rarely used keyword.

Small businesses should consider targeting long tail keywords. Common keywords such as 'software' are more competitive, making it harder to rank high for them in a search.

M

Metadata - Data that tells search engines what your website is about.

N

Nofollow - When a link from one site to another does not pass SEO credit.

Do not use nofollow when linking to internal pages in your website. Use it when linking to external pages that you don't want to endorse.

P

Page title - The name you give your page, which is seen at the top your browser window.

Page titles should contain keywords related to your business. Words at the beginning of your page title are more highly weighted than words at the end.

PageRank - A number from 0-10, assigned by Google, indicating how good your overall SEO is. It is technically known as 'Toolbar PageRank.' Note: PageRank relevancy is changing.

PPC (pay per click) - Advertising scheme in which an advertiser puts an ad in an advertising venue, and pays that venue each time a visitor clicks on his/her ad. Google AdWords is the classic example of this.

R

RSS Feed - RSS stands for 'really simple syndication.' It is a subscription-based way to get updates on new content from a web source.

Set up an RSS feed on your website or blog to help your followers stay updated when you release new content.

S

Social Media – Online media created by and shared among individuals. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are popular social media websites.

Links from many social media sites now appear in searches. It's important to have links to your site spread through social media.

Spider – A computer program that browses the internet and collects information about websites.

T

Traffic - The visitors to your site.

Traffic Rank - The ranking of how much traffic your site gets compared to all other sites on the internet. You can check your traffic rank on Alexa.

U

URL - The web address of a page on your site (example: www.yoursite.com/contact).

What others SEO terms do you think are useful for marketers to know?

Photo credit: sfkids.org

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Hooray. Finally, some good research on the impact of business planning, and particularly business plan software, on business success. There’s been very little on this in the past. Occasionally someone does a study seeking correlation between a formal business plan document and business success, but that’s really the wrong issue, and it generates the wrong response. But today I’m looking at a study of the impact of business plan software, and, specifically, Business Plan Pro. And I’m happy with what I’m reading.

Before I go on, let’s get this right up front: of course I’m biased. I wrote the original Business Plan Pro, and I’m founder of Palo Alto Software.

Happily, however, my bias doesn’t change the actual data. This is direct quote from a paper presented to the University of Oregon Department of Economics by Eason Ding and Tim Hursey, as part of the requirements for their honors degrees, under supervision of Prof. Joe Stone:

This paper examines the relationship between planning and success in the new light of business planning software. Results suggest that planning with software is highly correlated with subsequent successes for a variety of firms.

The source study was a questionnaire answered by 2,877 Business Plan Pro owners. Ding and Hursey used the completion of a business plan as the explanatory variable, the success of the business plan as the dependent variable, and a number of related results – original intent of the plan, type of company, stage of company growth, and so on – as controlling variables.

Bottom line: completing a business plan correlated with increased success in every one of the business objectives that came up in the study (which were: getting a loan, making a major purchase, getting investment, recruiting a new team member, thinking more strategically, and growing the company). In every one of these cases, well beyond the threshold of statistical validity, completing a business plan improved the proportion of respondents who achieved the goal. The authors of the study said:

The analysis indicates that completion of a business plan is positively correlated with every success variable indicated, even when controlling for intent of using the business plan.

And here’s their conclusion:

Except in a small number of cases, business planning appeared to be positively correlated with business success as measured by our variables. While our analysis cannot say that completing a business plan will lead to success, it does indicate that the type of entrepreneur who completes a business plan is also more likely to run a successful business.

I’m still looking through the data on this. I love what I’m seeing so far, but there is more coming, I promise.

Tim Berry

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At HubSpot, we've referred to Seth Godin as the world's most wanted marketer. Apart from that, he is a blogger and has written best-selling books, including the recent Linchpin.

I had the privilege to talk to Seth about his upcoming road trip, with his first stop in Boston this Thursday. He told me a little about what we can expect at his talk and how it ties in with Linchpin and his other works.

You can buy tickets to the event here.

A few of us from HubSpot will be attending, and we hope to see you there. Just look out for the HubSpot T-Shirts. To find out how you can connect with others who are attending the Boston event, check out the Boston Linchpins website.

Without further ado, here is the audio recording of our chat.

Seth Godin Interview

 

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This article was originally published on Social Fresh's Training blog as part of its online social media community.  Social Fresh is a social media event and community company based out of Charlotte, NC.  You can find the original post here.

If you’re a regular, consistent blogger, chances are you’ve developed a lot of content over the course of your blogging career.  

But once you’ve written a blog article, what happens after you hit “publish”?  Hopefully that content is already search engine optimized and you’re promoting it in social media to generate as much initial traffic as you can.  But if you’re like so many bloggers out there, once that article is replaced by a new article, it tends to run out of gas.

First, it will drop lower and lower on your blog’s front page.  Then it will disappear to the next page of your blog and continue to get buried under the newer, fresher content you create.  

The fact is, not every one of your subscribers will read every single article you publish, and not every one of your Twitter followers will catch every link you promote on your Twitter feed.  And you’ve probably put a lot of time and thought into your content because, let’s face it, a number of different factors go into crafting a good blog post.  So why not try to get some more mileage out of articles you’ve published in the past?  

Just because an article isn’t necessarily “new,” doesn’t mean it’s not new to many of your readers.

If you think about it, a lot of blog content has the potential for a much longer life span than you may be giving it credit for. 

Here are several ways you can get more mileage out of your content …

1. Select Your Best Content: Start by putting together a database of past content you think might still be useful to your readers.  Manually read through each article, excluding those that are overly timely, newsy or are no longer valuable for whatever reason.

2. Update Your Content: Did you initially include specific dates or timely references in a post?  Freshen up the article with current examples to eliminate staleness and then add a note to readers indicating it has been updated since first published. The only indicator that an article is “old” should be the original publication date.

3. Link to Your Content: Are you writing an article today that might be enhanced by linking to a past article?  Go right ahead!

4. Promote Past Content in Social Media: I recently conducted an experiment on Facebook and Twitter that involved promoting past HubSpot blog content in an attempt to generate additional social media traffic.  It worked -– traffic from social media sources to the HubSpot blog more than doubled!  As long as the content you’re promoting is not outdated, people will appreciate it.

5. Create “Best Of” Blog Articles: Write a quick blog article that summarizes and links to a few of your most popular past articles that generated the most traffic, or pull together a list of past articles on a specific topic.

6. Aggregate Content into Topic Pages: Do you have a bunch of articles focused on a particular topic?  Create a topic page that aggregates your content so it’s easily accessible to readers who are looking to educate themselves about a single topic. (The New York Times does a great job of this with their Times Topics pages.)  Then link to those topic pages in new blog articles and promote them in social media.

7. Experiment: Experiment with one or all of these ideas to determine what works for you.  Track your results.  Did you notice a spike in the amount of social media traffic to your blog?  Did your topics pages generate a lot of buzz and visitors?   

Promoting past content can be a great, supplemental way to generate additional traffic without much effort, but be warned -- reusing past content is in no way a replacement for creating fresh content.  Continuing to create new, remarkable content is the best way to keep your current readers’ attentions and attract new readership.  

Photo Credit: Wolfgang Staudt

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Okay, so the title and photo may be a little bit misleading.  We're not talking about who, Google or Bing, would win in a boxing match. Rather, we are referring to how the two search engines compare in ranking elements.

Our top inbound marketing article of the past week provides some great research and insight into the way Google and Bing compare in how they rank websites for search engine results.

1. Google vs. Bing: Correlation Analysis of Ranking Elements

Author: Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz

Author Rand Fishkin's article compiles his research on the different ranking elements of Google and Bing, providing valuable information for people looking to optimize their websites for these specific search engines.

Rand's analysis and conclusions cover the following SEO factors that contribute to how a website/page is ranked: query matching in the domain name; exact match domains by top-level domain (TLD) extension; keywords in subdomains; on-page keyword usage; link counts and link diversity; TLD extensions; length of domain, URL and content; website homepages; and anchor text link matches.

Marketing Takeaway: SEO is constantly changing. Understand how search engines rank websites to ensure you're optimizing your pages appropriately.

2. Using the Blogosphere’s Trends for Your Niche

Author: Kimberly Turner on Problogger

Ever wonder how you can take advantage of hot, trending topics in the news and current affairs for your blog?  Kimberly's article identifies that, no matter what your niche is, there is often a way to apply trending topics to your topic to make it interesting for readers.  They key, she says, is to take the time to research and understand the individual story's details and think creatively about how it can apply to your blogging niche.

She proves her point by providing a number of examples of recent, timely news stories and how they were successfully and creatively covered by bloggers in unexpected niches.

Marketing Takeaway: Think critically and creatively about trending topics to come up with unique, yet valuable, takeaways for your readers.

3. The Vital Importance of Labs

Author: Chris Brogan of chrisbrogan.com

How often do you experiment in your marketing?  Brogan's article emphasizes the importance of experimentation, stressing that it is a vital element in the growth of any business and that the most innovative companies are constantly experimenting.  He offers some of his best advice about using labs for experimentation.

Some of his best tips?  Make sure your experiments have clear goals, conduct your experiments in labs that aren't on your main website or online presence, and don't be afraid of failure or to get your hands dirty.

Marketing Takeaway: Don't be afraid to do some marketing experiments of your own. Take a risk, try something new and apply the lessons learned to future endeavors.

4. Tips for Making a Screencast for Your Startup

Author: Audrey Watters of ReadWriteWeb

Screencasts are a great type of online video to showcase and explain how a new product or feature works, but how do you create one?  Audrey's article offers some great advice for creating screencasts, outlining the step-by-step process to help you get started.

Her article covers tips for choosing the right screencasting tool, putting together a script, capturing the actual screencast and editing it for the best quality and results.

Marketing Takeaway: Screencasts can be a great instructional tool for your company's products or services. Try creating one for your business.

5. How Writing “Content Time Bombs” Can Double Your Blog Traffic

Author:  Rohit Bhargava on Influential Marketing Blog

According to Rohit, "'content time bombs' are pieces of content that are written to remain online until someone needs to know about that specific topic, and then they 'explode' as those people find them (usually through search engines). They are the social media equivalent of land mines, but in a good way." Content time bombs are valuable because they are written for the long term (e.g. a timely news post is not an example); they address common questions people ask.

To help you create these types of posts for your own blog, Rohit highlights some common features that make an article an ideal fit as a content time bomb:

1. It targets a specific audience or need.
2. It uses keywords frequently.
3. It can remain "dormant" until needed.
4. It engages a broader audience.

Marketing Takeaway: Think about creating some great content time bombs in your own industry that stand the test of time and help generate additional traffic long after they're initially published.

Photo by Claudio Gennari

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Many companies think of blogging as adding a bolt onto an existing machine. In reality, the companies that are successful at blogging inspire a blogging culture throughout the organization. To do this, your business needs to become a blogging machine.

3 Ways to Turn Your Company Into a Blogging Machine Method 1: Share Experiences Using Your Product

Let the whole company use your product. It can turn them into great evangelists for your brand. People will see that you love your product, which gives them more reason to love it.

The Kodak 1000 words blog is not about cameras - it is about the power of photography. Kodak employees blog about all that they can do with a camera. Through sharing their photographs and the stories behind them, they show their true emotional connection to Kodak's product. 

Even if your employees are not your target market, crowdsourcing content from your actual customers is a great idea. At HubSpot, even though we use our own software and we also showcase case studies from customers.

Method 2: Share Your Expertise

If people are in an industry, they should be knowledgeable about it, and might even be passionate about it. People love talking about something they're good at and passionate about.

Consulting company Accenture allows employees to blog about delivering high business performance. By doing so, Accenture has inspired a collection of some of the most prominent business blogs today. They show that they know their industry, and gain trust from potential customers.

Method 3: Share Your Company Culture

Southwest Airlines created an unconventional yet successful blog around corporate culture. While sprinkled with company news, the blog draws mostly from employee stories.

While your company doesn't need to have a left-field culture like Southwest, you can still let people know how you get things done. This can help you gain a reputation as a thought-leader in your industry, and improve your image for potential customers.

Marketing Takeaway

It's hard to get employees interested in blogging. Adding a marketing bolt on to your organization can only help you distribute news about your company more aggressively.

Turning your company into a blogging machine is a great way to produce useful content that is relevant and interesting to your customers. It enables your employees to advocate for their work and interact directly with customers.

What can you do to make your organization a blogging machine?

Photo Credit: rumpleteaser

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The 2010 FIFA World Cup begins in South Africa today, making it the first World Cup since the explosion of social media. The growth of social media since the last tournament in 2006 has led some bloggers to predict that the tournament will be the biggest event to ever hit Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, due to its international appeal (compared to other events that have been popular in social media such as the United States presidential election, the Super Bowl or the Oscars). Matt Stone, head of new media for FIFA (soccer’s international governing body), recently declared, “This is the first social media World Cup, where ordinary fans can become instant pundits from their living rooms.”

The World Cup is also a massive groundswell of marketing activity. This might be social media’s first truly global marketing foray and, based on what I have seen, social media marketing strategies will be at the heart of the 2010 World Cup. Advertisers have already harnessed the power of this; major World Cup sponsor Sony Ericsson is focusing its advertising dollars on social networking, shunning traditional marketing in the process. Sony has launched what they are calling the Twitter Cup, which will pit tweets from countries participating in the World Cup against each other. Coca-Cola will also be running an ad exclusively on social media during the World Cup.

I’m surprised that FIFA itself hasn’t been more robust in social media during the days leading up to the World Cup. Sure, it has developed The Club, FIFA's own social network which has 1.6 million users, but it feels like a missed opportunity that FIFA hasn't created an official Facebook application to capture the immense global anticipation and to join together the global elements of the tournament.

Consider that the 1.6 million users of the FIFA application pale in comparison to the 400 million member reach of Facebook, many of whom are soccer fans. It feels as if FIFA hasn't really leveraged the significant power of the social networks that already exist (and where people already spend their time).

So, what are the key marketing takeaways from this?

If your company wants to engage in social media, do so in the users’ native space rather than trying to aggregate it back to your own website.

Consider the difference in approach between Sony Ericsson, whose goal is to use Twitter to play in the supporters’ space, and FIFA, who created its own social network rather than leverage what already exists (and is popular).

In any case, when the world’s most-watched sport and the world’s most-used social media sites meet this Friday for the first time, it will be an interesting experiment in old vs. new media. Surely some tweets, websites and advertisers will rise above the rest as the go-to sources and innovators. Regardless of whom you’re cheering for, how social media plays out during the month-long tournament is something that will definitely be intriguing to watch.

Photo Credit: Shine2010

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Unless you've been living in a hole for a while (or this is your first visit to our blog), you may have noticed that we're a bit, uh, enthusiastic about inbound marketing.  And we give a ton of tips & advice to you about how to do it.  What I've noticed, however, is that it's easier than I expected to get inbound marketing just wrong.  You can put in the time and energy but still sligthly miss one or two essential things that are the difference between ho-hum and amazing results.  Diagnosing the problem and correcting it can make a huge difference in your results. 

For example...

• You're not getting leads.  Do you have a stunning, shiny call to action button? Yes.  Do you have a naked landing page with a short form and a sexy picture?  Yes.  So why aren't you getting conversions?  You don't have a quick description of what people will get when they fill out the form, so instead of getting leads, you get bounces.
  
  
• Your blog is a desolate, lonely place.  You've been blogging carefully away. You're using your long-tail keyword phrases strategically in your blog titles.  You're linking to other pages on your website with keyword phrase anchor text.  You have relevant calls to action at the end of each article, and you blog twice a week without fail.  Why isn't anyone subscribing to it?  Why don't you have any followers and only your mom has left a comment? Your blog is stuffed with sales content.  You haven't considered your prospects' interests or needs, and you're pretty much just tooting your own horn.
  
  
• Email marketing ROI? What email marketing ROI? You spend hours on each email marketing campaign you send.  You are very carefully reusing old blog content to provide perfect value to your prospects (and you haven't made the mistake in the last paragraph!).  You have engaging subject lines and people actually click on some of the links in the email.  But are you actually getting something from your efforts?  How can you justify the time you're spending?  By including calls to action.  Give your recipients something to do or to get for free (via a landing page, of course), and you'll discover that you're getting a lot of response from leads you thought were ice cold.  You'll even discover that you can measure your ROI.

These are only three examples of many.  Have you ever seen inbound marketing go from just okay to terrific?  How can we learn from your pain? 

Photo courtesy of Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier. 

Free Report: MarketingSherpa's 25 B2B Marketing Lessons B2B, Email, Search and Social Media Research from MarketingSherpa's Chart of the Week Data Download now for 25 free B2B marketing lessons.

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The word kill takes on many meanings in the sales and marketing world. You don’t want to do anything that could “kill” a deal or client relationship, but at the same time you want a “killer” marketing campaign or sales presentation.

When it comes to things that are “killer,” you can add email databases to the list. Developing one, especially one with targeted quality email addresses, is challenging, but it isn’t impossible, says Eric Rudolf in his article, How to Grow a Killer Email Database. All you need is time, hard work, and dedication, and the five strategies in his article get you well on your way.

As for “killing” things, you do not want to do anything to “harm” sales conversations with prospects or leads. Make a mistake here, and you could render the conversation and any relationship lifeless. One sure way to derail a sales conversation is to ask about a prospect’s budget right off the bat, writes Jill Konrath in her article, The One Question That Can Kill Any Sales Conversation.

Traditional sales training tells you to make sure prospects have enough money in their budget to afford your services, Konrath says. But asking “what’s your budget” would be the wrong thing to do when your prospect is interested but hasn’t committed to taking action. Instead get your prospect to see the value in what you offer and allocate money for your service, she says.

Konrath’s advice is just one thing older staff can teach young rainmakers, who need mentoring if they’re going to become talented rainmakers and help the firm grow. Derrick Smith has more suggestions in his article, 3 Simple Lessons to Help Junior Staff Become Rainmakers. Smith’s plan calls for starting with three main concepts, and then add time and practice.

“In this challenging economic climate, it’s important that everyone understands the need to nurture client relationships,” writes Smith. “As firm leaders, we can leverage our staff’s talents by mentoring them to assist with business development efforts. For many, it may take years to develop the skills to successfully foster client relationships. However, the following three concepts can help young professionals begin to develop the necessary skills.”

Such leadership practices are what make or break a firm, says Danita Bye, author of Leadership Shift: Paradoxical Wisdom for Transformational Leaders in These Times of Change, in her podcast interview, Are Your Sales Lagging? Poor Leadership Principles May Be the Cause. If the core leadership principles are faulty, then the organization will fail. Firms must examine what they’re doing and adjust accordingly.

When it comes to selling services, however, it all boils down to the buyer’s emotion, according to research from Enquiro. Do they trust you? Do they consider you a risky venture? Do you connect with them on an emotional level to show how their lives would be better if they worked with you—or would be worse if they didn’t work with you?

Buyers are risk-averse. Show them you’re the safest option, and you’ll win their business. And once you have them as a client, continue to offer good reliable service, and they’ll remain clients over the years.

Social media is a popular topic inside the walls of many businesses today. A major problem is that employees are at different stages of the social media adoption curve. Marketers and executives need clear information to help educated the organization about the impact social media has on their business. What is the best way to facilitate this education?

It is important to realize that people learn differently some by watching, others by listening and others by doing. The one common denominator in these types of learning is a clear and simple message. At HubSpot we wanted to help businesses solve this problem. We created a presentation eBook: Social Media Marketing: 27 Awesome Stats, Soundbites and Slides to give communicators and executives the information, visuals and statistics they need to educate others.

You can view the eBook on SlideShare below and please download your free copy of the document in PowerPoint and PDF formats.

Social Media Marketing: 27 Awesome Stats, Soundbites and Slides View more presentations from HubSpot Internet Marketing.

What type of information have you found successful in educating others about social media?

 

Free Presentation: 27 Awesome Social Media Stats and Slides Social Media Marketing, Stats, Tools and Explanations Download now for use in your own presentations.

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Think the big gun rainmakers all come out of the womb with a telephone in one hand and a contract in the other? Not even close.

Most big gun rainmakers from large and small firms alike thought at one point, “Selling isn’t for me.”

Then they got good at it and sold millions of dollars worth of consulting services.

What did they do first to create their selling success? They changed their minds! They stopped resisting, and started embracing, their role in sales.

If you’re running any recordings in your head that might be holding you back, here are six ideas that will help.

We all run scripts in our heads that define how we work and how we live. When faced with selling for the first time, these scripts can include:

• I won’t be good at this.
• I can’t be good at this.
• My boss is the visionary. She can sell the ideas. Not me.
• I don’t like talking about money.
• I don’t want to sell.
• I won’t like selling.
• You can’t be a “trusted adviser” and a “sales person” at the same time.
• I don’t have the personality for it.
• I don’t have time to sell.
• I’m afraid of selling.

The list goes on, but you get the idea. If you want to succeed with sales, don’t psych yourself out.

Psych yourself in.

If you’re ready to do that, here are six ideas to help you start thinking of selling, and of your role in selling, in a new light.

1. What makes a good consultant makes a good sales person. Think about how you deliver your services to your clients. You ask questions. You extend expert opinions. You work hard. You are accessible when the client needs you. You bring creative solutions to tough problems to the table. You deliver what you say you are going to deliver.

This is exactly what you need to do to become successful in sales. It’s not about persuading someone to buy something they don’t need. It’s about helping them find solutions when they realize they don’t have the expertise, experience, or team to get something done that they need to get done.

2. Your prospects and clients actually want you to sell to them. Clients and prospects want to solve problems they’re currently not solving, and they want to achieve success they’re currently not achieving. If you can show them how they can do that, and how you’re essential to getting them where they want to go, they’ll be grateful to know it. Right now they don’t know it, so they’re struggling where they don’t need to. They might not express it as such, but they want you to sell to them. Because if you do, you’ll help them succeed.

3. You’re most successful when you aren’t “salesy.“ The best rainmakers don’t use cheap tricks to win deals at all costs. They don’t do anything that will hinder the success of their clients. They don’t sound contrived when they ask questions or give advice. They’re not walking cliches.

You don’t have to be either. If you’re worried that you will need to do anything cheesy to succeed in selling, let that worry end here. You don’t. As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t. The most successful rainmakers don’t just sound sincere. They are sincere. And they do it with their very own personalities, never trying to sound like someone they’re not.

4. Selling is rewarding. Bringing in new clients is a thrill. Bringing in more dollars means more career success and financial rewards. But for many consultants, the greatest reward is being able to find new companies and new people for whom to make a difference and to create success. Think of all of the companies that could benefit from working with you and your firm. If you don’t find them and then win them as clients, you can’t make a difference for them or for yourself.

5. Selling helps you build relationships. Building relationships is essential when selling services. Even the sales calls that do not produce direct sales can be a win—if you continue to put energy into a relationship that is likely to yield at some point in the form of sales and referrals. If you like having strong relationships, selling is for you.

6. Selling is enjoyable. More important, selling is enjoyable for many people who never thought they’d believe it would be! Start to succeed at anything, and it will start to become more fun. Selling is no different.

Changed your mind yet? Maybe so, maybe not, but don’t forget that as long as you believe you can’t sell, won’t sell, and won’t like it, you’re right. If you believe you can sell, will sell, and might just like it, you’re also right.

Rainmaker Training

In the Selling Consulting Services with RAIN Selling Program, you’ll learn how the same skills that make you a great consultant are the ones that can make you great at sales. We’ll teach you how to refine them and apply them effectively so you can start bringing in a predictable flow of profitable clients. Learn more about this program.

With so many tactics to choose from to generate leads, and so little time to decide (if you don’t want to lose prospects to faster-moving competitors), how can you create conversations with the most qualified buyers for your services?

You can speak at conferences or seminars. Take advantage of the many PR opportunities available. Or you can cold call, send direct mail pieces, set up affiliate or referral programs—the list goes on.

Not knowing which tactic to choose and what to expect from your lead generation efforts can be a service provider’s worst nightmare. You have to zero in on what’s going to make the biggest splash in your pool of prospects. But how do you know?

Over the course of 2010, Wellesley Hills Group has conducted research from over 800 professional services providers; they’ve told us what’s worked, what hasn’t, and how they plan to generate leads in the future.

Join us on June 15 as Mike Schultz will be sharing findings from Wellesley Hills Group’s yet to be released What’s Working in Lead Generation 2010 report.

You will learn the answers to those sticky questions such as:

• How can I fill the front end of the pipeline with qualified prospects that will buy?
• Which tactics look good, but don’t work well for lead generation?
• How does lead generation work with other marketing and business development activities?
• Which tactics will work for my firm, given the dynamics of what I sell?
• What are the keys to developing a culture that supports ongoing lead generation success?

When: June 15, 2010 at 8:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. (continental breakfast and networking begin at 7:30 a.m.)

Where: Newton Marriott – 2345 Commonwealth Avenue, Newton, MA 02466

All attendees will receive a complimentary executive summary to the What’s Working in Lead Generation 2010 benchmark report.

Register for Lead Generation Success for Professional Services>>>

You must engage with prospects and get them to communicate needs (Photo by Ian Britton)

According to educationist Edgar Dale, we remember:

• 10% of what we read
• 20% of what we hear
• 30% of what we see
• 50% of what we see and hear
• 70% of what we say
• 90% of what we say and do

If we were to look at this hierarchy and map it to the typical sales process, we’d see that as sellers, we generally stop at the fourth item—what we see and hear. We send prospects sell sheets outlining our services (the prospect reads them), we engage in initial discussions (the prospect hears what we have to say), we present our proposals both verbally and physically (the prospect sees and hears our solution).

And that’s where it usually ends.

In our Selling Consulting Services online training program, instructors Mike Schultz and John Doerr drive home the importance of engaging with the prospect throughout the sales process to get the prospect to go beyond seeing and hearing your solution and actually experience it.

Modern-day selling is not about going in and pitching the prospect with the best dog-and-pony show you can deliver. You must:

• Engage the prospect in a give-and-take discussion
• Get the prospect to communicate his needs and desires
• Get the prospect to articulate the impact of solving the need or reaching his goal

The more you engage the prospect—get him to really feel the pain and see what it would look like if he made a change in this area—the easier it will be to sell him your solution. Your job is to facilitate this.

How to Get the Prospect Talking and Doing

Follow these three steps, and you’ll be well on your way to getting the prospect more engaged in the sales process and selling himself on your solution.

1. Approach the sales conversation as a discussion. You need to get the prospect talking more. As a rule of thumb, talk only 30% of the time (that’s right, you want to do less than half of the talking). Prospects don’t like to feel like they are being sold to. They like to feel that they are being heard.

2. Use questions to get the prospect talking. Prepare probing questions ahead of time to help uncover needs and the impact of using your services. If you know the needs your solution meets and how it helps your clients succeed, you can develop targeted questions to help the prospect articulate those needs.

For example, your solution may help improve profitability as well as productivity. The prospect may be focused only on the productivity piece. To get the prospect to see the full set of benefits and value, ask leading questions about how this affects the bottom line and what the employees could do if more of their time were freed up.

3. Ask the prospect to go back and do something before your next conversation. For example, if they don’t know the answer to some of your probing questions off hand, ask them to go back and think about the current loss of productivity, look at expenses in a particular area, calculate their current close rate, etc. Get them involved in the process.

Remember, what you’re trying to do is to get the prospect to explicitly describe his needs and desires and how he’d benefit from solving them.  This elevates his needs to the top of the priority list (he is more likely to remember the need and feel it more intensely), and it creates buy-in for the solution early on because he helped to craft it.

In the wise words of Confucius,  “I see and I forget, I hear and I remember, I do and I understand.”

Get your prospects to say and do, and not only will they be more likely to remember and understand your solution, but they’ll be more likely to buy it.

Do buyers see you as trustworthy or as a snake oil salesman?

Trust—there are countless articles, books, videos, and webinars about the importance of trust when selling professional services. You might think, “OK, OK—I get it. I need to get buyers to trust me.” But are you doing what it takes to establish that trust? Do you really understand what can happen if you don’t have a buyer’s trust? You could see a sale slip away even when you think you’re doing everything right.

That’s exactly what Colleen Francis was seeing when she wrote her article, The Sale That Slipped Away: What Went Wrong? The thing that went wrong is sellers pushed too hard—they oversold their service. And by doing so, they raised doubt in the buyers’ minds. They made them question whether they were genuine and trustworthy.

Charles H. Green, one of the masters of establishing trust in business relationships, has developed a plan to help you increase your business’s trust. In his article, 3 Strategies for Increasing Your Business’s Trust he says there are three dimensions by which you should measure your business’s performance on trust: Are your people trustworthy? Does your organization promote trustworthiness? Do you trust others appropriately? If you want to increase your business’s trust, you must have a strategy for all three.

In this day and age when people have little trust for most things—the government, Wall Street, big banks, car makers, Facebook, etc.—firms must show that they’re trustworthy and perform amazing work that keeps clients coming back for more. It isn’t enough to simply outline your services.

Change is Needed

Firms must also realize that a couple rainmakers are not enough to help a firm grow or even survive, says Lisa Nirell in her podcast interview, What Firms Must Do to Achieve Sustainable Growth. A firm’s success depends on everyone in the organization working together to attract and retain clients, and you need a plan for doing that.

Marketing plays a key role in that plan. Increasingly firms are turning to inbound marketing tactics such as blogs, search engine optimization, and social networks. One attraction is the lower cost per lead compared with outbound marketing tactics. But with so much online activity from firms, you must develop a plan that helps you stand out and you must test various tactics, says Jasmine Sandler in her article, The Secret to Online Marketing Success.

Firms are also thinking creatively when it comes to networking to develop new business partners and generate referrals. Doing so has become a necessity when traditional golf games and mixers fail to produce results. CPA firm Piercy Bowler Taylor & Kern followed this path and created Table for Four marketing lunches. The lunches were a big success, immediately leading to referrals and a six-figure deal. And what helps you get referrals? Trust. The events gave the firm’s partners an opportunity to develop relationships and build trust.

So, what are you doing to build your business’s trust?

We’re in an economic downturn; a slump in the economy; bad economic times and the list goes on.

Did you ever stop to think how this REALLY affects your business? I mean REALLY; not just believing all the naysayers but day to day what it means to your bottom line. My guess is nothing.  It doesn’t mean a thing. Let’s face it; we’re not Donald Trump wheeling and dealing with billions. We’re the local business next door servicing a few good clients and some so-so clients.

The media has made all the excuses we need to not succeed. If someone asks how things are going, you can say it could be better but you know how the economy is. It’s taking its toll on everyone. I call bull poop. It’s affecting large manufacturers; it’s affecting the stock market and it’s affecting my retirement fund but it is not negatively affecting my business or yours.

What is negatively affecting your business is getting caught up in all the negativity. How do you know this? The leads start to dry up. Is it because of the economy? No! It is because you stopped doing lead generation in your day to day routine.

So what are you afraid of?   don’t believe that you’re afraid there is not enough customers or enough business to go around. Think about it. How many customers do you really need to succeed this year? You don’t know! Well, that is the first thing you need to do. Figure it out. Not knowing is what is scaring the heck out of you. How can you possibly succeed if you don’t know what success looks like. Most small businesses only need a few customers; not thousands.  Some may need 10 good ones and others 100 or so. Either way, it’s not a huge number.

I think you’re afraid of making a commitment; of being accountable; of saying it out loud; maybe even afraid of success. You’ll find by knowing how many customers you need to succeed, you’ll know how many leads you need to generate and you’ll realize that it’s not that big a task and a lot less scary than the unknown.

Brenda Mahoney is a successful marketing coach with a passion for helping others succeed, personally and professionally. Working in the corporate world as well as being a business owner and marketing consultant for many years, Brenda has a strong track record for success. She’s worked with businesses in many different industries and loves what she does.
http://www.criticaledgemarketing.com/

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What is a Business Model? Why does it matter for Small & Medium Businesses and their owners?

Do you have a clearly defined business model for your business? Do you know what a business model really is? Well, it's quite a vague term... What do we call a Business Model? Well, for our purposes (focused on owners and managing directors of small and medium businesses) we can SIMPLY define a Business Model as a clear understanding and definition of the following for your business;

1. The Solution
1. what it is your business does,
2. what value it brings to the world, 
3. what segment of the market it targets,
4. why it is special/different/unique, 
2. The Profit
1. what revenue & margin does it & will it achieve (the current & target profit model),
2. what are the different revenue activities, margins, & expenses that make up this target profit model,
3. The Structure
1. what is the target business owners role at the target profit model,
2. what time commitment is the target business owners role,
3. what dependence level is the target business owners role,
4. what resources are required to achieve ‘The Target profit' & ‘The Target business owners role',
5. what human time resources are required at targets,
6. what is the organisational structure (org chart) at targets.

Other MBA types may separate ‘the business model' from ‘strategy' by saying that the business model doesn't focus on shareholder value, it should just focus on business value. Hey, and that's fine & strictly speaking a more accurate definition however, for owners of SMEs shareholder value is linked to everything. You see, I'm going to say that value = lifestyle for the MD of a SME. For SMEs value is not just the goodwill of the company or its dividend. So, we NEED to include the elements that make up ‘target business owners role' in your business model.

If you take away one point from this article, it is this...

Define & Design Your Ideal Business Model based on Your Ideal Lifestyle Goals!

Mind Map a visual representation of what your ideal lifestyle would be. Once you do that you can soon see how much profit the business must return you each month to live that lifestyle, and MORE importantly what time commitment and dependence the business requires from you personally to be able to live that lifestyle. This gives you the 3 dimensions of Lifestyle; Money (regular monthly income), Time (regular weekly working hours) & Freedom (ability to be anywhere for any period of time, i.e. how much the Time dimension is dependent on your physical presence thus trapping you to a single location).

Only once you have done this can you open your eyes to the fact that your business is not your JOB! The old 9-5 rules DO NOT apply, if you don't want them to. And now you can design a Business Model that delivers you the return on your effort a business should. Remember, as a business owner, you've likely risked more than 90% of the population, invested more, worked more, and created jobs, created value for the community, the economy & the country. It's time to start using your head more, and get a better return on that effort.

The higher up ‘The Business Model Ladder' you go the more value you get in return from your business. Where do you sit on the business model ladder?

The Business Model Ladder

Level 6 - Revolution: (totally re-inventing the industry, making a game changing innovation to your business model and indeed the market/world)
Level 5 - Innovation: (taking a big jump forward by innovating a new product or service or way to deliver that product or service, a big innovation in your business model)
Level 4 - Kaizen: (the famous Japanese theory of constant never ending improvement in everything, in this case a culture of constant never ending improvement for the business model)
Level 3 - Improved: (moving on from the current defined business model and seeking and implementing improvements to fine tune outcomes)
Level 2 - Defined: (a strong understanding of what a business model is, and a clearly defined business model)
Level 1 - Undefined: (letting the environment push you around, no clearly define business model)

 

Action Points

1) Define your personal lifestyle goals.
2) Quantify the 3 dimensions of lifestyle; Money, Time, Freedom.
3) Set a date to achieve these goals by (3mths, 6mths, 1yr, 2yrs, 3yrs, whatever).
4) Now start making progress on the Business Model Ladder. Start defining!

 

If prospects don't trust you, they won't buy from you (Photo by davedufour)

Are you concerned about converting leads into sales? You’re not alone. According to a poll by InTouch, lead conversion is the number one lead generation challenge for B2B firms.

One reason why that conversion is so challenging is that those buyers don’t yet trust you. You must prove your trustworthiness. And sometimes you might use tactics that you think are good when they’re actually hurting you, says Michael Maslansky, author of The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics, in his podcast interview, You Might Be a Trust Killer—and Not Even Know It.

“The subtler versions of lying, cheating, and stealing are what get people into trouble, such as claiming your service is perfect,” he says. “You will lose trust because we as people don’t believe anything is perfect today.”

You also want to keep in mind the “personal principle,” Maslansky says. Remember, it’s not about you; it’s about them—your buyers. Avoid talking just about your services and your firm and focus on your prospects’ needs and concerns.

Your expertise can also help develop trust and make you the go-to person in your field, says Vickie K. Sullivan in her article, Become a Must-Have Expert Everyone Wants to Work With. Buyers use three filters when deciding whether to buy your services: if your expertise will help them with the problem at hand, how readily available your expertise and skills are (do you know something they don’t?), and do they agree with your approach and the way you think.

When you tap into those three things, “not only will we get attention, but we will get the incoming emails and calls, too,” Sullivan says.

Lead Generation Tactics

Before you can convert those leads, you must first find them. You could use cold calling, but if the thought of doing that makes you shiver, there are many other tactics you can use, explains Kendra Lee in her article, Cold Calling Alternatives that Drive in Leads. Ideas include email campaigns, online events, social media, press releases, and conference exhibits.

“Some people love cold calling. But if you aren’t one of those people, relax, breathe a deep sigh of relief and change your prospecting strategy,” Lee says. “Not only will you build your pipeline, but you’ll also create awareness for yourself and your company through consistent exposure.”

If you decide to exhibit at conferences or trade shows, Sharon Berman has some excellent advice in her article, Bright Lights, Booth Babes, or Swag: How to Create the Best Conference Exhibit. In the first article of this two-part series, Berman focuses on the initial research to make your investment worthwhile. She also addresses what makes a magnetic booth that draws prospects to you and how to take advantage of the conference resources available to you.

Conference exhibits is a channel not many professional services firms pursue (or if they do, they don’t execute them well) and yet the lead potential is big. The key is understanding what makes an exhibit work and putting in the effort to make it succeed.

“If you haven’t seriously considered exhibiting before, it may be a tactic to add to your marketing arsenal,” Berman says. “Remember that any tactic is most successful when it is seamlessly integrated into a firm’s overall marketing strategy and viewed as a long-term investment.”