11 27th, 2008| 
In a recent conversation with Ville Kuusela about sales processes he mentioned that because we work in a B2B environment, we often forget B2C sales tactics still apply. His point was simple: we overlook the fact that we’re selling to people and not just to businesses. Not only do we need to convince buyers on the business merits but also make a human connection – very much as we do with consumers.
Factors to consider when focusing on SEO as a marketing strategy:
A Brief Explanation
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy based on the way Internet users view search results. Similar to print advertisements, studies show that a user will scan their search results from left to right, top to bottom. The theory is that links placed first, or highest on the list will get the most hits. Therefore, SEO focuses on editing the content, keywords, and HTML coding of a website to boost its relevance to specific search terms in order to achieve a higher ranking within search results.
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This is a continuation to the blog entry from a few days ago where I compiled a comparison matrix between the two advertising platforms. Read more… »
Yesterday, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with Paul Marcus from RainKing. Paul has a strong background in corporate sales stemming from a decade of work at Ipreo and Bigdough. He introduced me to RainKing, an interesting concept that combines old fashioned legwork with online networking to yield a reliable, corporate database housing details of decision makers from F2000 companies.
Update:
Don’t forget to read round 2.There I summarize the test results from the faceoff. Read my findings here.
Don’t forget to read round 2.There I summarize the test results from the faceoff. Read my findings here.
What is LinkedIn DirectAds?
Recently, Ari-Pekka Salovaara from Severa Plc encouraged me to look at LinkedIn for advertising. As soon as I got a chance, I gave his suggestion a try. DirectAds is the LinkedIn® version of Google AdWords. The new service was launched in July 2008 by the company. They provide a simple interface and some degree of audience targeting. Jack Chou has written a good blog about this.
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A sales cycle consists of different milestones and stages. The one I’ve listed below is based on 5 mile stones from initial contact to closing the sale. Read more… »
Have you tried LeadLander yet? Unlike other visitor tracking services which are primarily designed for web analytics, Leadlander is designed with the “sales guy” in mind. The premise behind it is simple. As a B2B company, you care the most about enterprise visitors that bring you revenue. LeadLander filters out the “tire kickers” and lets you focus on the corporate/business visitors. It removes clutter from your web logs to show “sale” interested data.
I’m always on the lookout to improve my lead generation process and add to the arsenal of tools for my sales team. So today, I was very keen to get a call from Chris Scarfo from Zoominfo (ironically he has a Linkedin profile but not a Zoominfo profile *grin*.) Chris is pretty much a straight shooter. He got me to try Zoominfo on a trial basis, with the following goals:
- Use Zoominfo as part of my lead generation program. Use it to generate vertical specific leads filtered by various criteria.
- Use Zoominfo to get additional lead data. Learn more about the lead’s company/boss/co-workers/etc and develop multiple points of contact.
What is Zoominfo?
Zoominfo is a business contacts database. The database is generated programmatically through web crawling of press releases, company websites and interviews. The Zoominfo Engine intelligently parses this content and creates profiles about individuals and companies. To see how good it is, I tried a search string of Steve Jobs. This is what I found:
Zoominfo Powersell :
Since Zoominfo has been able to create over 45 million profiles, its a good source of leads. That’s what Zoominfo Powersell offers. I started on a demo account with it today. I’m amazed to find how easy it’s to extract leads from the web interface based on simple metrics, including:
- Industry/Vertical
- Company size (both based on revenue and employees)
- Contact management level (low, mid or high-level manager)
- Geographic location (regions, states, zip code, etc)
For example, I searched for contacts in small law-firms in the UK. I filtered it further to only show IT related contacts who have updated profiles. The screenshot below shows the filtered leads. These leads can be downloaded in a CSV format or exported into SalesForce.
Unfortunately, my demo account doesn’t grant me access to the SalesForce API. But earlier today, I saw a live demo of how it works. It seems very slick. It offered most of the common Zoominfo capabilities through the SalesForce interface. The advantage was that Zoominfo data could be ported without data entry. A feature most sales guys would love.
Since I started using the service today, I’m unsure about Zoominfo’s lead’s quality or resourcefulness as a sales tool. Over the next few weeks, I’ll keep a closer eye on lead performance and conversions. I’ll let my pipeline funnel speak for itself – I’m interested to see how my little experiment with Zoominfo pans out.
