Marketing With Free Samples, Offers, and Giveaways - 7 No Fail Rules of Successful Freebie Offers

Wendy Nelson Kenney

Did that headline get your attention? It certainly got mine! But what if we changed the headline to read:

Plan: Let’s Talk About Leads

Michael Faul
President

Leads. Everyone wants more leads, but not everyone seems to know where to find them. Perhaps, because of the recession, we should resign ourselves to a no-growth strategy in 2009—then we can all just forget about finding new leads …

Wait! We have a better idea. Suppose we don’t accept that just because the market contracts we have to as well. After all, if our local market remains in a no-growth mode, does that mean all businesses are doomed to achieve zero growth or worse? No!

If the average firm achieves no growth, then some firms will decline, and some will… Well, they will grow. Why can’t you place your firm in this latter category? What’s stopping you—perhaps the lack of significant lead flow?

Throughout 2009, Xsellerate invites you into a conversation about leads. We will explore how to get, grow, and organize leads to fuel your growth. We want to help you learn how to build the pipeline of your dreams.

Interested? Then we invite you to participate in the conversation. Send us topics you would like to see covered. On our blog, post comments, success stories, and questions.

Here’s the plan for dealing with the economic situation—choose not to participate in the recession. Right now represents perhaps the greatest opportunity for your business. Those who whine about the economy and resign themselves to a no-growth strategy will probably get what they plan for. Those of us who dare to move in a more audacious direction will acquire clients, expand market share, and position ourselves well for the day when clients need to spend to win.

Market: Managing Your Lead Generation Community

Michael Faul
President

Traditionally, relationship marketing has focused on a simple premise which was the hallmark of American business—take good care of your customer, and the relationship will become more rewarding over time. Taking care of the customer provides all types of opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell additional products and services to that customer. And, because it’s easier and less expensive to sell to existing customers than to new customers, your margins improve. Simple.

If relationship marketing works so well for customers and clients, will it work for prospects? We need to remember we sell and market to people, not companies, agencies, governments, or associations. People with similar needs will respond similarly to the same offer or stimulus. So it stands to reason that techniques used to warm client relationships can also warm relationships with prospects, making them more receptive over time to your message. But, how do you warm up prospect relationships? Here is the first installment in a series of principles to help you manage your lead generating community.

Note: Learn more about the relationship stages of suspect, relationship, prospect, opportunity, and client by visiting us at http://www.xselleratesolutions.com/resources.php.

Focus your lead generation offers on getting people to form a relationship with your business. Routinely we see marketing pieces, sent to suspects, with offers to make substantial purchases or set appointments. Suspects, not knowing your business or even that you exist, have invested zero trust in a relationship with you. They have no reason to take time from their busy schedule to meet with you or discuss spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars with your firm. As a result, very few suspects will respond to these high-level offers.

Generally speaking, about one-half of one percent of recipients will respond to direct mail offers within large batches of 10,000 names or more. Those who do respond have an immediate and obvious need. Hoorah, sales success! If another two, five, or ten percent of the market has a need 12 or 18 months in the future, you may have to run large, ongoing campaigns to continue to engage them.

To improve response rates, scale back the initial offer to provide a high-value enticement such as a white paper or online tool. In exchange, you ask only for the smallest investment of trust—a name, company name, phone number, and e-mail address. By responding, the suspect forms a relationship with your business, and you have the ability to communicate with that individual over time at a much lower cost. Plus, those folks who will be buying down the road now have the opportunity to get to know you before making that decision.

Avoid asking suspects to do more than is appropriate. When you ask a suspect or other stranger to meet with you, you’re asking for a lot. Even if it you offer a free consult, the prospect will invest precious time from a busy schedule. If you request someone to exhibit a behavior not commensurate with the type of relationship you have, they will tend not to act. So, you will receive the best result by asking suspects to do only what is necessary for them to become a relationship, and relationships only that which advances them toward becoming a prospect.

Stay with us for future tips on managing your lead generation community!

Sell: Welcome New Leads with a Planned Follow-Up Strategy

Michael Faul
President

You worked hard to deploy a great marketing campaign and the phone rings, your inbox fills, or you start racking up registrations for your next seminar or webinar. Leads are heading inbound and your job is done, right? Not exactly. In fact, your job has just begun, and what you do next and how quickly you do it greatly increases or decreases your sales success. So we came up with some tips to help you maximize your ability to qualify and advance leads toward a sale.

Who took the bigger risk in forming this new relationship: you or your new lead? They just stepped out of the comfort of anonymity to provide you contact information and put their valuable time, energy, and privacy at risk. What your lead experiences first will determine if and how quickly you can replace that fear with trust. Achieving that objective determines when and if you can convert leads into sales.  Here are four tips to help you build goodwill with new members of your lead generation community.

Get to know the people contacting you. When someone contacts you they tend to provide you limited contact information. You need to complete contact information and conduct some customer intelligence. Go to your lead’s website and:

·         Complete all contact information,

·         Make notes about their product or service offerings,

·         Note if they have multiple office locations,

·         Review their client list, and

·         Check their leadership team

Use the information you gathered to personalize questions and comments for your first contact with your new lead. Being able to personalize your first contact will increase trust and differentiate you from the competition.

Roll out the welcome mat. Send every new member of your community a welcome letter or email. Set up your welcome letter or email as a template with mail merge fields. This allows you to generate personalized welcome notes with consistent messaging and little effort or time investment. In addition to welcoming new members, make them aware of other resources they may find valuable. 

Provide new community members a copy of your privacy policy. This demonstrates your respect for their trust in you with their contact information. Also explain to them your keep-in-touch program, focusing on the benefits of being a member of your community. Invite them to participate by posting comments on your blog or other online forums and download relevant resources from your website.

Begin interacting with new community members—quickly. The longer you wait to contact a lead, the more dramatically your probability of converting them into a sale declines. How much time do you have? Research published by Insidesales.com and The Sloan School of Management at MIT indicates your probability of sales success begins to decline after the first 5 minutes of a new relationship. By the end of your first business day, your chances of qualifying the relationship can decline by more than 25% and the probability of realizing a sale by as much as 20%. Think about that: if you don’t pick up the phone to contact that lead, you become 1/5 less likely to win the deal. You need a process that ensures phone contact within the first business day of a new relationship.

Begin the process of qualifying leads. In Xsellerate’s community marketing model, anyone can enter your lead-generating community. They only need to exchange contact information with you. But, you still need to qualify your community membership. Qualifying leads is not meant to determine if they are “in” or “out” of the community; rather it determines “where they live” within the community.

Do not over-qualify on the first interaction. This tends to turn off your new lead. Rather, determine if you have only a relationship or if your new friend is a true prospect. To do this you need a check list that describes what a good prospect looks like to your business and which describes the behaviors manifested by a prospect. Work your checklist items into a series of qualification questions. You can learn about relationships and prospects at http://www.xselleratesolutions.com/resources.php.

Keep in mind qualification needs to take place throughout the entire sales process (a subject for a future article.) For your first interaction, work your positioning questions into the conversation. Interweave qualifying questions with informational statements so you don’t sound like you are interrogating your lead. Strategically leave some qualifying questions for your next interaction.

The first step in a strong lead management process involves receiving the lead into your community quickly and establishing a meaningful interaction. This needs to take place within the first business day of the relationship. The interaction should be used to initiate lead qualification, but must add additional value to the relationship while inviting the lead to interact with your organization. Properly executed, a strong lead intake process will increase your close rates and, ultimately, your growth rate.