The Art of Closing Deals with a Qualified Lead

Closing deals with a qualified lead is the ultimate goal for every marketing program. Both marketing and sales folks need to work hand in hand to keep things going well without any hiccups. However, you need to keep a few things in mind to master the art of closing deals with a qualified lead.

1. Use different modes of communication (emails, phone calls, direct mail) to grab your lead’s attention. Ensure that your marketing plan drives engagement throughout the buying cycle. 
2. 
   Use a mail merge tool to personalize emails and direct mails.
3. 
   
   Always treat your leads as your top customers. Treat them with respect and let them know that you and your company care for their needs and interests.
4. 
   
   Focus on the lead’s individual needs and segment your marketing process accordingly. This will help you demonstrate how your products/services can help your leads meet the specific requirements.
5. 
   
   Timing is very crucial. You need to pass the leads to the sales team at the right time, neither too early nor too late.
6. 
   
   Please ensure that your marketing team shares the appropriate information about the lead to the sales department.
7. 
   
   Identify the right time to close the deal by starting the sales conversation.
   
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3 Key Factors in Website Optimization

Source:eGrabber

If you are an e-marketer focussed on your website rankings in search engine results, here are 3 key factors you should know and work upon constantly:

1. Your inbound links: Links from quality sites/ authoritative e-sources related to yours , related articles on popular sites, blog posts, etc. will benefit you way more than reciprocal links or links from a site that is unrelated.

2. Your competitor's inbound links: As good as your inbound links might be, it must still outshine and outnumber that of your competitors.

3. Your keywords: How competitive and targeted are your keywords? Sometimes you might want to opt for less competitve variations to start with.

2 Tips to Sound Different on your Sales Call

Source:eGrabber

Your prospects get dozens of calls from your competitors each week. Whats worse is they cannot distinguish one seller from the next because they all sound alike. To be successful with cold calling you must first learn to sound different than the other sales persons out there. Here are 2 tips to help you do that.

1. Change your sales opening (Ref tip on '2 Proven Sales Call Openings that Work' in the May 25 issue of our newsletter for sales and marketing professionals).

2. Dont talk about your product: Tell the prospect the opposite of what they expect you to say. Don’t talk about your product or service. Talk about what is important to the prospect.

Tests to Boost Effectiveness of Email Ads

Source: eGrabber Newsletters

Here are some of the tactics that have proven to have a great impact on email performance. It is important that you put to test some of these with your in-house list.

1. Test 2-3 different subject lines
2. Personalize email to appear to be from sales rep
3. Personalize email by user profile
4. Test different landing page content and layout
5. Offers/ discount
6. Timing of the email send

The first 3 tactics are extremely effective for boosting your ad open and click rates.

Govirals - Top 10 Videos March 2010

Top 10 Videos March 2010 - Source: goviral

BMW S1000 RR – Dinner Table
Pedigree – Dogs
Pepsi Max – ‘Oh Africa’
Nike – The Human Chain
Adidas Originals – Street Corner
Tropicana – Arctic Sun
Sprite – Spark
Sony PlayStation – Move
Specsavers – 'The Specs Effect'
Natural Gas – Soft Heat

Research Tips for Cold Calling Success

Source: eGrabber Newsletters

Do you schedule a certain day and time each week for cold calling? or Do you make cold calls only when you feel like it? Research* shows that timing plays a very important role when it comes to cold calling success.

Here a couple of facts from the research to help you improve your cold calling success:

• Thursday is the best day to contact a prospect and Friday is the worst.
• The best time of the day to cold call is 8-9am followed by 4-5pm. The worst time to call is right after lunch

So, if you are looking to add new leads to your pipeline be sure to make calls early in the day and before you leave for the day. Use the hours in between for follow-up calls.

*Excerpts from a research report by Dr. James Oldroyd from the Kellogg School of Management

Internet has surpassed TV as the “most essential” medium

Source: marketingcharts.com

The latest Infinite Dial study by Arbitron and Edison Resaerch shows that Internet has surpassed TV as the "most essential" medium for the first time.

When the respondents were asked which they would choose if they must never watch television or never access Internet, 49% of respondents chose to eliminate television. This is higher when compared to the survey conducted in 2001 that showed only 26% of the respondents chose to eliminate television.