Dear CEO:

I want to thank you for the opportunity to reach out to you today, I know that you are busy…..so I will try and keep this brief.

Your web presence is poor, non-existent, incognito, losing you money and quite honestly….sucks! It lacks the true meaning behind having a website and that is to increase your profits, yes that is correct….increase your profits! Now you are asking how do I know this?? Well, it is quite simple…..your potential buyers (prospects) cannot find you, which means you do not exist in their eyes, which means they will never have the opportunity to buy from you, which means you are losing money.  Feel free to continue to spend your hundreds of thousands of dollars on trade shows, trade journals, print advertising, TV commercials, Radio Spots, direct mail and the many other traditional forms of marketing available. Meanwhile, realize that 90% of all buying research and decisions takes place through the internet.

I know what you are saying, we are doing SEO, SEM, Social Media and some other forms of Internet Marketing Services and I have to stand right up and tell you…..you are not! You might be dabbling in it, playing around with it, testing things, increasing traffic and perhaps feel that your outsource firm or internal efforts are maximizing your potential, when the truth is due to their uneducated, lack of knowledge….you are losing money. Your Internet Marketing campaign must be conversion and profit focused and most external and internal teams do not have the experience or knowledge to make that happen……so you keep losing money.

You see I have been through this with your marketing department, sales manager, IT department and various other executives within your company and they seem to have this fear that you will deny this need even though it is a MUST HAVE. I have strongly demanded that I cannot believe you would take this approach since this is such a missing link to your overall marketing strategy and one that cannot be ignored any longer. Perhaps, you should re-engage your marketing department and various other execs showing them your support of such an initiative.

See my job is to take your online presence to a whole new level that you cannot even comprehend and I know that sometimes there is not even a budget established. Not having a budget is truly not a good enough reason to lose an enormous amount of potential income especially for a strategy that is so precisely trackable. Go find out how many people viewed that TV Commercial you ran or saw the full page magazine ad you placed in that trade journal…..not gonna happen, is it?

Well I have taken up enough of your time today and I will follow this letter up with repeated phone calls and contact points until you see the error of your ways and want to start making a difference and increase your companies profits. After all, you would not want me to start reaching out to the owner and/or board of directors…now would you?

Make it a great day!

Sincerely,

Your Best Shot At Internet Immortality

Although not as lengthy of a trip as the Tommy Boy venture (but very close to as much fun), yesterday Mark Fischer and I did some old fashioned door-to-door, pounding the pavement sales calls to businesses throughout the greater Philadelphia area.

We want to express much admiration to the many security guards we encountered that did their jobs and would not permit us to pass through to any possible decision makers. Also, we want to apologize to the young lady at the one business that opened the door for us but then took a “tongue lashing” from one of her bosses for letting us through. Thank you!

As Mark and I were venturing through one of the business parks we became curious as to how many other internet marketing/SEO companies send their sales force out cold calling on businesses in this manner. Further more, how many SEO firms have a sales department and do any type of prospecting?

We have been very successful with generating leads online (obviously), but we like to be more aggressive with introducing our services to others. It is still surprising how many businesses do not understand what we do and that a website automatically gets ranked.

I would love to hear any practices or structures that other SEO firms have for their sales and customer service departments. Please include funny stories. Of course, we would love to offer advice on those tough situations.

Sales departments wish that marketing would stop thinking they are the rulers of the earth, marketing departments wish sales departments would take their cocky arrogant attitudes to another planet for… well… ever, and the tech crew wishes that sales and marketings’ peanut-sized brains would grow at least to a size where they could identify what caused a problem rather than stating what the problem is.

Today (and this was confirmed through some meetings we’ve had in recent weeks), companies large and small have these three vital departments wasting TONS of time, energy and resources due to a lack of understanding in modern business principals.

Marketing departments need to understand that the days of throwing a hundred grand at a TV or billboard campaign and watching the sales teams phones light up are a thing of the past. People are able to educate themselves about you now with the click of a mouse. They are doing the research light years ahead of when they used to… and they’re doing it without your help. It’s just them and their Dell laptop. That’s right sales guys… there’s no cheese ball with a big ‘ol smile “helping” them in making their “best choice”. They are all alone and there’s nothing you can do about it.

So, here’s what needs to happen… and quickly… or your fortune 500 company or dream of a Fortune Small Business cover story may just go bust in the next few years.

Tech

Guys and gals… listen up… Your job isn’t to sit in a room and code any more. That’s part of it, but put your marshmallow shooter away because you need to put in a little more time now. Marketing is now in your job description whether you like it or not. It’s your job to create lead generating web sites, content management systems, and automated follow up systems for the marketing department. Don’t like it? OK… go work for Microsoft or Google in a department that has no influence on sales or marketing. When you’re part of a company that has active sales representatives and spends money on marketing… it’s your job now to get involved and think ‘tech’ with sales and marketing in mind.

When it comes to technology, today’s marketing department members tend to be dopes. Don’t be offended marketers… it’s not all of you, just the majority. They were taught the ins and outs of marketing and it had NOTHING TO DO WITH TECHNOLOGY. The “idiocity” that you sense really isn’t “idiocity”… it’s ignorance, and they are uncomfortable stating that they don’t understand something. Work with them, teach them, and show them the creative side that 80% of you possess. Prove that you can make their lives better and easier… it’s finally time for you to shine, my friend… so do it brightly.

Marketing

Listen closely… you DO NOT know everything. I know! That education of yours was “way expensive” and you did learn a lot about psychology and how people react to the color blue… but tech has something to offer you. And guess what… It’s now your job to do the sales reps job! What???!?!?! I know, it hurts to hear that and your ears and cheeks are getting redder and redder. Listen though.

Product and service buyers (whether consumers or businesses) used to have to call a sales rep to get information. Well, now it’s right online. All “Bonnie Buyer” has to do is give Google a shout and Google tells all right then and there. So first off, if Google doesn’t feel you’re the most important when Bonnie types “” into the search engine, give “Timmy Techguy” a call and have them get you to the top of the engines. If they don’t know how, hire someone to.

Once they find you… your job isn’t done. You need to convert them into a lead by getting their information. Here’s where A LOT of SEO’s screw up royally. So many search engine optimizers are so consumed with getting to the coveted number one spot that they don’t even think about what’s going to happen with the traffic once it gets there. Type just about anything into google and click on the number one result. You’ll find that about 90 percent of them don’t even have a call to action on the page. WHAT A WASTE!!!

OK, so you’re getting traffic and getting leads now, right? So now you’re going to give them to sales, right? NO! STOP! DON’T. If you do the water cooler talk in the sales department will sound something like this:

“Man, Harry… how about these horrible leads that marketing’s been sending over… they really suck!”

Now, am I saying that sales is “right”? No, I’m not… but if you want growth in your organization… you need to “cultivate the leads” so that they actually turn into prospects. So, call “Timmy Techguy” again.

Have Timmy build you a customized CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Or, of course, he could use ours if he calls us. 8 )

The CRM will automatically follow up with the leads via email and schedule things like letters, phone calls, thank you cards, gift sending and more to your clients based on the product or service that they’re interested in. Marketing… you’re now the “assistant” to the sales team. Does that tick you off? Well it shouldn’t… just deal with it.

Sales People

I’m going to make this simple. Ditch the BS. Toss out the superficial attitude. It smells like the trash can in my garage (I have 4 kids… two in diapers) and EVERYONE can smell it a mile away. But here’s the thing, you don’t need it anymore. When you get leads from marketing, it’s because they have been followed up on and they’re now ready to buy. Your job becomes explaining to them why they should buy from you and not one of your competitors. Be respectful and understand that any attempts to snowball them can be stopped with the click of the mouse. A huge issue I see every day with sales people is their lack of technical ability… especially those over the age of 35… it like an epidemic. Go take a class for goodness sake.

So look, all of you get in the same room together, and it will be uncomfortable. Tech… you’re the kingpin bringing it all together, so if you don’t like to talk in groups, get some help. The bottom line is: get traffic - get leads - cultivate leads (through automation and personal touch) - close leads.

This is your show. Now have at it.

Most people I talk to are triggered to Internet Marketing by one simple conclusion “Nobody Can Find Me”. Without internet marketing your website is a brochure sitting in the storage closet undelivered to potential clients. The amount of traffic that goes by that closet and sees your brochure is minimal and if someone goes by that closet and looks at your brochure they were probably searching for pens or a tablet and stumbled across your brochure and for the most part you will not even realize they took a look at your brochure. There is not necessarily anything wrong with someone that is looking for pens to see and read your brochure, the real problem is not knowing that they looked at your brochure.

Your website is alot of times the end result….not the beginning. If you are not doing anything to drive traffic to your site and you do not have your site equipped to track and capture information from people visiting it, you are throwing away the 10s of thousands of dollars you spent on your website. Make sure your Internet Marketing plan includes every step of the process from every aspect of “Being Found” to full traffic reports to complete lead capture from your site and landing pages to contact management to prospect conversion.

Internet Marketing is more than a website….it is a complete online solution for any business.

As you know, a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link. In the same way, lead generation is only as strong as a company’s sales force. In other words, it’s important that the leads that are generated by your customized lead generation campaigns are followed up just as strongly as any other lead you would receive in your company. Many companies make the mistake of looking at online generated leads as not being as high a priority, when in reality those leads are just as important. The online consumer thinks about making a buying decision much earlier than your typical brick and mortar lead that comes into your building or even the lead that gives you a call.

Understanding the Online Consumer

The Internet has done amazing things for business but one of the bad things that it is done is added a bit of confusion. Think about this for a second. Every single piece of data that you could ever need is now available like your fingertips via an Internet connection. What this has enabled consumers and people looking to purchase business-to-business products and services the ability to be able to do all of the research online instead of doing things like calling for a quote. Therefore, these Internet leads are often much earlier in the buying process. So often, business sales people let these leads go to waste by not following up with them on a regular basis. The leads then end up still making a purchasing decision. The problem is, they do it from someone else.

We have literally spent years educating business people on how to follow up with online generated leads. After learning that there are virtually no programs available to simplify the process of follow-up, we decided that we would create one ourselves.

We are proud to present Prospect Maximizer.

Prospect Maximizer is a solution that enables customized follow-up to all of your leads, whether they’re generated online or off-line. Online leads can automatically be entered into prospect maximizer and with a simple selection of a campaign, they can automatically be followed up with via e-mail, phone calls, letters, postcards and more. Off-line leads are just as easy. We have an incredible import feature which will allow you to take leads, from a trade show for example, and upload them directly into the system. Those leads will then be followed up with, just as your online generated leads are.

Our Prospect Maximizer solution is web-based, and therefore can be accessed from virtually any computer anywhere in the world with an Internet connection.

To learn more about Prospect Maximizer simply fill out our form, give us a call, or send us a text message using the navigational bar the right.