All posts with the tag 'Small Business'

ePublishing – 3,350 views and counting

ePublishing or electronic publishing is one of the many new manifestations of the increasingly pervasive reach of the internet. Though many traditional publsihers may not like this new trend, another threat to established publishers, I for one am very impressed with the model. I’ve now published 50 articles on Ezine, one of the leading ePublishing sites on the net and have seen 3,350 viewers read these articles. Ezine does not allow self promotional articles, nor do they accept rants or raves. Articles must meet a long list of criteria to be published, from beneficial content to grammar and formatting.  Articles are published for free, Ezine earns their fees from PPC ads.

Sometimes the view results of my articles are surprising, for example my top three articles are:

Article Title/Views/Clicks/Click %/Votes/Date Posted

Should You Hire an Insurance Agency Producer Without an Insurance Agency Marketing Program? 352 27 7.7% Rating: Rating: Rating: Rating: Rating: 05/26/2010
Are the Days of Direct Mail Marketing Dead For Insurance Agencies? 301 39 13.0% Rating: Rating: Rating: Rating: Rating: 06/02/2010
How to “Insure” the Success of New Salespeople 242 19 7.9% Rating: Rating: Rating: Rating: rating: 4.5000 03/19/2010

Actually I thought my article on the Prospect Scorecard would be one of my most valuable and popular, however it is currently running in the middle of the pack for views to date. Note that the author interface shown above tracks click through rate (13% was the highest click through rate for these articles) and the number of stars people allocate for voting. I’ve found vertically oriented articles to offer the greatest pull for both me and my clients. StartUpSelling provides marketing services for any B2B company but we’ve found a vertical approach to be most effective for both our own marketing and ePublishing. We now post many articles on behalf of our clients in areas including: legal practices, insurance agents, consultants, training firms, software and technology companies. If you would like to read some of these articles click on the following link:  http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Alan_Blume

To read more about virtual sales and marketing, read Your Virtual Success: www.yourvirtualsuccess.net or go to www.startupselling.com

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Posted in emerging business, Insurance Agency Leads, Insurance Agency Marketing, Insurance Agency Webinars, Virtual Business | Leave a Comment »

The Prospect Scorecard – A Simple Way for Salespeople and Businesses to Improve Close Ratios, Forecasting and Communication

Great selling starts with great prospect identification and qualification. Salespeople and businesses need to quantify prospects in such a way that they can improve close ratios and pipeline forecasting accuracy. To accomplish this, you need to use something I call a “Prospect Scorecard”. This Prospect Scorecard, combined with a simple but accurate prospect identification method makes it much easier to quantify your current pipeline and thus improve close rates and forecasting accuracy. It can also be used to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing programs, because you can more readily judge (or score) the quality of incoming leads. This technique will work for essentially any company.

It’s easy to create a prospect scorecard (or virtual prospect scorecard if you’re a virtual company or self employed individual). First, start with your top ten criteria for an ideal, in profile client (if you don’t have ten, you can select 5 or 6). Criteria can include items like industry, revenues, growth, target buyer title, specific technology requirements, total employees, solution needs, and other attributes relevant to your ideal prospect. Once you have identified your top ten (or whatever number you select), you can rate them on your scorecard on a scale of 1 to 10, a 10 being your perfect prospect and a 1 not even worthy of discussion. We currently use a 5 point scale on our own scorecard, and our sales agents consider anyone less than a 3 as an unlikely prospect. If they aren’t a 3 or better, they don’t even make it to the pipeline. The scorecard helps salespeople match their prospect against specific and quantifiable criteria selected for your ideal prospect profile, turning the subjective into the objective. They can also compare their current prospects with prior opportunities which were won and lost, and match their current prospects against this historical information. Prospect scorecards are easy to create and useful for almost any type of company.

Once you have created your scorecard criteria, you can simply add ideal buyer attributes, or to simplify the process, a prospect identification acronym. The acronym we use is “BUD”, which stands for Budget, Urgency and Decision maker. If we are speaking with a principal or CEO, and they understand the pricing paradigm, we have a capital “B” and know that the budget will not be an issue. If we are speaking with a marketing manager and they are uncertain, we have a lower case “b”, and they are a less qualified prospect. The same holds true with urgency and decision maker. If we have all three, and the prospect score is a 3 or better, we know they are very likely to become a client.

BUD can be modified for your company. For example, perhaps your prospect identification acronym will be BUNT (Budget, Urgency, Need, and Timing). What’s an example for “Timing”; a new person or organizational change is causing your prospect to rethink their needs and their service provider, thus the timing is a capital “T”. The prospect identification acronym needs to be short and simple, and should include critical qualification elements of your sales cycle. I remember using the scorecard and BUD at a high tech, high growth company about 10 years ago, as we rapidly ramped up our pipeline and sales volume. Salespeople would frequently walk into my office and say, “I have a BUD-qualified prospect.” Or they might ask for help, “can you come to XYZ Company on Thursday, they are a 9 on the scorecard and BUD qualified.” We were all speaking the same language, having turned subjective terms like “good prospect”, “hot prospect” and “well qualified prospect” into quantifiable terms like “a 9” which is “BUD qualified”.  Make this part of your everyday language and weave it into the fabric of your sales culture.

This is a win for both the salespeople and for management, as this simple process makes it easier to communicate, forecast and close. More information is available on The Prospect Scorecard in Your Virtual Success (Career Press): Available at all major bookstores and Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Your-Virtual-Success-Finding-Profitability/dp/1601631014/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275487494&sr=8-1

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The Top of the Sales Funnel – Who Is Responsible?

The theory of an efficient sales funnel (or pipeline) is simple enough; pouring high quality leads into the top of the selling funnel will result in more closes flowing out the bottom of the funnel. One question, seemingly on the minds of many salespeople, revolves around the top of the funnel, and depending upon the industry or company, some refer to this aspect as the marketing funnel. Let’s review a simple sales funnel for a moment, specifically one which might be applicable to many small companies. A simplistic sales funnel often consists of suspects, prospects, presentations (or meetings), proposals, and ultimately closes (new clients). It’s called a sales funnel because the graphic used to describe this is a funnel, wide at the top (suspects), narrowing at the bottom (closes). The top of the funnel is normally filled with suspects, which are hopefully in profile suspects. Let’s say that there are 1,000 suspects at the top of your B2B (Business To Business) sales funnel. If you are selling to “C Level” executives, these suspects might have titles like CEO, CFO, CTO, CSO and CMO, and predicated upon your company or solution, you might be targeting a vertical or horizontal market. Your target companies might be within a designated target revenue range of say $20 Million to $100 Million dollars, and may be in a geographic region, let’s say the Northeastern US. There are of course many other variables, but let’s stop here for the moment and consider the prior description to be an in profile suspect for your sales funnel. These suspects then need to be culled to find prospects which we’ll define as interested, in profile, suspects.

Who should be responsible to fill the top of the funnel, culling the suspects and finding prospects? Some companies

The theory is simple: Pouring High Quality Suspects into the Top - Results in More Closes at the Bottom

call for that to be done by their salespeople, particularly small companies or bootstrapped companies. This happens at many other types of companies too, particularly those organizations reticent to add marketing dollars to their current sales funding allocation.  Many companies expect their sales team to cold call, network, attend business functions, industry events and community events and send personalized emails to build their own pipeline, and fill the top of the funnel. Most often, this is a probable path to failure, as these new sales people are often unprepared to tackle the changing world of lead generation as it migrates away from cold calling and face to face networking toward eMarketing, Web Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Blogging, SEO and Web Seminar Marketing, to mention just a few of the new tools being utilized today. In other words, sales people often have good sales skills (working the lower portion of the sales funnel), but insufficient skills (or time) to work the top of the sales funnel.

Many salespeople lament that filling the top of their funnel can be an arduous and challenging process. That’s why so many new salespeople fail; they are not savvy marketers and fail to fill up the top of their funnel with good quality suspects, then culling the suspects to identify high quality prospects. Insufficient qualified prospects at the top, invariably means inadequate results at the bottom. Why don’t emerging or small companies invest more in marketing, and why do so many of them resort to traditional cold calling methods? I think there are a few reasons.

  1. If a small company hires a sales representative at a base salary of say $75,000 and is contributing to health benefits, overhead and certain expenses, they are already nearing an investment of $100,000 per year. Adding say $20,000 in marketing lead generation services to this investment seems like it is simply overhead, overkill.
  2. Some “C Level” executives in smaller firms simply don’t believe in marketing. In many segments, particularly laggard industries, many still look at cold calling and personal networking as a pipeline panacea.
  3. Many old school marketing plans and dollars simply focus on local events, traditional seminars and perhaps improving the look and feel of their web site. Web marketing lead generation is something they may not understand or simply don’t want to invest in yet.
  4. Many small companies lack a formal marketing department, have inadequate internal resources or knowledge and are not comfortable outsourcing their marketing. This dearth of expertise creates a marketing void.

There are likely a myriad of other reasons, but the net results are the same, salespeople that don’t have quality leads flowing into the top of the funnel, won’t have sufficient sales flowing from the bottom. The results are easy to predict in that case, with large sales expenses and a lower company return on their sales investment. Remember, if one of three salespeople you hire fails, the overall costs would be much higher that an incremental and supportive lead generation program. The best advice for smaller companies when it comes to hiring new salespeople is as follows. If you’re going to invest in three new salespeople, but not invest in marketing and lead generation services, consider investing in two new salespeople use the savings toward a marketing support, lead generation program specifically for those new salespeople. And what if the budget is only sufficient to hire one new salesperson with nothing left over? Try to convince the new sales hire to consider a lower salary while guaranteeing a lead generation program to “insure” their success – perhaps you could offer increased backend commissions as you both succeed with this new program. Hiring a new salesperson without a lead generation program is like buying a new car, without sufficient funds to pay for gas. You just can’t go very far with that formula.

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Small Business Judo – Turning Your Competitor’s Greatest Strengths Into Clearly Defined Weaknesses

Judo is a method of turning an opponent’s strength into a weakness and overcoming their physical advantage by skill rather than sheer strength. You can use something I call Small Business Judo (I sometimes refer to this as Virtual Business Judo) to compete against large and established companies by turning their greatest strengths into clearly defined weaknesses. Don’t try to show greater depth of resources or feign an ability which is not at your command. Don’t try to convince someone that you have a broader product line than an established billion dollar competitor if you only employ five people. But you can easily convince someone that you have great expertise in a focused area or that you’ll be much more responsive than a multibillion dollar corporation.

If you were to take a 40 foot cabin cruiser and place it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, nobody would notice it, and even if you were searching for it, it is unlikely to be found. Yet if we were to take the same 40 foot boat and place it in the middle of a small two acre pond, it would be almost impossible to overlook. Small companies should consider this perspective when seeking market share for their emerging business. Some years ago, while leading the sales and marketing efforts of a small software startup, I decided to focus our sales and marketing efforts on a very small and specific target market, small medical offices with one to four physicians, in New England. We touted our local presence, ease of use and superior support, jabbed at competitors’ large, lumbering size, and critiqued their large scale platforms.

We then practiced Small Business Judo to help convey our competitive advantages. Don’t try to be what you are not. If you’re a small software company, don’t try to look like SAP. If you’re a niche integration firm, don’t try to act like IBM. Instead of fighting an uphill battle attempting to show you are superior in every way to an established competitor, take a boutique approach, leveraging their perceived strengths against them, and turning their superior size and marketing muscle into a weakness. Convey a responsive, flexible, expertise-oriented image by saying for example:

• We’re a much more responsive company because of our size
• Because we are a boutique, everyone who works here is an expert
• Your account will be working with our most senior people; there are no junior people at our firm.
• Our product is newer, taking advantage of current tools and technologies
• We don’t outsource your support calls offshore, when you call for support you deal directly with us
• We’re better because we specialize in this one specific area
• You’ll have direct access to our senior most executives
• It is much easier for us to accommodate your suggestions because we’re not trying to service 5,000 clients
• We’ll make you feel like our number one client

These types of statements attack your competitor’s strengths by turning them into weaknesses. You can leverage your modest size and resources as an advantage. Words like flexible, responsive, important, expert, focus, boutique, current and leading edge can make your startup sound like a winner. Imagine the small, swift ship that can change course at the slightest touch of the rudder, while the competitor’s battleship sails on another mile before beginning her turn. Think about the maneuverability of a Ferrari when compared to an eighteen-wheeler, or a jet ski compared to a yacht. Another great example of Small Business Judo can be used when you are competing with a firm that has a large account base and has been around a long time. Let’s say their solution has 1,000 customers installed and yours only has ten, and their solution has been in use for over a decade, whereas yours has only been in use for two years. You could say:

• Our system was written from the ground up two years ago and takes advantage of all the newer technologies
• Because our system is more recently developed it is more compatible than the older systems
• Our code is newer and more efficient than the competition
• We’re more focused than the older traditional companies because of our size and expertise in your specific market
• We’re more responsive because we’re not trying to service 5,000 clients
• We’ll make you feel like you’re our number one client (say it twice!)

With some practice and a good understanding of both your competitive advantages and your competitor’s weaknesses, you can leverage Small Business Judo to outmaneuver, out position and outsell much larger and more established companies. Today, the size of the company is not the most important factor; it’s the stability, viability and capability of delivering quality results at a great value. If someone is trying to leverage their size against your small or virtual business, just remember to mention Enron, General Motors, Washington Mutual, WorldCom, Conseco and Lehman Brothers, all monster size organizations that filed for bankruptcy. Today, small is good, and virtual is even better.

For more information read Your Virtual Success, Finding Profitability in an Online World: http://www.yourvirtualsuccess.net/

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The Venture Capital Trap

Which is more likely to happen? You come up with a great business concept, secure Venture Capital funding and your startup goes IPO, making you millions – or you get struck by lightning? Unfortunately the answer is that you’re more likely to get struck by lightning which, according to the National Weather Service has odds of 5,000 to 1. Should you ever consider venture capital? Companies requiring a significant infusion of cash to get started may require this type of funding, and could thus consider it as long as the founders are aware of the long shot odds. If you’re starting up a truly capital intensive company, perhaps a biotech, medical device, or energy related company, you might be forced to consider Venture Capital. But if you plan on creating a small startup service company, a new accounting firm, consulting practice, training firm, video production company, cleaning services firm, boutique software company, or any of the thousands of opportunities that aren’t truly capital intensive, I’d suggest you stay as far away from the vulture capitalists as possible. There are far better financing alternatives which offer greater control over your destiny.

Are you thinking of creating a software company which expects to hit $10 Million in sales in three years – don’t bother. Either you’ll miss your targets and get booted and diluted or the resulting flip will yield you a fraction of what you would receive on your own. That’s why Venture Capital is a ludicrous bet for most entrepreneurs. But worse than that, it’s also a pressure cooker and you’re almost guaranteed that you will lose control. Not only will you have the dubious honor of giving away a huge portion of your company, you’ll also have a VC backed board breathing down your neck. They will be watching where and how you spend your money while they fly first class and wine and dine in four star establishments at your expense. When they visit you, chances are they will be flying first class and staying at a top notch hotel. Don’t be surprised if your VC backers drop $10,000 or $15,000 of your money to attend one of your board meetings. Then again, is it your money or their money? And pragmatically which scenario would be better for the VC’s – exceeding the proposed massive sales targets or having you miss your early targets and then taking control of your company – dirt cheap – then exceeding the sales targets?

Here is some great advice from Peter Ireland from his Smart Startup Guide (www.antiventurecapital.com):

• First, chasing outside capital is by far the most unpleasant and drawn-out ordeal experienced by entrepreneurs. It always seems to take “forever”. (For this reason, veteran entrepreneurs try to avoid raising outside capital at all costs.)
• Second, based on the fact that your typical early stage Venture Capital firm invests in only one company out of every 500 business plans it reviews, your odds of succeeding are only 1:500.
• Third, in about 50% of instances where an early stage company actually succeeds in raising Venture Capital, the founder is fired within the first year and kisses his or her stock good-bye.

Perhaps this is merely a buyer beware blog entry. I can’t say that every VC has an agenda, other than massive financial returns, just that their money is extremely expensive and comes with great risk. Bootstrapping is a far better alternative for most startup companies, and perhaps, if you’re thinking of a startup that requires a large capital infusion and must then consider venture capital, you should think of a different business venture or a better funding alternative. Are there any circumstances when venture capital is clearly a better alternative? Certainly – they are clearly better than a loan shark and possibly better than a pawn shop which might charge 10% interest per month!

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You’re Too Old – or is it just your copyright

If you were a main street retailer, your window display might look a tad tired and dusty, it might seem overly familiar. The colors on your merchandise slightly faded from the afternoon sun. This would be an obvious sign of neglect, not caring very much about your clients or prospective clients. Your web site should be thought of in much the same way. Of course there is no afternoon sun and faded colors to contend with, but there is the problem of internet dust in the form of your copyright notice. Most web sites have a copyright notice on the bottom of their site, or somewhere else on their site. How old is yours? I’ve seen sites with copyrights that are 3, 5 and even 10 years old. When clients and prospects see this, they realize you’re not paying much attention to your internet front window. Perhaps they are wondering what else you are missing. It’s a small but important detail. Then again, if your copyright is three years old, when did you last update and refine your web site?

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How to “Insure” the Success of New Salespeople

A month ago I hired a sales contractor who we’ll call “Joe”. Joe has three years of sales experience in business insurance, but found the 60 hour work weeks and mundane nuances of insurance to be less than 100% fulfilling. He sought a better balance for his working schedule, greater income opportunities and the opportunity to create his own business. Most organizations fail to create a winning game plan for new hires. Too often I hear of companies that hire two new salespeople, “put them in a room and throw the Yellow Pages at them” to borrow a quote from a recent client of mine.

On Joe’s first day, we created a target prospect list, set up an eMarketing campaign to 3,000 companies, created a custom call script, set up a web seminar on a topic of interest (Integrated Marketing for Insurance Agencies) and scheduled an emailing for the next day. On day two, the emailing was sent and Joe was already responding to inquiries, calling on click through and web seminar respondents. On day three, Joe has already set up web meetings with prospects (Joe set up 4 meetings in his first week). By the end of week #2, Joe had closed his first client, and then closed another one week later.

Granted, there are longer sales cycle solutions than lead generation and marketing services engagements, but I’ve seen this Virtual Sales and Marketing approach (the 4-Phase Virtual Sales Process) work with essentially every B2B business product, service or solution. So when you hire a new sales agent, contract or employee, make sure you have a virtual game plan and start them off with some well rehearsed plays. If you get an early lead – you’ll win the game.

For more information read Your Virtual Success goto www.startupselling.com.

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Ring in the New Year with a good business model – and reap the profits

Many business owners choose or create flawed small business models which are inherently more difficult to run profitably. As an adopter of a completely virtual and highly profitable model over the past 6 years, I have leveraged a few key fundamentals which have made it dramatically easier to find a consistent path to profitability:

• Find a short path to the money – whenever possible avoid businesses with a long lead time and significant investment to achieve profits. If your business model requires this, consider a different or complimentary business.
• Insist on client deposits – we never begin a project without a deposit and my cash flow is excellent. Once a client has paid a deposit – they become a partner – not just a client.
• Work the virtual business model – No office space, employees (use contractors), no servers, no expenses, no travel, no utilities – essentially no costs – translate to a much easier and faster path to profits.
• Utilize outsource contractors instead of employees – with so many qualified contractors available today, why invest in a large office and hire employees. Work from your home office and contract with 10, 15 or more talented independent contractors – if you create the correct virtual infrastructure – you can often accomplish more with fewer people and far lower costs. And we never have workers sitting on the bench.
• Invest in Cloud Computing solutions, not server based solutions – in a recent web seminar on behalf of one of our clients we registered over 350 senior executives which resulted in 235 attendees. Registration is automatic, tracking is automatic, reminders are automatic, web seminar reports take minutes, our solution even allows us to run the session redundantly in case of internet interruption. Total cost for unlimited meetings and web seminars is less than $20 a week. And since it is an SaaS application, our administrative and infrastructure overhead is zero.

My lead generation and marketing services company eschews traditional brick and mortar trappings, leverages some of the best contractors available in North America and enjoyed a record year in the challenging 2009 economy. Your Virtual Success, due out in April 2010 (Career Press) reviews these key principals. If you would like more information on my virtual business model, go to www.alanblume.com or www.startupselling.com.

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Freezing rain, snow and wind in Boston – Brutal Morning Commute for the Non-Virtual

The weather outside is frightful – but my virtual morning commute was delightful. The temperature was in the low 30′s this morning providing the backdrop for a combination of snow and freezing rain. Unfortunately the storm hit during the morning commute making a typically bad commute, simply terrible. Of course, in my virtual office I was comfortable and ready to go at around 7:45am, with my Starbuck’s Pike’s Place coffee, and a good internet connection. My car was snow free, still parked in my garage as I glanced occasionally out the window and remembered what it used to be like to sit in bumper to bumper traffic on Route 128.
On mornings like this, I especially appreciate my virtual business model and virtual lifestyle. It was a tremendously productive day for us at www.StartUpSelling.com. We ran a successful web seminar for one of our clients with 175 registrants and 118 attendees; we posted a web site update for another client, downloaded lists, distributed web seminar reports, sent out multiple email campaigns and called many targeted prospective clients on behalf of our B2B clientele. In other words, it was business as usual.
More info at: www.startupselling.com www.alanblume.com

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Going Postal

It seems pretty strange that the U.S. government still delivers mail six days a week. After all, the postal service has been running at a deficit for years, in some cases, multibillion dollar deficits. At the moment, it does seem reasonable to have mail delivery services a few days a week. After all, we still get some bills and checks in the mail, though the trend is clearly moving to on-line banking and direct deposit. You may receive the occasional important letter or notification, and a favorite catalog from time to time. To accomplish this, according the United States Postal Service Web site (www.usps.com), these items are delivered by, “685,000 career employees and 101,000 non-career staff, making it the second-largest employer in the United States (behind Wal-Mart). The Postal Service employs more workers on U.S. soil than General Motors, Ford and Chrysler combined.” The site goes on further to say, “The USPS operates the largest fleet of commercial vehicles in the country—some 212,000 vans and trucks.” That’s a lot of vehicles, a lot of gas and a huge expense! Imagine the energy savings if we stopped sending junk mail, encouraged opt in email, cut down on the USPS delivery days, and encouraged electronic signatures for legal documents. Imagine the post office needing 100,000 or even 150,000 fewer vehicles! But even this logic is faulty. It won’t be long before most traditional catalogs are replaced by cheaper, faster, better on-line versions. It won’t be long before people stop writing hand written letters and notes. When was the last time your twelve year old wrote a letter and mailed it to a friend? The last time my 20-year-old daughter wrote a letter was six years ago when she was in summer camp and didn’t have access to a computer. My 33 year old nephew receives all his bills on-line, and is still using the same book of traditional bank checks received in his first order. It won’t be long before traditional mail is almost completely supplanted by email, eBilling, Instant Messaging and digital documents. And all of these events will move us into a progressively more pervasive on-line existence and a more environmentally friendly communication and distribution system. Don’t go postal, go virtual.

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