Phil Lauterjung

Posts Tagged ‘sales leads’

A number of years ago there was a very funny movie called City Slickers, and if you haven’t seen it go rent it.  You’ll be glad you did.  Briefly it’s about some New York ‘city slickers’ who get the bright idea to spend a couple of weeks at a working dude ranch out west.  Jack Palance plays Curly, a grizzled old cowboy who epitomizes what it means to be a cowboy.  In one scene he explains Curly’s Law:  Read more... (620 words, 2 images, estimated 2:29 mins reading time)

Everyone knows that email marketing is the least expensive and most effective form of online marketing available – right?  It’s been proven to be helpful regardless of the size of your business.  Yet, according to an Epsilon and ROI Research study, 55% of e-mail subscribers in the U.S. and Canada unsubscribe occasionally and 14% do so frequently.  Sometimes it can be a tough road.  So what gives?  Why are there such high rates of unsubscribers?

Fortunately, the same study asked the reasons that internet users unsubscribe from permission-based emails.  Here’s what they found:

 Read more... (444 words, 4 images, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

There are plenty of theories about this topic and much of it is wrong.  That is if you accept the findings of a study done by MIT (the brainiac university) and InsideSales.com.  They actually had a professor (Dr. James Oldroyd) with a PhD head the study, so I’m guessing that might have a little credibility with you.

They examined 3 years of data across six companies that generate and respond to web leads, from over fifteen thousand leads and over one hundred thousand phone call attempts.

They focused on one question for this study:  Read more... (562 words, 5 images, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)

The lifeblood of any business is leads – right?  If you don’t have leads to follow up you won’t have many sales.  Seems simple enough, but in today’s marketplace it has become VERY difficult to get well qualified  leads.

According to Todd Defren at Shift Communications you should consider using the PR power of social media.  Todd taught a class for Inbound Marketing University today called PR for Inbound Marketing, and had some great insights worth passing along.  Read more... (530 words, 2 images, estimated 2:07 mins reading time)

When I used to work at a Fortune 500 company we had a VP who was very provincial concerning his department.  Whenever another VP got a little too involved in his area he would  tell that other VP in no uncertain terms to “get out of my sandbox.”  I’m not quite sure why that has stuck in my brain all these years, but someone else can do the psychoanalysis on that.

I have seen that attitude persist in a lot of companies today between sales and marketing.  If you don’t believe that check out some of the other blogs on  the subject.  It’s been a hot topic lately – a lack of alignment between sales and marketing.  Read more... (501 words, 2 images, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

As the recession wears on more and more companies are trying to find sales nirvana.  The number of articles, postings, tips, tricks, and short cuts are increasing every day.  But, once again, reality bites.  Point-of-the-post alert!! – There are no short cuts, only hard work!!

A report released a few months ago by Dow Jones and CSO Insights on Sales Performance Optimization noted that the number of companies using a formal or dynamic sales process decreased this year.  The reason they concluded that happened was that it required hard work.  An astounding 63% of the companies surveyed only had a random or informal sales process in place.  I hope I don’t need to tell anyone that those companies had worse sales results than the 37% with a formal or dynamic sales process.  Read more... (483 words, 3 images, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)