Sales Progress Blog

Let’s face it- we live in a world that is becoming more and more technology based. Customers are turning to the World Wide Web when they need a new product or service, and companies are relying on websites, blogs and online articles to boost sales. Inside sales people need to know where traffic is coming from in order to efficiently gather leads and prospects. There are three important ways that potential customers are brought to a website: direct traffic, organic traffic and social media traffic.

1. Direct Traffic

Direct traffic involves people accessing your website through a bookmark or by “directly” typing the web name into the URL. This sort of traffic does not depend on your SEO ratings or the popularity of your blog. It is important to understand how direct traffic works because it tells you that people view your company as credible, and they came directly to your page or blog to look for information and updates.

Direct traffic is great for lead generation because you know that the people purposefully came to your site, and they are interested in your product or service.

2. Organic Traffic

Any traffic that comes to your website or blog because of words typed into a search engine, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo, is known as organic traffic. It relies mostly on keywords and search engine optimization which help your website appear earlier in any search. The more content you have built surrounding your company (this can include multiple website pages, blogs, whitepapers and articles), the more likely you are to increase your sites popularity.

Organic traffic tells inside sales people that there are people out there that are in need of their product or service, and if prospected properly, they could become long-time customers.

3. Social Media Traffic

This is the traffic that comes from people reading your blogs, clicking on twitter links or visiting from sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Typically, these people can constitute both customers and competitors. Include an RSS feed button onto your blog to keep people coming back and measure the amount of time people spend re-tweeting your information and participating on your Facebook page.

If you monitor social media traffic properly, inside sales people can generate leads from the active participants because it shows that they are genuinely intrigued by the information that you are posting.

If companies want to see their sales progress, they need to help their inside sales reps fully understand how to create leads from the tools that are out there.

admin Sales Training direct traffic, lead generation, linkedin, organic traffic, prospecting, Sales Progress, social media, Twitter

Salespeople know that the best way to reach potential customers is through their current ones. It is important to work well with your clients and to build up trust because essentially you want them to recommend your product or service to their friends and family.

Prospecting by obtaining references from clients is a great way to conduct business, and the process has slowly begun moving to the World Wide Web. There are many advantages of computer based training, but the biggest advantage comes with using the social media site Twitter. Most people believe that Twitter is useless, that it is just a place for people to follow their favorite celebrities every move, but in fact, a study conducted by Deming Hill proves otherwise:

·    20% of all Twitter communication contains a reference to a product or a service
·     41% of business owners say that Twitter delivers great value to their business

Read more…

admin Sales Training advantages of computer based training, business opportunities, linkedin, re-tweet, Sales Progress, social media, Twitter

We all know the importance of social media. We have heard that it will help lead us to prospects, and it will give us more face time with our customers. Deming Hill did some research and put together these statistics:

·    Adults spend 15+ hours on the internet every month
·    93% of B2B buyers use search engines to begin the buying process
·    9 out of 10 consumers will find you when they are ready

This means that your company had better be out ton the Internet for someone to find you, and this is where social media is the most beneficial. The more items you enter into a Facebook page or a blog, the more likely a potential client is to find you. Deming Hill found these statistics out when they did research on the biggest social media site-Facebook:

·    40% of Facebook users become fans or followers of brands/services.
·    60 million status updates happen daily on Facebook
·    50% of users log on everyday and average more than 55 minutes a day
·    If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest:
1.China
2.India
3.Facebook
4.USA

More…

admin Sales Training business opportunities, Facebook, linkedin, sales, Sales Progress, social media, Twitter

The old method of using cold calling to prospect is well on its way out, and you don’t want to be left behind. While your inside sales team had to have excellent communication skills to engage with someone over the phone, they need to be even more refined online. They need to be able to connect with friends and clients and post blogs and whitepapers to get their company in front of potential clients. Managers need to become business coaches and teach their inside sales teams to harness the new social media tools for their own benefit.

Most of us know the outstanding stats when it comes to how many people are actually involved in sites such as Twitter and Facebook, but did you know that 41% of all businesses receive leads from social media? This is huge for most sales teams. However, not everyone knows how to take social media and turn it into profits. Managers need to step in and tailor sales training to the new tool. Social media is a great tool for sales people.  It can help easily gather information, increase lead generation, allow for warmer introduction calls and much more. The trick to successful use of social media in selling is to remember that despite the new channels of communication, you are still selling. You still have to get the right message to the right decision maker at the right time.

There are three main social media sites that can be used to increase sales and create more leads:

Click here to read more.

Click here for a free powerpoint and whitepaper.

admin Sales Training business coaching, cold calling, communication skills, effective coaching, Facebook, inside sales team, lead generation, linkedin, management leadership training, prospecting, Sales Managers, social media, social networking, training reinforcement, Twitter

Cold calling. Early morning flights. Long presentations. These are things of the past. A new business model is changing the sales game. The inside sales model allows us to reach out, contact and interact with our customers, all without ever having to leave the office. With new resources, such as the Internet, sales people can save time and connect with customers from the inside.

So, how do you save time, increase revenue and obtain more customers from your office? It is simple: turn on your computer and start using social media. Make yourself and your company accessible to consumers by creating a Facebook, a LinkedIn and a Twitter account. Then post your blogs and whitepapers and connect with an audience you think would be interested in your product or service.

Social networking gives us opportunities to build out our own personal network of confidants and associates that truly care about us. Social networking tools (fastpitchnetworking.com, linkedin.com, plaxo.com, and facebook.com) allow us to build teams of followers and people who hold our best interest at heart. It is critical to not that you should not build your network with people you do not know because these are the people we are going to go back to time and time again, to not only network but to potentially ask for help to communicate information coming from your company. Social networking allows us to tap into other people’s networks, sometimes to reach thousands of people in a matter of minutes.

Go ahead try it, and let us know what you think of this new way of selling.

admin Sales Training Facebook, linkedin, networking, prospecting, Sales Managers, social media, social networking, Twitter

Many people are using social media sites to help market/promote themselves or their businesses. They will set up accounts on every site they hear about and spread themselves thin. They will not utilize all the sites to their fullest potential. The following article will give you some tips to make sure you are using your social media sites to their full potential to benefit you or your company.

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/122390

vfarnia Sales Training B2B, Facebook, linkedin, Marketing, Ning, Sales Managers, social media, Twitter

If anyone out there is feeling overwhlemed with all of the social media outlets that have been created recently, then you are probably feeling the same as everyone esle. The following article will touch on that subject and show you the three best outlets that you can use to market yourself or your company.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Social-Media-That-Matters&id=2981021

vfarnia Sales Training Facebook, linkedin, Marketing, Sales Managers, social media, Twitter

Social Networking continues to grow and this is an easy tool to let people know what you are doing.  We are coming out with a full suite of products soon on tools like Twitter! It’s FREE!

Follow me here:      http://twitter.com/TimHagen

Tim Hagen Sales Training social networking, Twitter