In the brave new world of prospecting, your sales people need to know how to find top prospects, and — more importantly — how to close them. Living online may provide new advantages in terms of streamlining sales and marketing processes, but it also presents challenges in terms of prospecting.
With that in mind, Outcome-Based Marketing author John Leavy offers these four steps for maximizing your online prospecting efforts and generating more top-notch leads:
- Profile your ideal online prospect(s): Perform an audit of your sales for the past two years to determine which types of prospects are most likely to buy. Based on that info, determine which keywords would be most beneficial in terms of finding those types of prospects via social networks and search engines.
- Consider where prospects congregate online: Determine which online forums, message boards, social networks, online groups and industry sites prospects spend the most time on.
- Budget effectively: Determine where and how your (and your sales and marketing team’s) online time, resources and money can provide the strongest ROI.
- Implement and monitor: Measure the results from week to week, tweaking the strategy until you’ve achieved peak results.
