The tag line here at The Sales Whisperer® is “Life is too short for follow up calls.”

What I mean by that tag line is that your entire sales and marketing process must be scripted and planned in advance and the people you meet should know when they will hear from you, how they will hear from you and purpose of the correspondence and/or meeting.

Good ol’ Woody Allen once said “80% of success is just showing up.”

In today’s Age of Disruption, your sales and business success is ALL ABOUT your marketing efforts showing up in the inbox, mail box, voice mail and text on a regular and consistent basis or you and your company and your features and your benefits and your patents and your new and improved gizmo will be forgotten

While most sales professionals and business owners and marketing folks understand this at a rudimentary level, i.e., send a folder with a full-color brochure to someone that fills out a contact form then call them 12 times until they answer then push for a meeting and try to sell them something, what I have in mind is a little more elegant, sophisticated and productive.

In order to get this right you must view proper follow-up as a way of life vs. a gimmick or tactic or quick hit for a short term revenue boost. It requires forethought and planning because to do it well you must take what you do naturally or “off the cuff” (Sin # 1 of The 7 Deadly Sins of Selling) and systematize it and apply it to every constituent group in your business.

Here are some ideas on how to take your follow-up “To infinity and beyond!” (I just love Tim Allen in Buzz Lightyear.)

Employees & Staff

• In my sales management training I instruct my clients to “manage activity and pay on results.” With the right marketing automation platform you can assign automated tasks and notifications to your employees to keep them focused and on point. Case in point is cold calling. In my prospecting training I teach sales people to develop not only a great opening line for speaking to prospects but to also deliver a storyline of sequential voicemail messages when they reach the inevitable voicemail in the majority of their calls. Your autoresponder can be set to deliver a message to your salespeople that it is time to call prospect #1,687 and leave voicemail message #3. If you can keep your people that focused over any length of time good things will happen!

Clients & Customers

• Build an autoresonder email series to deliver supplemental training to new customers. This is especially beneficial when you have a complex product or service with many subtleties or intricate features.
• Upsell or cross-promote to your customers and offer extended warranties, upgraded service packages or complimentary offerings.
• Send a survey to your customers asking them how they would rate your product, service and support. (Send an apology letter and/or gift if you’ve let them down.)
• Send an email asking for testimonials.
• Send an email or letter asking for referrals.
• Send handwritten notes and/or little gifts or articles about their business or industry.

Prospects

• Auto-responders: You need an autoresponder to “automatically respond” to your prospects in a timely manner. Simple autoresponders such as Aweber can be setup to deliver a series of emails, free reports, links to audio or video files on your site, announcements of upcoming webinars or tradeshows and even snail mail to your prospects over a predetermined time frame. Delivering relevant, credible, timely information on a consistent basis to people that asked for your information is a great and affordable way to stay top of mind and build trust. My personal favorite is more than just an autoresponder, it’s actually a complete marketing and selling automation secret weapon and they allow my readers to get a free 30-day trial vs. the standard 15-day trial. Check out the only software platform guaranteed to double your sales here.
• Social Media: As soon as I meet someone I’m checking out their profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and sending them invitations to connect. Then I stay in touch. I shoot a quick note to them and I make sure to comment on a couple of posts they make sooner rather than later to help them remember me and what I do.

Referrals & Referral Sources

• Referrals are like ATMs with hopes, fears, desires and goals. Cater to and address their needs and the profits will flow forth. Craft a follow-up process that not only helps you get and stay in touch with your referrals but also with the referral source! Keep them informed of the progress you’re making with the referral they sent your way. Let them both know they are appreciated and special.

Vendors & Suppliers

• These are free eyes and ears for you and your business. Treat them like trusted, valued, appreciated extensions of your company by keeping them informed and watch your vendor issues decline, their satisfaction rise and their sales – and yours – soar.

To see what kind of follow up sequences we can create together click on over to my contact page and setup a free consultation.

David Reese with HealthPlan4U is both a client and a friend.

So we put together a little something for him today and have submitted to the internet marketing gods to be indexed by more than a few sites. Let’s see how long it takes it to show up on the first page of various search engines.

This week I volunteered to setup a simple website and shopping cart for my church to sell Christmas trees and tree stands.

I went to Jimdo and created a free site and make a couple of pages, put in some pictures of Douglas Firs and Nobles and poinsettias. I then went into my Infusionsoft account and created some products and a custom shopping cart and published the site.

Here’s Where the Gay Times Began

To welcome people we made a little welcome video just so people could see us from church and maybe recognize us and put them ease and let them know they’re in the right place.

No big deal, right?

To make it easy for people to find us on YouTube I also put in a description and I tagged the video and then (here’s the GOTCHA) I selected from YouTube’s categories “Nonprofits & Activism.”

HEY, YOUTUBE! WTF? WHY DO YOU LUMP ACTIVISM WITH NONPROFITS?

YouTube has a cool (at least I thought is was cool) little feature whereby it shows related videos at the conclusion of your video.

Under normal circumstances this would be good as it helps you get your video found and it helps visitors find relevant information.

HOWEVER, when you put your nonprofit video in its true category the related videos are DOMINATED by activism videos, which are dominated by gay videos.

AGAIN I ASK, “HEY, YOUTUBE! WTF?”

So today I lived and learned the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished. Imagine my HORROR when the guy I’m helping calls me and says “Hey, Wes, WTF? Why are there all of these gay videos on our site? I’M NOT KIDDING! WHY ARE THERE A BUNCH OF GAY VIDEOS ON OUR CHURCH SITE?!”

To which I calmly and coolly stated, “ARUGH?”

While I had remembered there was a way to disable YouTube’s related video feature I wasn’t concerned about it since I knew I had tagged and described the video properly and I thought, “What’s the worst that can happen? People will see some Christmas song videos?”

WRONG!

But YouTube places more emphasis on the Category from their drop down menu than their tags and description.

SOOOOOO, if you’d like to NOT show your kids and church gay porn through YouTube you need to perform a little “hack” to the embed code YouTube gives you when you upload your video.

Just add “&rel=0″ to the end of the embed src URL.

Here is my code for the video above with the “hack” in red:

<object width=”560″ height=”340″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/GP-3ROgUpNc&hl=en_US&fs=1&”></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/GP-3ROgUpNc&hl=en_US&fs=1&&rel=0” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”560″ height=”340″></embed></object>

It’s really not that hard, and truth be told, it’s really not that important AS LONG AS you select the proper category and then test your video to see what YouTube thinks are “related-videos.”

On second thought, do the hack. You don’t want people seeing anything you don’t want them to see, ever. Especially on your church site.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Throw down some graffiti below along with your thoughts, comments, experiences and suggestions.

Wes Schaeffer is founder and owner of “The Sales Whisperer®,” the best dang social media marketing, copy writing, sales training and Infusionsoft Small Business CRM consultant this side of the Mason Dixon Line. He has traveled the world serving his country, selling high tech gizmos and gadgets and training business owners, entrepreneurs and professional sales people how to sell more, faster, at higher margin, with less stress and more fun. He even has a “Double Your Sales in 12 Months” guarantee. Contact him here today to start doubling your sales by tomorrow. When you’re done you can subscribe to his “Southern Social Media” podcast on iTunes here.

Social Media Sites Are The Way To Go To Get New Customers

This is more of a “selective myth” than an outright lie.

I say “selective-myth” because not all social media sites are created equally, nor with the same purpose and goal in mind. A great majority of the sites are “social” first (hence the name), which means people are there to visit and be sociable rather than shop or be sold something.

Because of that oft-overlooked fact, many of the major social media sites are either not the best places for a business owner to spend their resources – time and money – and/or their “typical” approach to marketing is not ideal and must be reevaluated and redesigned to fit the social media landscape.

*Sidebar: Truth be told, most – as in 92.75% – of small businesses don’t know SQUAT about sales or marketing. They waste money on glossy brochures that end up in the trash. They turn over their sales force at an alarming rate but hold on to the doddering do-gooders that know how to brown nose and befriend the staff despite missing numbers year after year. Their media buys are based on the deal-of-the-month with no consideration given to creating and delivering a powerful message or considering how it will fit into a bigger strategic marketing picture. And they have no centralized, process-driven system for automating, tracking and measuring it all. Now back to your regularly-scheduled blog post already in progress…

When approaching social media for business purposes – and ALL businesses should – you must first determine your primary objective and there are only two choices: networking or link building.

Volumes have been written on the various means and methods to achieve both objectives (and a Saturday morning blog post before the Army @ Air Force and LSU @ Alabama games (Air Force and LSU will win, IMHO) is not the place to get into the weeds on those topics) but suffice it to say every major and minor social media site lends itself more adequately to one or the other for your business.

Once you understand the primary focus and benefit of each social media site for your industry you can then leverage them to first make the marketplace aware of you, then lead them back to your site or blog and then to become a customer.

Start small. Create a standard profile on several major sites and start listening. Demonstrate your expertise and skill level and industry insight by first asking great questions. This will show how good you are without bragging and provide insight as to the interest level and market potential in the chosen social network based on the degree to which others contribute to your question.

Answer questions posted by others. This again shows your expertise and will begin to attract prospects to you. (It also gives you a chance to create valuable content that can be used on your site for SEO.)

Integrate your social media sites together with free tools such as RSS feeds, Ping.fm and HootSuite to expand your reach and presence with minimal duplication and see which platform produces the best results.

Always keep in mind the primary function of social media sites is help you get noticed, which causes the reader to want to visit your site or take you up on a unique, timely, relevant call to action, which, at a minimum, enables you to capture their contact information and ultimately results in a sale.

There’s a lot of moving pieces and parts.

If you need a little help give me jingle and watch your cash register ring.

BNI’s motto is “givers gain.”

That is quite visible in the world of Twitter (the Twitterverse).

Many bloggers (and MLMers and grandmas and brick and mortar businesses) use Twitter as a viable means to promote their own blog. The micro-blogging capability of Twitter serves as a free press release that tells your followers you have something worth reading back at your blog. (Think of Twitter as a river that feeds the lake known as your blog / website.)

However, a really powerful aspect of Twitter that is often under-utilized by blogger is highlighting the great content of others by “retweeting”

Just as you would retell a funny joke or quote a magazine or newspaper article when you see an interesting story, “retweeting” is simply re-sending a twitter message that all of your followers will see. However, unlike Jayson Blair or Dan Rather (ouch!), you should give credit to the original “Tweeterer” by including their username with the @ sign. For example, mine is @SalesWhisperer.

“But, Wes, won’t this redirect my followers to the person I am re-tweeting?”

Nope.

What ends up happening is that your followers will come to regard you as a source of valuable information and they’ll pay more attention to you because you find good things for them.

Retweeting Basics

With Twitter you only have 140 characters so the best way to Re-Tweet is to start the post with an abbreviation, RT.

Then add their username followed by a colon (:) and then, if there is room, your opinion of it.

So it looks like this:

RT @SalesWhisperer: Life’s too short for follow up calls. [That Wes is a smart dude!]

Remember, to be considered by others to be a trusted, valuable resource on the internet and the Twitterverse, be sure to screen thoroughly that which you Re-Tweet, because you will be judged by the Twitter company that you keep!

Over time you will grow your followers and those that you Re-Tweet will likely follow and Re-Tweet you as well. It’s the classic case of “if you scratch my back” or Robert Cialdini’s Rule of Reciprocity.

Keep in mind, though, that you are not limited to simply Re-Tweeting other’s Tweets. You can also link to relevant, interesting sites and content you find on the web.

Retweeting Can and Will Strengthen Your Brand

Have you ever called or visited a store looking for an item that they did not carry but a helpful clerk there told you where you could get it and/or called the other store to make sure they had it in stock?

Did your appreciation for that store go up or down because of that interaction? Of course it SKYROCKETED and you probably told 5 other people about it and you still visit that store first anytime you need something else.

Re-Tweeting is the same thing.

So fire up your mouse, boot up your favorite aggregator (I like HootSuite and TweetDeck, in that order) and start throwing around some kudos to the Twitterers you like and watch your followers grow along with the grin on your face!

Kudos to the Germans for leveraging social media to build awareness by getting free press via social media. They’re also using their creativity to solve “mundane” issues.

What’s the last creative idea you actually thought of, let alone had the guts to implement and test at the risk of being called “silly” or “stupid” or “whatever?”

It’s working for Volkswagen. Might it work for you?

Getting creative help is more affordable and accessible than you think.

Why in the heck is social media so confusing? So full of wasted energy and broken promises? So full of snake oil salesmen promising you “secrets revealed” and the “one thing you gotta do to make money with social media?”

If these guys and gals are so good why do they hide behind fancy websites and 240 page PDF’s and 95 CD’s they know you’ll never get through?

What happened to good old-fashioned, real life, live interaction?

Well, I guess it takes a Southern boy to bring Southern hospitality to the world of Social Media Marketing.

Please join me live every Monday morning to kick start your week with new ideas on how to leverage social media to grow your business. And because I’m a longtime salesman we’ll also get into persuasion, follow up, writing compelling copy, making powerful lead magnets, getting the attention of decision makers and a whole lotta other cool stuff that will help you garner and focus the energy and the power of Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and Ning and YouTube and all the other 57 million (it seems like) social media platforms popping up out there.

And the good part is the calls will be recorded and you can download them anytime to listen to forever!

And the even better part is…it’s AFFORDABLE! These classes will only be $47 per month!

Yep, you read that right: $47 per month. Not per week or per day or per hour or per half hour or per quarter hour or per minute or…you get the point.

Just $47 per month gets you live weekly calls with me and a host of experts and other sales people, business owners, entrepreneurs, marketing professionals to exchange ideas, share best practices, learn from each other and from the best social media marketing minds in the country.

And you’ll get access to a new membership site we’re building as I type this blog update so the same $47 per month will get you access to the membership site, also.

And, check this out, you’ll also be able to attend any future training or participate in any future workshop I’m conducting at 50% off the published price as long as you’re an active member of the Social Media Marketing Mastery Monday Mastermind.

So what do you have to lose except headaches and backaches from staring at the computer screen all day long?

Sign up now before we get the first 100 and have to either cut it off or add another class at a higher amount. (It would be worth it at $97/mo but let’s hook each other up and do some business together and grow ourselves to our true potential.)

What’s good for big business is not always good for small business.

There have been a log of myths and misnomers about the benefits of social media marketing and social networking sites for small businesses.

Many small business owners are finding that these platforms do not live up to the buzz.

While I am a big fan and promoter and provider of “outrageous” marketing consulting, ideas and tools that get your business found and gets your message out, there are a lot of challenges when setting up your social media marketing strategy and tactics

(To be fair, I’ve not found more than a handful of small business owners that know how to market worth a cr*p, so they face challenges with any marketing medium. But we’ll focus on Social Media Marketing here today.)

So if you’re drawn to the Facebook-Twitter-LinkedIn-etc. bright, shiny pots of gold on the hill, please pause and consider the following few posts before you go any further.

1. Social marketing is free.

We all know that direct mail is not free. You have to get the list, write the letter, address the envelopes, stuff the envelopes, pay for a stamp and get them to the post office…all for a 0.5% to 1% response rate (I can help you bump that up DRAMATICALLY. It all boils down to list segmentation and copy writing, but I digress.)

Leveraging social media sites for marketing is not “free,” either. In fact, because of the proliferation of social media sites and tools, it may be the most expensive form of marketing available today because it takes so much time to wrap your arms and brain around this ever-evolving platform.

Sure, most social media sites can be created for free: Facebook, WordPress, Twitter, Google, Google Wave, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, TweetDeck, HootSuite, etc. all cost zero dollars to create.

But like a new puppy, they all need constant care and feeding and attention because, just like an un-supervised puppy can get into trouble, an out-of-date blog or Facebook Fan Page can actually harm your Web 2.0 marketing efforts.

And if you’ve ever attempted to write a direct mail piece, update the content on your website or even create a radio or TV ad, you know how hard it is to keep your sites and marketing material up to date and current. Social media ads the additional “burden” of requiring you to respond to questions from visitors either in the comment section or via text/chat, post brilliant ideas and concepts (such as here! , add attractive, eye-pleasing graphics, monitor (good and bad) activity (you should see one of the “crazies” that attempted to hijack one of my LinkedIn Groups) — all in an effort to create buzz and chatter about you and your business.

Companies using social media marketing to successfully close new business are on their sites all the time. What is considered “old information” today may be just an hour old! If you allow comments – as you should – and you do not respond, you might as well transfer money straight to the PayPal account of your competition.

Most mid-sized companies (and certainly, large enterprises) have fulltime “social media marketers / writers” building their online presence. It is a fulltime job keeping a presence on these sites, and fulltime people consume fulltime resources. If you don’t have that type of cash or time on your hands you can always check out my Done-For-You-Social-Media offering at a fraction of the cost of a fulltime person.

(Next we’ll look at whether or not the “big” sites are the “best” sites for you.)

“Where’s your Social Media Marketing beef?”

How will Bing treat Twitter Tweets? Interesting and emerging landscape. Get on the social media train because content is still king but social media is becoming more about search / SEO and grabbing virtual real estate.

More here:http://bit.ly/1433xp