Decreasing Connections While Increasing Our Networks

 Here’s a special guest post by Corvida. If you’re not already subscribed to her blog, you should be.

DecreasingConnections While Increasing Our Networks

While lounging on my couch this morning I decided to go through all 200 Twitter and FriendFeed requests that I’ve procrastinated on getting to this week. Lately I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed with requests that I’ve created a filter in Gmail to label and archive these requests. When I clicked on the label and took a cursory glance at my inbox, I wondered why I’d been feeling so overwhelmed with going through these requests. After about 10 minutes it hit me: as my network grows social networks don’t allow me to connect to my followers the way I used to.

ItWas All A Dream

Corvida writes at SheGeeks.net

Your Lead Generation Methods Have to Change

Read Brogans post and if you are thinking about following a blog, well this is one that I would Brogan is awesome. 

Lead generation is a fairly core activity to marketing. Sales people need leads to close sales. You might not always look at it in those baseline terms, but that’s the general process, right? Find people who want that thing you’re selling, be that Jesus or real estate, higher education or luchador masks.

Youbuild someone’s interest, you make the offer, you close the sale. That’s the basic cycle. Let’s talk about leads and how lead generation might have shifted in the last little while. I’m thinking that our tactics and strategies have been born out of yesterday’s “mild interest” methods, versus a shift, I’m thinking, to today’s “they presented a need” method.

SoundLike Your Plan?

Youhave a product to sell. To get interest, you look for your target market of prospective buyers and try to figure out what they are like. You then try messaging them using whatever forms work for you. Maybe you buy some door knockers with your offer on them, or you buy radio spots in the 6-9AM drive time sports radio markets of 14 key cities. Maybe you’ve got a website that tells people the same stuff you put in your direct mailing piece, so that you have brand consistency.

Somenumber of people limply respond to your call to action. They opt into the next wave and your sales process kicks in to try and close them before they lose interest. If they don’t close, you just keep sending them information, trying to keep the pulse of that lead alive by reinforcing what you’ve been sending them.

Inthis above model, you have to keep coming up with new offers, new ideas, new ways to make something seem interesting and pertinent. Think about Ford for a moment. They are out there trying to figure out what else to say about their new Ford Flex so that people will swing by and give it a chance. But the thing is, we the consumer aren’t exactly reacting that way any more.

Thatwas distraction marketing, or interruption marketing, as Seth Godin called it forever ago. That’s list building. And list pounding. And it’s not always bad to have a list, but how are you cultivating it?

The New Stuff

Ifyou’re Seth, you call it Permission marketing. If you’re Hubspot, you call it Inbound Marketing. You call it whatever you want to call it, but we’re in a world where the power of marketing is in the hands of the consumer more than the marketer right now, at least in the wide area of the sales funnel.

If you’re going to use social media tools to work on “wide funnel sales” opportunities, then you’ve got to make a conversion engine, something that moves me from “love your blog” into “want your product.” And that’s a lesson for another time.

Your Turn

So, you’re the pro. Tear me apart. What’s wrong here? Don’t say scale. This isn’t about scale. Look how good scale’s been treating you lately.

What’sgood and bad about these ideas to you?

Photo credit, Josh Staiger

Building Blocks

Great article from fellow Duct tape Marketing Coach Bill Brelsford:

Building Blocks Referrals - Give Them to Get Them

Do you struggle to ask for referrals on a consistent basis?

Many of the professional service providers that I meet feel uncomfortable asking for referrals on a regular basis. They may feel it is not “professional”. Some feel they will be perceived as a nuisance.

If you happen to be one of these people who doesn’t feel comfortable asking for referrals, here is a tip that may help. Set goals related to giving referrals.

For example, I have a goal of giving 5 referrals a week. That’s just one referral a day. This modest goal helps me with my own referrals in a number of ways:

1. It forces me to get out from my office or behind the desk and talk to people. This can sometimes be a challenge for us technically oriented folks.
2. It helps me be a better listener. I am more engaged in the conversation, listening for ways I may be able to help the person I’m talking to.
3. I’ve become better at describing who is an ideal prospect for my business. When you are able to help someone, most people want to reciprocate. They ask how they can help you. By learning to be very specific in my description of who I am looking for, I make it easy for them to help me if they can.
4. I can talk to the same people, frequently, about referrals and how I may be able to help them without feeling I am being a nuisance.
5. More often than not, I end up meeting a new contact when the person I am visiting with thinks of “someone I should meet”.

So if you struggle with asking for referrals, change your focus and set some concrete goals for giving referrals.