Leads are the growing wheat that fills the bread basket –
An Excerpt from The Sales Evangelist by Karl Goldfield – Fall 2009 – Sales Gravy Press

When generating leads you have two primary methods that all efforts fit into:
Push methodology: The delivery of content or information to someone that is readily available. Examples: E-mail inbox, voicemail, mailbox.

Pull methodology: The goal of driving prospects to content through a series of communications. Examples: Banner ads that link to websites, television commercials that show 800 numbers.

EVERY GREAT SALES EVANGLIST BUILDS campaigns with A HEALTHY DOSE OF BOTH. In general, B2B tends to have more push, I.E. e-mail campaigns, telemarketing and outbound sales initiatives, etc… B2C tends to be more about traditional and Internet advertising. Lately, crossover initiatives have great improved the productivity of many companies.

If you want the best results, blend your push and pull techniques to create constant triggers for prospects. The more singular ideas you can plant in the marketplace, the more likely one will appeal to a potential client. One example is an e-mail campaign that offers white papers and other valuable resources for prospects that provide important information for their day to day needs. The material may not have anything to do with your offering on the surface, but they have to come to your website to leverage the resource (E-mail push, website pull). By offering the viable content, you build a perception as a thought leader, and you have an easier time prospecting.

Now this may seem like a marketing technique, so let’s take it into a sales activity. Say, I called you today and mentioned some changes in your industry. I may also share with you how a well known company in your sector managed these changes. This part of the conversation is push, along with the follow up e-mail that I send sharing a link to the case study for that company. Now, you receive the e-mail, and while you are on the site downloading read about our services (pull). After reading you register for an online demo, and we engage in an initial relationship of salesperson and prospect. This harmonious relationship between push and pull has given you the impression that I am a business person with value to provide, not a pushy salesperson. Would we want it any other way?

Even shy people get in the groove when they feel someone really cares about them. If you are a true Sales Evangelist, looking to make a career out of taking care of people, you should care about them. That said, your job now is to get them to reveal the inner workings of the company in relation to you, your competitors, their core processes, products and problems. Treat every contact as someone you want to get to know; not just professionally, but personally. If you can build this habit into your initial phase of qualifying, you are taking a huge step towards building a long term bond. People buy from people they like, and everyone tends to like people if they know they are going to listen.

Karl Goldfield is passionate about developing teams for emerging companies. For the past fifteen years, he has shown the ability to deliver beyond expectations through continual innovation. By establishing a plan then testing the boundaries of that plan, Karl provides methodologies that help to address particular challenges. He delivers strategies that allow startups to mold sales teams from the clay of their own attributes.

Karl Goldfield, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it +1 831-345-6435 Skype: karldforce http://karlgoldfield.com http:// salesblog.karlgoldfield.com http://tv.salesevangelist.com