What was the world like before Goggle adwords? Grab an ergonomically correct chair and sit down for a short exploration of what we may have left along the side of the business highway on our way to helping making Google the richest of the rich tech companies.
Proxima Sales is a company full of people who may not be 'that' old but are pretty darn well aged in the oak barrel of life in technology sales. Yes, for every one of us who actually carried a Compac luggable to our software demos of long ago, there's someone here who never lugged anything heavier than a Toshiba or Acer 90's laptop. But we're an experienced bunch. We know how to use a fax machine. We remember carrying the FedEx account number in our wallets for on-the-road use, and we've sold a lot of software and hardware solutions in all kinds of markets.
No, we don't fax or Fedex very often any more but there is one task we do every day that we think maybe your company salespeople should consider doing as well. We talk to strangers. We prefer to talk to well-qualified-to-buy what we're selling strangers, but on a dreary day near a national holiday, we'll take an interested anybody who is stuck in the office. We learn things about markets and targets and what people care about this year by talking to people who do not think they are in the market for exactly what our clients use as search terms in their Adwords campaigns.
Do your salespeople talk to strangers? We bet not many. And here is where the Google Adwords Contagion (GAC) comes in:
Nearly every company we know, every salesperson, CEO, and Vice President in charge of making the numbers, has at least a few dollars out, every hour of every day, on Adwords. And, unless you're selling something no-one ever, ever, searches for, you get Adwords responses. It's a lottery ticket for orders but it's practically a sure bet that you'll scratch off some leads. They may be a flood or a trickle. They come on the phone, to your site, as email, as filled-out-the form you have on your site leads, but, again assuming you're not selling wet-dog scented cologne, they come in. You dish them to your salespeople or they help themselves to the tasty lead treats as they hit the server.
Then the Adwords leads begin the work of contaminating your sales efforts. Good leads, pre-sold buyers, tire kickers, and guys selling you SEO services, all come in to whatever funnels you've built to catch the GAC (Google Adwords Contagion) in the Google sky. You and your salespeople sort these leads, you send them ebooks, white papers, do site visits, send proposals, schedule meetings, follow up, and then add the GAC to your CRM or World base of contacts and generally make busy-ness happen on the road to following that lead, passively, forever.
Ok, that last bit was wrong. Some well-known sales organizations do abandon their Google leads after virtually no follow-up but we'll assume that your sales team has a plan of action for touching the GAC at least three times.
Referrals and volunteer buyers are great but, in the universe of potential buyers, the people who would genuinely benefit by adopting your solutions, are mostly people you've not met. They visit trade-show booths, they browse web sites, or they sit in their offices and wonder if there is a tool that will rescue them from the drudgery of using Excel to do a repetitive monthly task, in the most error prone way available. These potential buyers ask really random questions. They are not pre-qualified shoppers who know your benefits and have already read about the alternatives. They need salespeople to do the leg-work of evaluating whether your solutions are a good fit for their needs, wants, and budget. They may even be utterly clueless about what will help their efficiency or earnings until a well prepared salesperson explains the options.
Your sales team knows they should cold-call your list of leads that last summer's intern, your niece Amber, built from scratch over eight weeks. Your sales team knows that there is a database on their desk full of every prospect, the guys you fired years ago, ever contacted about your services and solutions. They know it is there. It is quiet. It is ominous. It is always going to be on next week's to-do list because the daily incoming GAC is so much more approachable.
GAC leads bring in a certain number of orders and taking orders is fun. Proxima salespeople like to take orders too. But our salespeople know that each GAC generated order is in a bubble. It is a one-off contact. Even if it comes with an easy order, it will need a lot of special treatment to turn into a referral base or a growing account. A buyer is great but a buyer who started as an Adwords shopper, who already knew what he was searching for is a threat to every potential sale out there that requires good old-fashioned sales skills.
Adwords gets expensive and many business leaders tell us that they want or need to spend less on GAC leads BUT since their salespeople are unwilling to dive into the old luggable style database and mine for gold, the GAC leads better produce orders because order takers are what most companies are down to after feeding their team GAC for a generation.
If you could use some help building fresh revenue the old-fashioned way, give Kate Parker a call. kate@proxima-sales.com.
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