This blog post is about three things:

1. 5 Ways To WIN AT SOCIAL SELLING
2. Smarketing Strategy #6
3. Lead Nurturing Resources

Did you know it’s easier to sell today than it was 10 years ago?

Sales professionals who harness real-time data available via social media have an unfair advantage over those that don’t.

Learn the best mindset, strategies and tools to reach motivated decision makers before your competition.

Join experts David Meerman Scott and Craig Elias on Tuesday November 22^nd and learn:

• The best tools to use
• How to leverage real-time information
• How to make your solution more relevant right now
• How to create content that attracts the best prospects
• How to share content that gets decision makers to call you

This webinar will be moderated by Cliff Pollan the CEO of VisibleGains - His tool VisibleGains for sales is one of my favourite Social Selling tools.

Register even if you can’t make the live event because all registrants receive links to the recording and handout from the event.

Click the button below to sign up now!

http://bit.ly/WinAtSocialSelling

Learn more about the speakers below!
David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web.

David’s popular Web Ink Now blog and hundreds of speaking engagements around the world give him a singular perspective on how businesses are implementing new strategies to reach buyers.

Craig Elias is the creator of Trigger Event Selling™ and author of the Bronze Medal winner of the Top Sales Books of 2010 “SHiFT!“ His knowledge of Trigger Events has resulted in a 20 year track record as a top sales performer, winning a $1,000,000 prize in a global billion dollar idea competition and coverage on NBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal.

In my last blog post I shared Smarketing Strategy #5 : How to convert visitors to prospects.  If you did not have time to read it, below is a short video (1:50) that explains the three best questions ask when following up with those who access your digital marketing content.

Smarketing Strategy #6 – using the Situation, Target, Plan (STP) framework - is to nurture, score, notify sales at EXACTLY the right time.

Carlos Hidalgo – The Executive Director of the Marketing Automation Institute – has a Lead Management Framework that explains some of the benefits of effective lead nurturing are:

• Deals closed on nurtured leads have a 47% higher order value
• Nurture email have a 200% higher open rate
• Win rates are improved by up to 20%

My contribution to the lead nurturing conversation is understanding there are three key times you want to notify sales about a prospect’s activity:

1) They Reach a Scoring Threshold

In order to minimize prospect frustration and maximize sales productivity, sales 2.0 savvy organizations are implementing lead scoring systems that are an indicator of a decision makers likelihood of making a buying decision soon.

If you want to create a lead scoring system that includes key elements of Trigger Event Selling™ here is the link to download the Trigger Event Scoring™ worksheet.

When you complete the form you will receive an email with links to the Trigger Event Scoring™ (aka Trigger Event Qualifying™) worksheet, instructions on how to use it, and a sample of the completed worksheet.

2) Their Email Address Bounces

As you may have heard from me before a single bounce email is a Trigger Event that creates at least three different sales opportunities for a savvy sales professional to phone and follow-up on:

1. The person who left – where did they go?
2. The person who left – who took their place?
3. The person who took their place – where did they come from?

3) They Access Justification Resources

When the access justification resources it is highly they have experienced both the want event and the afford event now they need to justify their decision to their superiors, subordinates, or stakeholders.

Now is one of the key moments in making sure the purchase happens and you are the supplier who wins the deal.

Tom Pisello – the ‘ROI Guy’ – has an excellent infograph that talks about the need to help decision makers justify their decision based by providing:

• ROI calculators
• Third party validation of your claims
• Business cases on other customers who have benefited from your solution

One of the things that Tom’s company -Alinean - does is help organizations build ROI calculators. See their Social Media ROI calculator as an example of what they do.

Eloqua – My choice as the #2 Sales 2.0 Sales Tool - has some great resource on the process of lead nurturing:

1. A Best Practice Tool Kit on Nurturing
2. Blog posts and webinars on Nurturing
3. An infograph on which content is best used when

Have an eventful month!

Craig

P.S. Carlos Hidalgo is one of the speakers in my three part webinar series – How to Turn Webinars Into Your #1 LEAD GENERATION METHOD - with Citrix (GoToWebinar & GoToMeeting) that runs the 2^nd Tuesday of January, February, & March. Stay tuned for registration details.