We like to break down this pool of people into Suspects and Prospects:

Suspects are anyone that meets the demographic criteria of someone we would want to spend some sales and marketing effort on – size, industry, location, revenues, etc.  As far as we know, however, these people have never heard of our business, and have never indicated any interest in buying from us.

Prospects, on the other hand, meet the demographic criteria mentioned above, but have also met one or more of the following criteria:

• Engaged in some sort of conversation with us
• Have indicated interest in what we have to offer, although the specific time frame and budget is not yet clear or even short term (that would make them an opportunity)
• Have agreed to have us keep in touch with them
• Have in the past or are currently purchasing similar products and services from a competitor of ours

As you can see, there is a real difference between Suspects and Prospects.  Suspects are the greater universe of potential customers that could be a fit, whereas Prospects are further along – they have some strong indicators that they should be a fit.

Why is this distinction important to understand in your sales and marketing process?  For the following reasons:

1. The message that you should use with Suspects is different than that of Prospects.  With Suspects, it’s all about finding out if they have any interest, whereas with Prospects it’s about stoking the fires of that interest and trying to move them into opportunities.
2. The media you use to reach Suspects and Prospects may at times be different.  The universe of Suspects is often times very large, so you need to reach them in a very cost-effective manner – making email and search marketing a great choice.  Once you’ve narrowed down to a smaller list of Prospects, you may choose to do larger direct mail pieces, or make calls from senior business development personnel.
3. The budget you apply to Suspects should be different than that toward Prospects.  You can and should spend much more on a qualified Prospect than you should on a Suspect, as you know they have indicated some real interest in your products and services.  If you over spend on Suspects, you’ll spend yourself right out of business!
4. The expectations of your marketing should be different with Suspects and Prospects.  Marketing to Suspects will just get the sales and marketing process started – you can’t expect them to jump out of their seat to buy services from you on the first email they receive.  It takes time!  You also shouldn’t expect that every Suspect is going to become a Prospect – only a relatively small percentage will every raise their hand to say “I’m interested”.  For this reason, you need to keep refreshing and building the list of Suspects in your marketing funnel to give you a new and larger pool to market to.  That being said, once you have a good list of Prospects that you’ve nurtured, you should expect to start to see measurable movement and progress in your sales pipeline.

Understanding the difference between Suspects and Prospects will allow you to better fine tune your sales and marketing approach, and give you the right expectations for your efforts.

Mike

1. I grow my business 100% from referrals, so leads don’t cost me anything. Actually, they are costing you a ton.  You are not growing nearly as quickly as you could, and your “non-investment” model will put a cap on your total growth potential.  Every business has a cost of acquiring new leads and customers – yours is not the exception.
2. I got three leads and didn’t close a deal, the leads were bad. Perhaps they were “bad”, if there is such a thing.  Statistically, you will probably only sell about 1 out of 10 leads you get.  That’s not “bad”, that’s the normal sales pipeline.  If your numbers are worse than 1 out of 10, it’s much more likely that you need sales training than it is that all of those leads are “bad”…FYI.
3. I closed the customer, but they only did $700 in business with us this month, so it wasn’t worth it. Again, you probably need more sales training and a better plan to follow up with these customers. Not everyone signs a big recurring revenue contract the day they meet you – put a follow up plan in place and build trust over time!

We are officially launching our Local Accelerator program to the Colorado public. Designed to accelerate online lead generation and sales for Colorado small businesses, this program promises to offer a complete Internet marketing makeover to one lucky local business every month!

The program combines fulfillment services with access to Kutenda’s Internet marketing tool-set and training to get your company successfully marketing online. We’ll be choosing one lucky company every month … Selected companies will receive over $9,000 in services at no cost and 3 months of free Kutenda access.

If you’re based in CO, submit your company here: http://kutenda.com/accelerator.html

According to new projections from Outsell, Inc., digital/online marketing will overtake print in 2010. Companies are projected to spend $119.6 billion on online and digital strategies. For small businesses, marketing online is a known challenge due to the intense learning curve, budgetary constrictions and the lack of available software. Kutenda has set out to change that with it’s Internet marketing tool-set for small businesses and the Local Accelerator program is making the extra leap locally by offering tools, services and training for free.

The Local Accelerator program includes all of the foundations for a comprehensive Internet marketing strategy that will drive leads and sales. We begin by creating a website or optimizing your existing website for lead generation and search engine rankings. Companies walk away with a list of campaigns, content and the tools, training and support to pick up where Kutenda’s fulfillment process ends.

Specifics include:

• Promotional landing pages with automated response emails
• A prospect-focused email marketing campaign designed to convert
• Customizable email templates
• A search advertising pay-per-click campaign
• Live local search listing
• Optimized keyword list for specific products / services
• A knowledge base of Internet marketing best practices

In order to qualify, companies must be based in Colorado. We’re accepting submissions at http://kutenda.com/accelerator.html via a short form. Each monthly winner will be contacted directly by Kutenda’s director of training, Alex Ross. We are allowing companies to resubmit monthly for another chance to win.

Submit your business today!

Suggestions for increasing your chances of being chosen:

1) cross your fingers

2) grab your rabbit-foot key chain

3)  send your intern on a hunt for the perfect four leaf clover

4) maybe eat a bowl of Lucky Charms… whatever it takes…

GOOD LUCK!

Affinity Track focuses on providing quality search engine optimization and marketing services to their clients. By utilizing both organic SEO and effective paid search campaigns, they help businesses improve their performance online and get real results.

Emily’s guest post focuses on some of the key components needed to create a successful local online presence. From local listings to on-page techniques, the tips are designed to be bite-sized pieces to help you begin right away. Check out the post and get started with your local search campaign today!

Follow Emily on Twitter: @ekthompson

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At the ConnectWise Summit, I spoke to many MSPs who use ConnectWise to manage the sales process. As I mentioned in my post last week, ConnectWise is really helpful for managing and tracking tasks for your sales team during the last 20 percent of the sales cycle. Kutenda helps with the first 80 percent.

That still begs the question: How the heck can you generate more and better leads for your managed services business? I had a conversation with Larry Walsh from Channel Insider just last week about the same thing. He basically told me that what he hears from MSPs is that yes, you need more leads. But you also need better leads. So lets talk about how Kutenda helps you generate more leads—of higher quality.

Generating more leads for managed services
How does your managed services business generate new leads today? Here are a few ways that you might use:

- knocking on doors
- cold-calling
- networking at local business functions
- referrals

All of these methods work, and depending on your personality and perseverance, they can work well. But, they all have one thing in common—they require person-to-person engagement. This limits the effectiveness of each of these methods because once you max out on dials (or doors), you have to hire another sales person to increase the number of leads you’re getting. Kutenda gives you a more cost-effective solution to use in conjunction with your other lead generation activities.

Question: If you could drive people who are already looking for your services to your web site to fill out a lead form, would you? Of course you would! That’s where search marketing (pay-per-click advertising, PPC) comes in. Running PPC is simply the fastest way to drive leads to your site. Even if you’re on page 755,343 of the Google search results for “Data Recovery,” you can get to the top of the sponsored results for that same keyword—especially if you narrow your target to your local geographic area. Kutenda’s PPC keyword research tool simplifies the process of selecting keywords for your ad campaigns. Plus, we also give you keyword lists and  ad copy for a whole variety of managed services (Help Desk, BDR, Managed Services and more), so you’ve got a head start in building campaigns to drive those leads.

Getting better leads for managed services
Let’s look back at the more expensive lead drivers again for a minute. Even if you get someone to engage with you from one of those methods, you may not close them all at this point anyway. Here are a few reasons why:

1. they’re not looking for a managed service (just want to deal with an immediate problem)
2. it’s not the right fit
3. it costs too much
4. they realize they can manage it in-house

Are these people still good leads for other services you offer? Might they convert to a customer in two, three or even 12 years from now? Yes! But most likely, you’ll lose touch with them because you don’t have an efficient way to nurture those leads into better leads over time. Again, this is where Kutenda helps.

Our MSP partners use ready-to-send email campaigns we provide to stay connected with these leads over time and nurture them into better (more qualified leads). By sending out regular email campaigns to prospects (and existing customers), you increase your chances of getting them as paying customers later down the road—of turning more of your leads into better leads.

What is a better lead?
What ‘better’ leads are is certainly up for interpretation, but in our world,  better leads are really leads that are more qualified—those that have first gone through 80 percent of the sales process. No matter where that lead comes from—referral, PPC, cold call, etc.—making them into a more qualified lead will improve your sales conversions. Using a lead nurturing system like Kutenda makes that lead qualifying process more automatic, allowing you to spend more time with those leads that are in the last 20 percent of the sales cycle. That is, by the way, when you put them into ConnectWise—so you can use Tracks to keep your sales people on task to close those more qualified leads.