Managing Sales Leads - Book Recommendation

I was tipped off by MarketingSherpa to what looks like a good read - Managing Sales Leads: Turning Cold Prospects into Hot Customers by James Obermayer. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list and I figured I would give you a heads up in case you wanted to jump into it. If you do, would love to hear your thoughts.

Website Design - Starting All Over

While many of the software companies I speak with are just a few tweaks away from a vastly improved website, there are also plenty of companies in need of wholesale changes. It's very hard to know where to even begin when it appears that their website has been simply pieced together over time. It's even harder to actually tell them this.

So where to begin? As always, ask yourself what the goal of your website is? For almost every software company I speak with the goal is to convert web visitors into leads. Then ask yourself, how can I entice visitors to give us their contact details so we can follow up with them? Free trial? Free consultation?

Then with these questions in mind, consider all of the content pieces that you would like to include in your website and ask yourself how they fit in with your goals. This will help you to understand the emphasis you should place on each as well as navigation paths that you will want to build into your website.

Also, check out this article on web design written by Susannah Ross. It's a decent read.

Remember, if you have decided to start over, you have already made the most important step - realizing that your site is...well, awful.

What about Tomorrow?

I just spoke with a marketing/sales person (who shall remain nameless) at a vendor that has a very long form on their Contact Us page. I mentioned to him that they are probably losing a lot of prospects at that form since people are less prone to complete a long form as opposed to a short form. They like it long because he believes that helps qualify the prospect - only those that are serious and ready to buy today will complete it. While I do agree with this to a degree, it was what he said next that still has me shaking my head. He went on to state that "and these are the only people we want to hear from."

Really? While I can (sort of) see you not wanting to hear from people that aren't remotely serious about ever buying a product and just happen to be doing some very preliminary research, but what about those that are serious and ready to buy today but simply get annoyed by very long online forms? Don't you want to reach them? Or how about those leads that are serious but are planning to take take a few weeks/months to make a decision. After all, aren't they the vast majority of leads?

How many business software buyers start their research and make their final decision in a day or two? How hard is it to automate an email marketing campaign (potentially supplemented with a phone call or two) to cultivate leads over a period of weeks or months, which happens to be the buying cycle for the majority of major software purchases?