In the ever-changing world of sales and marketing, it’s comforting to know that some approaches  and best practices remain relevant and unchanged.  Leads360 founder Jeff Solomon’s Seven Universal Rules to Sales and Marketing provides seven universal factors that aim to help maximize your sales and convert a larger portion of your leads.

The Seven Universal Rules of Sales and Marketing are as follows:

1. 1. Speed of Sales Process
2. 2. Number of Decision Makers
3. 3. Simplicity of Buying Process
4. 4. Quantity of Leads
5. 5. Role of Emotion
6. 6. Value of Sale
7. 7. Uniformity of Offer

In any sales situation, all seven of these factors must be addressed and you should ask yourself: where do I fall in each of these categories?  In particular, the differences between B2B sales and B2C sales are laid bare by these Seven Rules.  B2C sales are fast, where B2B are slower.  B2C involves one or two decision makers, where B2B will often have multiple people and departments involved in the decision making process.  The simplicity of the buying process is much easier in B2C sales than in B2B sales.  B2C involves many more leads than B2B sales.  B2C sales can often be closed with emotion, where B2B sales rely more on logical appeals.  The value of an individual sale in B2B will be far greater than those in B2C.  Finally, B2C offers will be much more uniform than B2B offers.

None of these rules are hard and fast though.  For every situation, whether it is B2B or B2C sales, it’s important to think of the Seven Universal Rules as being on a sliding scale. Once understood, the key to sustained success is understanding where you stand in each case.  Some small business sales will more closely resemble B2C sales than B2B sales when you consider the Seven Universal Rules, while other B2C sales might be on a scale where an approach that more closely resembles B2B could be more effective.  Whatever the lead, it’s important that you understand where your business is so that you can find the most effective approach to increasing your sales.

Most companies have already done the math to figure out the monetary value of a lead. They have determined how many leads it takes to obtain a sale and what’s the most they are willing to do for a lead. However if leads are the life blood of your website and business, than you realize there is more to a lead then just monetary value.

If leads are down, sales are down, company moral is down, business is down and everything in turn starts to take a toll.  Alternatively, if leads are coming in and sales are closing, your business is successful.

This is why we must treasure every lead generated. We need to secure our best lead sources and properly track the status of each and every lead from source to sale. Our Call Attempt Study helps you understand why you should contact your leads more often. Our lead management software can help you manage leads and can automatically sort and route leads for you. We also have lead management videos and webinars to help encourage you to track every lead, good and bad, as well as teach you how to convert more leads to sales.

If leads keep your business running, than managing them efficiently and diligently will not only increase your overall conversion rate and ROI, but improve your overall business’ success and future.

Just as mortgage brokers generate loan modification leads and search engine optimization companies generate marketing leads, education institutes and universities have to generate enrollment leads. Every year schools and universities spend millions of dollars promoting various programs offered throughout the year. The majority of those dollars are spent on lead enrollment forms (students that are interested in a particular program filling out a questionnaire or information request form).

Universities generating leads for brochure mailings or for education enrollment specialists could greatly benefit from having an efficient software that can assist in enrollment marketing and management goals. A lead software can help convert more leads, and in turn increasing the possibility of filling up classes.

Here are some very interesting tasks a proper enrollment management software can do for your school.

•    Sort through leads based on programs selected
•    Assign leads to different representatives
•    Recognize geographic location of your lead
•    Track origination of your leads
•    Create easy forms for potential students to fill
•    Distribute and prioritize leads based on form entries
•    Export/download leads in various formats
•    Automatically reply to potential students
•    Track and analyze leads entries
•    Capture the student lead while they are still interested
•    Identify fake leads and highly valuable leads
•    Receive instant emails as soon as lead is generated
•    Sort, filter and route leads based on demographics
•    Update you on the status of each and every lead

To top it off, you can do all this automatically within 1 software interface provided by Leads360. Try out our enrollment management software for free here.

With so many tasks in the work day it’s sometimes hard to prioritize which tasks are most important and which tasks can be pushed aside. If you are a company that generates leads for sales, you could be overlooking some very valuable yet time consuming tasks such as distributing your leads, sorting and filtering through leads generated through marketing, and assigning them to various salesmen or projects.

Without an organized plan your company could be loosing leads, wasting your time on invaluable leads or handling your most valuable leads wrong.

Choosing a sophisticated lead management software that has the ability to automatically assign and send leads to various departments based on any field provided in your form can save you time, improve the efficiency of business flow and increase your ROI.

Just imagine your cluttered email box of leads, how many leads you missed and how many dead end leads you wasted your time looking through. Imagine how great it could be to stop the process of printing huge lists of leads and manually going through these lists line by line. Imagine lead software that can automatically send leads that came from California to your west coast representative or send leads generated via search engine straight to your next available sales rep.

Leads360 provides the most innovative lead distribution and lead routing software that can make your whole lead generation to conversion process more efficient and effective. Try Leads360 Lead Management software completely free for 21 days and see for yourself how simple it is to management every single lead generated.

When CRM and SaaS first started it was all about customization. Look at Salesforce.com or RightNow Technologies; both are web-based CRM software that is customizable beyond anyone’s imagination. I think this has been, and continues to be a big selling point for them. Think about it. Your pitching a powerful CRM system and you say to the client, hey, this can be customized to your exact business needs. Sounds great right? For a long time this was major selling technique for Leads360 as well. In fact, if you compare our lead management platform with just about any other B2C LMS on the market, you’ll see we have a much more configurable product.

Well its true, customization and configuration are benefits and we’ve certainly seen sales from it. But the tide is shifting and more companies, especially small and medium sized businesses are looking for pre-configured best practices. We get this question all the time; “hey, just tell me what my competitors are doing that is working and I want to do the same thing.” They don’t want to re-invent the wheel and they certainly don’t want to pay big bucks to some CRM consulting firm to customize Salesforce.com for them. This is a path we’ve been forging for some time. Not only do we give our clients best practices workflow templates to start with, but we continue to enhance the configuration based on feedback, research and analysis of what REALLY works. And believe me, some things work really well and some things don’t.

In the coming months we’ll be releasing more on this, both in terms of better templates and in the research reports we’ll be compiling. Stay tuned.

You hire a sales team to do one thing, Sell. All too often, managers frustrated with their ROI, tend to go to what they think is the root of their problem, their sales department. Who could blame them though? Going through their checklist they think they are doing everything they can to convert the most sales. Adequate lead generation quantity? Check. Quality Leads? Check. Target market Research? Check. So it must be the sales team’s lack of effort right? WRONG. In today’s market, ensuring those items on the list only takes you half way there. Your company needs to maximize the potential it already possesses by creating an environment that is conducive to selling. Lead management technology in conjunction with tools like predictive dialing, create the best environment possible for your sales team to SELL. Think about how much time is wasted dialing people, waiting for them to pick, leaving a message, and then hanging up. With tools like predictive dialing, hundreds of numbers are automatically called and then routed to sales people once a lead answers the phone. This allows more time for sales people to properly engage the lead and make the most of it.  With all the extra time saved from the predictive dialer, an environment is created that maximizes performance and encourages success. Click to view  Leads360 and Five9’s whitepaper. 1+1=3

Please join us on December 9th at 11AM Pacific / 2PM Eastern for a brand new webinar about how to understand and leverage the unique characteristics of your sales process.  You can register here, for free, in about 5 seconds.

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What Planet Are You On? Leverage the Differences between B2C and B2B Sales and Marketing

Applying the 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing and the 3 keys to lead conversion

Knowing what factors are critical to success in your business is not as obvious as you may think. The most successful sales and marketing organizations understand which planet they are on, and they know which sales and marketing approaches align with their needs.

Understanding the characteristics of your sales and marketing efforts are essential to achieving higher lead conversion and sales success.

Sign up for this free webinar to learn how the 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing apply differently to B2C and B2B sales. Find out what the unique characteristics of your sales efforts are, and see how to leverage the 3 keys to lead conversion using powerful lead management software from Leads360.

From this webinar, you will learn:
•    Questions for better understanding the rules of your target marketplace and sales process
•    The 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing
•    The 3 key drivers of sales lead conversion
•    How lead management software can boost your sales and increase ROI
•    Why implementing the wrong technology solution can cripple your business

We’ll see you there.

There comes a time when companies have to start buying leads in order to jump start a new business, survive in the business they are currently in, or continue to grow and increase ROI. Even if  your company is currently generating leads they  should always aim to attain higher quality leads.

If you are an insurance provider buying leads, here are a few tips to help you purchase the best leads for your business.

1.The Lead Source: Where your lead came from is one of the most important factors to consider. Did they come instantly from a search engine, a month old sweepstakes form at the mall, the white pages etc.? Knowing the lead source should be the first objective in determining if the leads you are generating will convert to profits. If you’re buying leads from someone, make sure you know exactly how those leads are obtained. You don’t want to pay for leads that would’ve never converted in the first place, simply because of their origination.

2.The Age of the Lead: When was that lead obtain? When did that lead give up their info? Was it a year ago or 5 minutes ago? Newer leads are much easier to convert because typically the interest is still there.

3. The Cost of our Leads: The majority of the time, factors 1 and 2 will affect the cost of the lead, when it comes to attaining leads its all about the end result or  ROI. You must determine how much each lead is worth based on variables such as conversion rate and revenue per sale. There are also other factors to consider on the buying-side such as how much your competitors are willing to pay and the temperature of the lead. You should only buy leads that are worth your money AND time.

4. How many other companies have access to your leads: Do you get first dibs on them or do you have to wait a couple turns? This is a huge factor to consider.

5. What made the person give up the information: This relates to factor 1, the lead source. What type of marketing method or advertising ad was being used? Did they entice their users with incentives or prizes? Did the ad promise them the world? Do the leads even realize what they are filling out?

6. Research : ‘Google’ the company you’re buying your leads from along with terms like “scam”, “review”, “fake”, “fraud”, “cheat”, “ratings”, “listings”, etc. This will help you determine what type of company you are giving your money to.

7. How Qualified is That Lead: Was that person actively searching for your service or your help in search engines? Did it come from a form on an website notorious for providing your industry’s best information and resources? Or, did that lead come from a business owner that just wanted to download a free ebook?

8.Don’t Hesitate To Question Your Seller. The 7 tips above are all basic lead buying best practices that all dealers should be ready to address.

Use these eight tips to help you buy better leads.

For a comprehensive guide on insurance buying, insurance CRM and other methods of lead generation best practices, download Leads360’s whitepaper “Insuring Success: How to Use Internet Leads to Reach Insurance Buyers” here.

Good Luck!

Almost 10% of homeowners fell at least one payment behind in recent months according to a report by the Mortgage Bankers Association. This figure does not include homeowners who are already in foreclosure. Adding these cases, the delinquency figure nearly reaches 15% or one in seven homeowners. These rising numbers, (the highest since they started being recorded in 1972) are driven by, but lag behind rising unemployment. So when unemployment peaks next year, it is expected that mortgage delinquency will not hit its apex until probably 2011. This is due to the fact that home equity is the primary place that the unemployed can lean when their income dries up. Negative equity plus unemployment leads to increased foreclosures.

CRM’s (Customer Relationship Management) are designed to provide lead management solutions and there are various CRM software packages to choose from. Whichever lead CRM software you choose to manage your marketing efforts (RightNow, SalesForce, Leads360, SAP, Microsoft,etc.),  it’s important to understand that they all require regular management and upkeep. In order to be effective the CRM software implemented must be customized to fit your particular company’s needs and goals.

An effective CRM software is designed to automate sales, track lead origination, rate the value of each potential customer and ensure constant contact with your clients. However, even if your company is using the most reliable and efficient leads management software that performs all these tasks, if poorly managed your ROI of this software will greatly suffer.

Regardless of which software you choose, time must be invested in setting up your account and ensuring the software is customized to meet your company’s goals. You must configure into your account how much you pay per leads, your desired cost per acquisitions goals, and the ROI of various marketing efforts of your company. In order to achieve the highest ROI of this software it is important that you learn to fully utilize its features.

“Most reports cite that a whopping 42% of CRM systems go completely unused after purchase, a sobering statistic given that CRM sales topped 9 billion in 2008.”

It’s imperative to know what features your leads software package provides and how you can use these features to your advantage.

We’ve created a Whitepaper titled “8 Reasons CRM Fails to Deliver“. It analyzes and explains various reasons customer management systems fail to meet expectations, and provides an easy way to assess if CRM is right for your business.

Whitepaper Topics
1. CRM is Complicated
2. CRM is Labor Intensive
3. Buying More than You Need
4. Turn-Key CRM does Not Exist
5. CRM is More Expensive than You Think
6. It is Hard to Quantify Success
7. Success is Driven by Your Company 1st & Your Software 2nd
8. Know the Problems you are Trying to Solve

You can Download the Full Whitepaper Here