Griff says...

eProspector product ideas

Share your input about these recent or future eProspector features/services:

• create a unique landing page to track email campaigns, visitors, and behavior
• revenue results tracking integrated into eProspector reports
• social networking/marketing features to create forums with friends/colleagues
• 90 second video commercial to drive people to your site and conver more visitors to prospects
• click to call automated phone call links - auto connect your email recipeints by VOiP
• daily emailing of click-thru leads and open recipient reports
• integration with your salesforce.com CRM, or other CRM
• tracking of success by particular email message
• telemarketing services
• Search Engine Optimization services
• web site design/redesign
• sales training
• sales management training
• executive training/leadership training

What do you think?

Sales and marketing discussion

What are some of your most challenging sales and marketing issues?

Here are some from my own experience:

• How do you track the results of my marketing efforts?
• How do you effectively recruit, select, hire, retain sales reps?
• How do you get your reps to prospect consistently?
• Should a sales rep handle all aspects of sales or do you need a prospector, a presenter, a closer, and a service rep for each responsibility?
• How do you properly compensate/incent the right sales behavior?
• How do you prevent your reps from closing a few customer accounts and living off those indefinitely?
• What kind of marketing support do our reps need?
• What is the best marketing ROI activity?
• How do you improve your market awareness?
• What is your market awareness?
• How do you create more opportunities to compete?
• Will SEO work for me?
• Do you need territories?

Let me know which of these need more discussion and/or your experiences with these.

What are your concerns about email marketing?

Here are some that are often mentioned.  I will be commenting on them in the future:

• What's wrong with the open percentages these days?
• How do you track the success of my email campaigns?
• How do you measure the effectiveness of your web site?
• What is Can Spam compliance and how do I make sure I comply?
• Where do I source/generate email lists?
• Must emailing be permission-based?
• Can I scrape web sites to obtain email addresses?
• Do I need an automated opt-out link for normal daily sales rep emailing?
• What is the best freqency of sending emails?
• Do I need a skilled resource to create my email campaigns?
• Are responses similar to direct mail marketing?
• Can I create flashy HTML emails and send them out?
• Will I upset too many of my prospects by sending them emails?
• How do I deal with email filtering?
• Won't too many people opt-out?
• Can it be effective with the frequency of people changing email addresses?
• How do I deal with email blasts that are considered spamming?
• Will email marketing work for me?
• Will I get blacklisted?
• Will my domain get blocked from emailing my prospects?
• Will my prospects frown on me emailing them?
• How do I handle all the undeliverables and opt-outs?
• Isn't it too expensive?

These are all genuine issues/concerns that must be addressed before you do any email marketing. Feel free to share your input and experiences for discussion, and mention any others of concern.