Most of you know that I’m a recovering sales rep turned marketer, but the more I learn about good marketing, the more I find myself thinking: I wish I knew this stuff when I was selling. Since I wish I knew more about marketing when I was selling, and I think marketers can learn a lot from sales reps, I wanted to share an idea with you here.  If you’re in a business-to-business (B2B) or other lead-gen based sales and/or marketing role, this bud post is for you.

Too many small and medium sized businesses share a common word to describe their business growth strategy: random. Their leads are random, their quotes are random, and—big surprise—their sales are random. I spent a little over 3 years in B2B sales, and most of the time I felt like I was swimming through a random sea of leads, and I couldn’t really predict when a big sale was going to come to help me hit my goals each month. I was swimming in lead soup.

In the image above, the different colored dots represent people who are in very different places in the sales cycle. Yet we seem to approach them all in the same way: close the sale. In looking at all those dots, it’s no wonder that my sales felt random. The engaged person is ready to hear that sales pitch, but it’s important for sales rep’s to learn to ask questions to figure out what the person on the other end needs to hear.

The “sale” pitch is not what the grey, red, or orange leads need to hear, and trying to close them will be a frustrating waste of your time. These people will likely appreciate useful information about your industry, tips and tools on how to make their life easier/better/more efficient, etc. They may want to know background information about your company (but don’t flatter yourself – be brief), or as they become more interested they may want to know about your pricing so they can set budgets for next year. Either way – if you bring the same pitch to all of these different people you’re going to have a tough time navigating through lead soup.

So how do you ditch the random lead soup strategy? It’s much easier said than done…the answer is the funnel. Marketing nerds talk about it all the time, and a jerk like me can spout off and put up a great visual (or in my case, piss-poor “3D” PowerPoint art), and make it seem easy. But it’s not easy. If it was, you wouldn’t be swimming in lead soup. Here are a few very (very) basic steps you can take to meet the needs of these people, and give them the right message at the right time.

Awareness:

Crawl before you walk. Your future customers need to hear your brand name before they’re going to buy from you. This is probably the easiest problem to solve, as long as there is sufficient budget to “get your name out there.” An awareness campaign might include:

• TV/Radio Ads (B2C)
• Print Ads in relevant publications or trade magazines
• Outdoor Advertising (billboards) (B2C)
• Display (Banner) Ads Online
• Text Ads on Search engines on relevant industry terms
• Contests & Prize Giveaways using Social Media

I’m partial to the bottom three because they are digital, and with some web analytics in place you will be able to measure effectiveness and quickly make changes to make your campaigns work harder. The first three can also be very effective, but you may not really feel the effects of your efforts until weeks or months later, and you won’t be able to make changes at that point.

Interest:

Ok, they’ve heard of you. Congratulations – but don’t try to get in their pants just yet. People who are at the beginning of the purchase cycle are in research mode. They need to know what they need to know – and if you can help them learn how to be a smart shopper, you will gain their trust and respect. You can help these people with things like:

• “Intro to [Your Industry)” or “[Your Industry] 101” whitepapers & articles
• Useful tools to help identify their needs
• Glossary of industry terms & jargon
• A blog or newsletter (email or snail mail) covering industry news & trends

Sales reps can help marketers understand what’s useful by sharing what common questions are asked of them when talking to new prospects. Hint: Setup goals in your web analytics system and measure how many people are downloading your whitepapers, or spending time using these tools. You can learn a lot by comparing these numbers, to the numbers of the more obvious actions like leads from web, sales, etc (because you are measuring these already…right?).

Engagement:

Once a person knows a little more about what they need (or need to know), they will want to hear all the goodies about your specific product or service:

• Price Guidelines or Rate Card
• Competitive Specs (why is your product better than your competitors?)
• Technical Specs (our Whiz-Gadge-Mo’s run at 256,000 Kilo-Blams per second)

This is the stuff that sales rep’s love to talk about (and they should), and it will be well received by the right audience. This audience.

Ready to Buy:

You sales reps who have a big deal on the line should have a much easier go at landing it if they’re right up next to the boat (switching to a fishing analogy now) than if they’re way out across the pond. More than likely if you’re working with an engaged consumer, they will come to you and ask you for the quote. You may need to clear up some final questions, or eliminate some small obstacles, but if they’ve been worked through a good funnel you and your customer will probably go home happy.

Thanks to a few friends who let me bounce these ideas off of you before posting. I’ll post a followup soon(ish) sharing some ideas on putting the funnel into practice.

Ok…yesterday was ridiculous.

Derek stirred the pot, and more people seemed to give him high-fives, than question what he was saying.

Photo: SEO87 on Flickr

This means (not that it’s a huge surprise) that there are a lot of people out there with a really bad taste in their about SEO. Why? What happened? What did you experience? I know that there are sleaze ballz out there. But I also know what I do, and I wouldn’t call it even close to sleazy, spammy, etc (neither would you, if I helped you understand best practices for your site & business).

Do me a solid? Answer this question honestly:

To me, SEO is _________

Use as many or as few words as you need to. While I’m happy to hear from my colleagues, I’d love to hear from the rest of the world (i.e. you don’t work in SEO) on this one.

You know those jobs where you think to yourself I could do that? After all DJs on the radio just talk. Copywriters just “write words.” And photographers just “take pictures.”

My friends Alan and Naomi are wedding photographers, and last week I had the privilege of being an usher in a wedding that they photographed. I’ve known Alan, and Kyle (the groom) since I was in elementary school – so this wedding really meant something to me. When Naomi posted some of the pics on their blog yesterday, I was floored. The pictures were really meaningful to me because I was there – I watched all of it happen, and they are of people who are important to me.

Seeing the pictures inspired me about the importance of striving for greatness. These two have sacrificed a lot so that this can become their full time profession, they’ve trained with other wedding photographers in the twin cities, and have taken on side-jobs to be able to buy the right equipment to do this right. Whatever your profession, hobby, or hobby which you hope to become a profession, strive for greatness at it. Sacrifice so that you can get better, and continue reaching higher all the time.

Go check out the rest of the pictures. I’m going to go try to figure out how to be great at something

No, I’m not starting a shoe business. I was lucky enough to get the chance to share my thoughts on the MN AMA blog this week. Give the article a read (click on the image) and let me know what you think!

My friend sent me a message today through facebook, announcing that her new site was up and running. To be honest – often times when a “check out my new website” message comes out (not that I would ever do that) I’m unimpressed with what’s on the other side of the link.

But much to my surprise, behind the link for Green4YourSoul.com I found a well built, very robost e-commerce site, with a deep catalogue of “trusted green products” from skin care, to candles, to *ehem* “dog de-funkifier spray.” While my friend didn’t ask for any advice – I got so excited about the site that I vomited up all kinds of advice about starting a web based small business (especially e-commerce). After ranting on for a bit, I realized this would be better suited in a blog-post, so here here are my two (ok four) cents on where to start:

1. Build links back to your site from as many sites as you can.

Search engines see links as “votes” for credibility – the more votes, the higher you’ll rank (links from within sites which are password protected like facebook won’t help. sorry). See if you can write guest posts on people’s blogs, find websites with similar ideals who are not direct competitors and ask if they would link to your site, or write an article about your site.

2. If you’re up for the time commitment, start blogging on a regular basis.

Don’t make it about selling product – make it about what matters to your target audience (in her case: the commitment to being a green, organic, cruelty free consumer). This will take a lot of time, and for a few months you will see little to no return…but in the long run, it can be a great way to get found in search engines, and attract links from other sites.

3. Pay attention to google analytics each month.

How are people getting to your site? Which keywords did they search? Which keywords or traffic sources are leading to sales? This free analytics tool from our friends at the Goog’ is so powerful – and it can literally show a savvy e-commerce entrepreneur how much revenue is made from a single traffic source, or keyword on average (and if you can’t get that info – get some help – it is absolutely necessary information for running any web based business!)

4. google adwords can be a great way to get targeted traffic going right away.

google.com/adwords lets you pay-per-click on targeted keywords. Adwords Hint: Bid on specific keywords and send people to specific product pages.

Good: bid on the keyword “tea tree oil acne cream” and send traffic to this page: http://www.green4yoursoul.com/products/corrective-skincare-tea-tree-acne-gel.html

Bad: Bid on the keyword “green” and send them to your homepage…hoping and praying that they buy something

Anyway, in the spirit of sharing unsolicited advice with people who weren’t asking for it…I thought I’d throw these thoughts up here.

Note: I first posted this over at Social Media Breakfast – Twin Cities. You can see that post for further discussion.

Hey friends, in light of Mykl’s “Supercharged Personal Branding” post, and the awesome presentation that Greg and Christopher gave on Reputation Management, I’ve been thinking about one little narcissistic thing lately: do you rank for your name? And if so…how many times?

Craig Key Search Results

I’ve been trying to grab more search real estate on my name craig key (did I mention I’m a narcissist?), but I’m having a hard time because there happens to be an island in the Florida Keys which is bold enough to go by that same moniker (and a judge in Oklahoma that wrote a book called “A Deadly Game of Tug o War”).

But I wanted to throw out a challenge: Own your name in the search results – so that others can’t.

For me, I rank for my facebook, twitter, blog and linkedin profiles. 4 out of 10. Not bad…but I’d rather have all 10. Ok, maybe I won’t take down Wikipedia (stupid island), but I could at least aim for 9 out of 10.

I have some thoughts on the subject (or tips, I guess), but I would rather hear from you first.

How many of the top 10 search results on your name do you control?
How do you think you can boost the rank of some profiles?

All of this is a fun test for your own name…but brands should be asking themselves the same questions, don’t you think?

space150 threw another Deepspace event last night!  This one was all about SEO, so i got to share some of my thoughts on the subject.  I will probably write more later (let’s be honest, I probably won’t), but here is my deck of slides for the talk.  My topic was “Social Media and SEO” – I explored the search engine ranking benefits that can be gained from companies getting involved in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc.  I also explored the differences between companies getting involved in 3rd party social media sights, vs creating their own social media portal specific to their brand.

I’ll leave the comments section open (let’s hope for a record setting 5 comments on this post!) by asking you a few questions:

Have you had interaction with companies/brands on social media sites like facebook or twitter?

How did it make you feel?

Who is doing this weel?

Who rubbed you the wrong way?

Since I haven’t written anything in a LONG while…I thought I would open up a little mini-discussion around my Senior Thesis: “Let The Painter Preach.”  This was written almost 5 years ago, before I entered the–ehem “real world,” but for the most part, I think this is still quite in line with my views and beliefs.

Here is a sample to whet your appetite (or completely turn you off):

Flannery O’Conner defined art this way: “The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode. The person who aims after art in his work aims after truth.”. An archer aims an arrow at his target. Whether he hits it or not, he is ultimately striving to hit the bull’s-eye. In the same way, an artist strives for truth. As he expresses something from deep inside of himself, he is searching for truth.

Augustine said, “When I search for truth, and I arrive at truth, I find God.” If truth existed outside of God, he would not be God. So then, any search for ultimate truth will be found only in an ultimate God.

Art is the search for God.

So here you go, the culmination of my college education at Azusa Pacifc University:

“ Let the Painter Preach (and the preach paint?) An Essay on the Relationship Between the Church and the Arts.”

by Craig Key.

PS My mom was quick to point our there are some Type-o’s in there.  Sorry mom.  I still graduated.

Friday was a fun and interesting day for me.  Julio Ojeda-Zapata (tech writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press) summed up the day’s events nicely.  For the sake of this post, I’ll just say that a movement was started centering around the idea of Chipotle opening their doors a little earlier, and serving Breakfast Burritos (I know right?).  I thought I would recap from my point of view what was a cheap, and easy way to facilitate a social media movement, which could be applicable to infinate other ideas.  Here goes:

Step 1: Find the influencers

Social media buzz is difficult to create on your own.  However, with a few of the right people, you can quickly reach a wide audience who will in turn reach their audience, and so on.  In this case, I mentioned Chipotle Gift cards as currency on twitter, and I have a relatively small following (about 175 people).  But Jon Mierow, who is active in the Twin Cities Social Media Scene, has more followers (218), but more importantly is connected to some bigger influencers.  Within minutes after Jon proclaimed his desire for Breakfast Burritos at Chipotle, Mike Keliher (1600+ followers) and Julio Ojeda-Zapada (1100+ folowers; the guy is writing a book about twitter, not to mention being a burrito connoisseur) were chiming in and bringing our movement to the eyeballs of 2,000+ people (their followers probably have some overlap).

By myself, I really don’t pull much weight (no seriously, I’ve tried).  But with the right influencers on board, a movement was born.   Find the influencers to help create buzz, and get them in on a movement before you start spending your press.

Step 1.5: Share it, don’t sell it.

(since this is a 3 step post, I had to squeeze this in as a half step).  In the case of #chipotlebreakfast, none of us have any commercial or monetary interest in the movement.  We just all happened to agree that this would be completly awesometastic.  If you are running a business, and looking to leverage Social Media for profit, get creative about what “movement” you want to start.

An example from my day job: I don’t don’t think I could easily get people on board with a “5 Alarm Music” Movement.  Getting people to commit to a brand is very difficult (but bravo if you can accomplish this).  I might have some luck, however getting people on board with “People Against Sucky Spots and Promos” (PASSAP) movement.  Don’t aim for the sales bullseye with your movement, aim for the fringes where people might join you, and then ask themselves “who is this company anyway? What are they all about?”

Step 2: Act quickly

In the case of #chipotlebreakfast, Mike called for a “full court press” at 9:22 am, I purchased “chipotlebreakfast.com” at by 9:55 (this was the only thing I spent money on: $18 for private regestered domain), setup the twitter account by 10:06, opened the site for registration, and invited the influencers to write by 12:17pm, and finally I setup the facebook group around 2:00pm.

This quick movement allowed the buzz to trickle out from twitter, to the blogosphere, to facebook, and beyond very quickly.  I might have suggested getting all of these things in place ahead of time for a pre-planned movement, but honestly–the impromptu nature of this, and keeping the followers posted along the way seemed to add to the excitement.  I think if this got started, and suddenly the blog, facebook group, etc were already up and polished, users might smell a sales pitch and be less likely to commit to the cause.

By Saturday morning, I had 3 blog posts (two of which were not written by me),  15 blog comments (I’m lucky if I get 2  comments on a post here!), over 90 “tweets” about #chipotlebreakfast, a facebook group with almost 100 members and growing, AND (get ready) an official response from Chipotle!  That’s right folks, after less than 24 hours, we few Minnesotan, burrito lovers got the attention of one of the fastest growing fast food companies in the world!

Step 3: Social Media Tools are cheap and easy; Diversify.

As I already mentioned, the only money I spent was buying the domain name–and even that wasn’t a must.  I could have set up the blog on wordpress.com (actually, I did at first, then I changed to self hosted wordpress b/c I like it better), or blogger.com.   Facebook and twitter were also free.  I could have used any number of other outlets to spread the word, here is a short list of free online social communities that could be effective in creating buzz:

• myspace (annoying ads aside, this still has a huge reader base, and is still a big player in social media)
• ning.com (very easy way to start an online community)
• plurk, pownce, tumblr, etc (these are all micro-blogging sites similar to twitter)
• last.fm, or pandora.com (music sites for a burrito movement? Sure, why not? Music is an easy way to connect with people.  Create a channel which represents your movement.  For example, “The 90s were so mint” by rockworms.com –does anyone want to volunteer to make “breakfast burrito radio”?
• Youtube, Vimeo, or Blip.tv (if you have means to do it, bring some video content to the table.  Our attention spans are much too short to read long-winded blogposts like this one.

The point is, use more than one avenue to reach your audience.  Twitter is a fantastic online community, but 3/4 of my friends either haven’t heard of it, or if they have, they just don’t get it.  Diversify your channels of exporting information to the masses (or in this case, the hundred(s(ish)).

I will keep you (both) posted on #chipotlebreakfast.  The “probably not” response from Joe @ Chipotle HQ took a little wind out of our sails, but overall it is apparant that this touched a nerve with hundreds of people, and more than likely there are thousands more that would hop on board too if they heard about it.

Politics Suck

I’m really sick of politics.  Why is that every election season we seem forced to choose the lesser evil?  I swear,  between ads from McCain / Obama, Madia / Paulson, and Coleman /Franken, I really want to shoot my TV.  I am actually happy when an ad comes on TV that is for a product or service, and not for one of these jerks.  I welcome the marketing exec’s of Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Ford, GM, hell–I even like promos for stupid reality shows better than I like watching political smear campaigns.

Since we’re less than a month away from going to the polls, I actually feel the need to start caring about this stuff, and I’m so sick of Al Franken and Norm Coleman I could puke.  I watched the  some of the debate, this week and in all honesty, Dean Barkley didn’t impress me any more or less than the other two, but honestly it was just refreshing to know that there was a 3rd option besides tweetle-dee and tweetle-dum.

Independent in Minnesota? That could never happen!

I didn’t give it too much thought, because the general consensus is that voting for a 3rd party is throwing your vote away.  But this morning I heard that Franken is leading Coleman 38% to 36%, with Barkley at 18% leaving 8% undecided.  18% for an independent?  That’s not bad folks!  Do you know what that is?  Hope!

Ok, some of you are probably pretty far on one side or the other.  But I beg you, just check out Dean Barkley, read his stance on the issues, and ask your self if this guy isn’t better than either of the other two candidates.  I think everyone can agree that “partisan politics” (cliche, pukety-puke-puke) are bogging down Washington, and I for one would rather send an Independent senator there, than a Demo, or Repo. That’s all.

#votefordean

Oh, and I’m starting a twitter hashtag: #votefordean.  If you’re with me (even if you’re only 18% with me) give a shout out to #votefordean.