Yesterday’s post discussed nurturing leads and customers with drip marketing. As promised, today’s post shares some tools you can use to automate and make it easiest for you.

It’s always great to know WHO to go to with questions, and Nancy Nardin of Smart Selling Tools  came thorugh on ideas for her drip marketing picks.  Nancy shares the following tools:

• ActOn Software

Obviously, marketing automation software would be helpful but they aren’t cheap or free. However there is one marketing automation tool that claims to be focused on the Fortune 5,000,000.  Yes, 5 million.  In otherwords, all the small businesses who need affordable marketing automation. You can get started with ActOn Software for $14.95/mo/1000 active contacts. They’ve built in all the typical marketing automation functionality such as demand generation, lead qualification, website tracking, webinar and event management and automation capabilities.

•  Yoono

A free toolbar slider (a vertical toolbar) that lets you track tweets and rss feeds of your client.  Here’s how to use it to stay in regular communication with your prospects.

1st. Create a list of your prospects’ twitter ids (you do this within Yoono).  Then each morning, simply pop open the Twitter Panel.  You’ll see a summary of all the tweets from your list.

2nd Simply re-tweet the ones you pick.  Your prospects will notice that you’re following them and are interested.

 The RSS functionality works the same way.  You simply subscribe to your prospects’ blogs. Then pop open the RSS Panel once a day or as frequently as you choose. From there you can share, comment, or tweet the blog post.

 And lastly, if you’re surfing the web and find a site (a page or article) you think your Twitter followers would be interested in, simply click the “Share” button on the side panel. It opens up a window for you to tweet about the page. The link is automatically inserted. Hit submit and you’re done.  Again, just hit “share”, type your tweet, hit submit – you’re done.

•  GoldMail

When sending along a helpful guide or other document, use GoldMail to personalize.  Easily record a quick personal message that attaches itself to the document.  GoldMails can be sent from within Microsoft Outlook or from Constant Contact. Click here to see a quick video demo on how to use GoldMail in Constant Contact

You get a lot of functionality in their free version.  You get even more with their $9.95/month version.

 Your GoldMails can also be posted via links within Twitter, or Facebook or use them on your web-site for call-to-actions.

•  Cloud2Mail

Want to really impress your contacts? Send them real mail. Cloud2Mails tagline is “Real Mail as easy as Email”.

Whether you’re sending postcards, greeting cards, brochures or just a note, all of these formats can be ordered and mailed much like an email.

Cloud2Mail is a free application on the Salesforce.com Appexchange with a simple low per unit cost structure (.50-.99).

At Sales Pro Insider we use SendOut Cards for our ‘real mail’. There is a small charge for it – and it is worth it! 

And there you have it!  Easy and cost-effective ways for you to stay in front of your leads and customers without the boring ‘check-in call’ every few weeks.

Please share other tools you use as a Comment.

Happy nurturing!

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Cold Calling is not usually high on many sales pros’ To Do lists. There are so many reasons I hear for doing almost anything else before picking up the phone to call people you don’t know about your product or service.

In a workshop on The Golden Keys to the Gatekeeper, Top Sales Dog Leslie Buterin, shared some powerful ideas on getting appointments with high level decision makers and executives:

1. Have the mindset that it is your obligation to reach out to start a relationship so that this person/company can benefit from the wonderful solutions you offer. You are not interrupting them to kill time, you are contacting them to help them.

2. Prepare to get to the point.

3. Make sure you speak their language. Executives have three main concerns:

• Increase profits
• Decrease costs
• Mitigate risks

4. Be able to succinctly state what you can do for THIS person or company. Giving them a 3 minute, or longer, blah blah blah does NOT excite them to want to meet you. Instead, state a specific result that you could achieve for them.

“We can increase your profitability by ___%. I’d like to meet with you to discuss.”

“We can reduce the liability inherent in your hiring processes…”

“I’m calling to see if we can decrease the costs of recruitment process by 50%.”

5. There is some debate on this next one…skip the niceties when they pick up the phone! You should only be on the phone 90 seconds – they don’t want to waste more time being asked about their day, the weather, do you have time (how do they know they have time if they don’t know who you are or why you are calling?) Respect their time.

In reading this list I noticed an overlying concept – that even when cold calling, the subject and focus should be on What’s in it for THEM!

As you contact your prospects, what are some things you have discovered?

In a future blog I will lay out more on the emotional aspects of Cold Calling.

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