I called a division of Acme Industrial [name changed to protect the guilty] a week ago and asked to speak to someone in sales as I had some questions.   The service runs about $7500-12,000 per year, not an insubstantial amount of investment. The phone system asked me to press 1 if I wanted to speak to someone who “would be happy to answer your questions about our services.” The person I got didn’t know anything about the product at all, and said someone would call me back.  Already a bad precedent, I wonder how the sales rep covering my territory would feel about their inside team dropping the ball.

A week goes by. A week!

So I call back today and go thru the menu prompts again and again I’m told I’ll be transferred to someone who “would be happy to answer your questions about our services.” When they did answer, they said that they have no record of my call last week. They put me on hold for 4 minutes. They come back on the line and ask me for the same contact information I provided a week earlier. Didn’t ask any qualifying questions, curiously, like budget, timeframe, or even what 2-3 top questions I wanted answered. Said “someone will call you back.” When I asked when I would hear from them or who would call me, the rep didn’t know. I pointed out it had been a week and I wanted this information as soon as possible so I could make a final decision – would I get a call back today? “I’ll ask them to call you sooner rather than later.”

By contrast, their competitor took my call live on the first time I called them, answered my questions reasonably well, and sent me email today to follow up.

What company can afford to put themselves in this situation? How many other calls did they handle this way? Sales live by the numbers, but this team isn’t doing themselves any good. And with marketers scrambling to justify their existence and their budgets based on closed leads, its clear that getting the metrics right is only part of the equation. What does this experience communicate to me as a prospective buyer about what it may be like to work with these guys? I felt a lack of accountability, lack of concern for me as a customer, and a very low service experience.   Guess who’s product I purchased?  And that Acme Industrial sales rep handling my territory never even knew what they lost.

Thanks to Malay Pharma Sales Rep Rant  for the picture.

(Goofy shirt not required)

Inquisix is looking for a few good great interns.  

Do you blog? Love business, marketing and PR? Fascinated by Social Media and can succinctly express yourself in 140 characters or less?

Inquisix is a up & coming business referral network start-up looking for some marketing and sales interns. This is an unpaid internship.

At Inquisix, we all wear a lot of hats. This is a fantastic opportunity for the right person. No coffee-making, no errands, no copying. You’ll be thrown right into the fray, get hands-on experience and will have genuine work-product to show for your efforts. Areas you may work on: strategy, blogging, tweeting, member relations, sales presentations/materials, and media outreach.

We want enthusiastic, creative entrepreneurial problem solvers who happen to be persuasive writers and speakers. Our interns will work remotely, so while we’re based in Boston, you needn’t be (though we prefer it)– you do need to be self-directed and be able to work independently, have a computer with dedicated Internet access and can consistently devote at least 10-15 hours a week to us. 

Above all be smart (book/street, it all works for us.)

So send shoot us an email with your resume and why you want to be our intern. Charm us, dazzle us. Be creative. 

Send your resume, pitch letter and a sample “tweet” to:

Betsy MacKinnon, V.P. Marketing & Communications at Inquisix 

betsy@inquisix.com

Jump start the economy.

No we’re not talking about recently passed stimulus bill. Or even a bailout.  We’re talking about something more tactile, more visceral– more like an A+B=C.

John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing, and Inquisix have joined forces (with some other amazing sponsors) to promote Make a Referral Week, this March 9-13th.  The goal is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses.

This is a good thing.  For you. For the economy.

So take the pledge.

It’s tough times. Everywhere you turn negative economic indicators are released, reports on recessionary fears, and opinons on the impact of the economic stimulus package crowd the news.  Overwhelming problems and few solutions.

It is time for small businesses to take matters into their own hands.  Positive changes in small business can have a positive impact on the economy. Hey, it’s no biggie surprise to the rest of us that small businesses basically drive the economy.

As a class, small business:

• represent over 99.7% of employers;
• employ over half of all private sector employees;
• generate between 60%-80% of new jobs in the last decade; and
• produce more than 50% of non-farm private gross domestic product, or a GDP of roughly $6 trillion.

As John Jantsch sees it, “Make a Referral Week is an entrepreneurial approach to stimulating the small busienss economy one referred business at a time.  The goal is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses in an effort to highlight the impact of a simple action that could blossom into millions of dollars of new business. Small business is the lifeblood and job-creating engine of the economy and merits the positive attention saved for corporate bailout stories.”

It’s Inquisix’s hope is that this one week further highlights the power of the referral. Referral prospects are less price sensitive, and, as Joanne Black, author of “No More Cold Calling,” points out “[a] referral is pre-sold on you … and [you] get a new client over 70 percent of the time.” We believe that by highlighting the high ROI benefits of referral networking, more businesses will permanently adopt this as a new strategic marketing tool, which will translate into healthier bottom lines. Good for them. Good for you. Good for the U.S. economy.

So be among the 1000+ small businesses to get new business the week of March 9- March 13, 2009. Take the pledge. Give a referral. Get a referral.  There will be an exciting schedule of programs to tune into featuring Ivan Misner (founder of BNI, author of Masters of Networking,) Bob Burg (Author of Endless Referrals, The Go-Giver,) Bill Cates (author of Get More Referrals Now,) Guy Kawasaki (author of Reality Check,) Scott Allen (author of The Virtual Handshake) and Susan Solovic Wilson (of SBTV.com) to name  few.

And for the social media savvy, follow the action on twitter and connect to tweeps partaking in Make a Referral Week (Add the hashtag”#MARW09″ to the end of your tweets!)

Happy Connecting!

Make it relevant

I’m a big fan of Kevin Sasser’s The Sales Wars blog.  He  must be really busy in his day job because he’s not posted in almost 2 months.  Well, my wait is over and as usual, I learned something and laughed at the same time.

Definitely read the full blog post.  After the funny analogy, Kevin writes about a colleague who is putting together an agenda for marketing to update the sales team.  The standard agenda is suggested:

• Our company overview
• What we see happening in the industry
• Our “vision”
• Our unique approach

To which Kevin figuratively sticks his fingers in his mouth at the thought of listening to all that.  What struck me is that the sales team is probably doing the same thing to the prospect!  You are polite while marketing pitches you but you’re secretly daydreaming or reading your BlackBerry under the table.  Wanna bet your prospect is doing the same as  you pitch?  Kevin suggested the following agenda for marketing.  I suggest you follow the same agenda when selling to prospects:

• Why you are in my office taking up my time
• My problem that you can solve for me
• How you will solve the problem in clear, concise, concrete terms
• The benefit that you will deliver to me that your competitor can’t

As I get reminded at home, it’s not about me, it’s about what’s important to them!

After reading Joanne’s post yesterday about recession proof selling, I saw this posting about recession proof marketing. Uh oh, it looks like almost everyone is agreeing we’re headed into a recession. (Unless you’re part of the tech industry in Boston, but I digress.)

Brian and Joanne both agree that one of the key areas to focus when economic times are tough is lead generation. Joanne gives her 5 tips for salespeople to improve lead generation through referrals. Brian tells marketers to, “…direct their budgets away from traditional awareness building campaigns that quickly eat up budget and instead expand and optimize lead generation programs that bring measurable results.” And he points to an IDC study that says that 80% of marketing expenditures on lead generation and collateral are wasted because the leads are ignored by sales people.

The Marketing department in a recession needs to focus on those tasks that generate valuable leads for the sales reps. So valuable that these leads are equal in value to the sales rep’s own lead generation through referrals.

Actually, marketing’s lead generation programs should be doing that even when times are booming!