How often do you look up a product or service on Google, land on a website, and search for the price or requirements, only to encounter a lengthy form filled with required fields?

If you鈥檙e like most people, you hit the back button and keep looking. That company, despite its investment in search engine optimization (SEO) and website development, just made it too difficult to do business. Essentially, they鈥檙e saying, 鈥淭hanks for visiting, but if you don鈥檛 buy on our terms, you鈥檙e out of luck.鈥�

Imagine if this interaction happened at a tradeshow. Would a salesperson pull out an iPad and ask you to fill out numerous fields before speaking to you? Probably not, unless they were a very poor salesperson!

Buyer Habits are Changing
People buy differently today than they did 10 years ago. This change struck me recently when my wife mentioned we needed our house power-washed. Typically, she would Google 鈥淧ower washing for homes,鈥� get results, and request a few bids. But instead, she received a direct mail piece from a power-washing company. She looked up the company online, found several negative reviews, and discarded the mailer.

This made me realize how often we miss opportunities because customers are frustrated with our website or because we lack (or have unanswered) reviews of our company.

Buyers are Researching More Now than Ever
The amount of research buyers perform before a purchase is increasing. According to Gartner, 90% of B2B buyers start their purchase journey with an online search. Companies often claim they 鈥渟ell on relationships鈥� and their 鈥渟ervice and relationships with customers鈥� set them apart. While that may be true, prospects don鈥檛 have a relationship with you when they鈥檙e researching solutions.

If you don鈥檛 get a chance to meet a prospect, you can鈥檛 build a relationship with them. Frustrating them by not answering their questions or making your information hard to find will drive them away.

A great salesperson listens to their customers. A bad salesperson talks over people and doesn鈥檛 give them a chance to ask questions. Is your online presence more like a good or bad salesperson?

A good marketing person collaborates with sales. A bad marketing person thinks they know the market better and sends out irrelevant emails or ads. Is your marketing solving customer problems or just telling them to buy?
Five Steps to Make Your Website a Better Sales Tool
Fixing these issues is simple, but not easy. Here are some steps:

1. Common Questions: Ask each salesperson the top five questions they get from prospects who have never done business with you and how they answer them. Post these questions and answers on your website as blog articles or FAQs.
2. Detailed Offerings: Write a page for each product or service with this outline:
   鈥� Name of product or service (what someone would type into Google to find it)
   鈥� A short description of the offering
   鈥� An image of this product or service being used 鈥渋n real life鈥�
   鈥� A list of the pain points this product or service addresses and how it works
   鈥� The typical industries or companies (preferred) that buy this product or service or the applications it can be used in
   鈥� The process for buying the product and how long it takes to go from purchase to installation or launch
   鈥� The price or price range (starting at $10,000, for example)
   鈥� A link to download a case study of one of your customers who experienced success with using this product or service
   鈥� Add a quote from a satisfied customer and give the name of business (with permission)
   鈥� Add a form that requires the buyer to fill minimal information and tell them what to expect when they contact your team or consider investing in building a shopping cart where customers can buy the product or service (Most corporate cards have a $10-15k limit and you鈥檇 be surprised what people will just buy online if it appears to solve their problem.)
3. About Us Page: Create an “About Us” page with photos of real people at your company. Describe who you serve, how you do it, and why your team is passionate about serving customers.
4. Google Business Listing: Claim your Google Business listing. Ask a few customers to write reviews and respond to existing reviews.
5. Google Alerts: Set up Google Alerts for your company name and owner names to monitor online mentions.
   Brandon Dempsey owns, marketing firm, goBRANDgo!, actively develops real estate, and teaches at Washington University 鈥� St. Louis. He is a published author, an accomplished keynote speaker, and he serves as the Global Membership Chair of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) working to support entrepreneurs worldwide.

Brandon Dempsey owns, marketing firm, , actively develops real estate, and teaches at Washington University 鈥� St. Louis. He is a published author, an accomplished keynote speaker, and he serves as the Global Membership Chair of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) working to support entrepreneurs worldwide.

by Brandon Dempsey (2023 Convention Speaker)

How many quotes have you sent and didn鈥檛 win over the years? How many customers have you done business with, but haven鈥檛 sold anything in over a year?

This is your goldmine! These prospects and customers are still buying things, and if you are like most manufacturers and distributors, these contacts have fallen through the cracks, and your sales team is no longer pursuing them. What鈥檚 worse is that often times these prospects’ contact information isn鈥檛 sitting in a nice CRM for marketing to run campaigns, but sitting in your salespeople鈥檚 email and Outlook accounts. This is where targeted re-activation campaigns come into play.

Re-activation campaigns are all about engaging past prospects and customers with content that is relevant to the challenges they face on a daily basis. This content can get these prospects to send you another quote, reach out to a salesperson, or submit an inquiry to help them solve a problem they haven鈥檛 been able to solve.

Think for a second about these prospects. Do prospects who you have sent a quote to in the past have any idea what kind of business you are or have evolved to today? So, what kind of sales team do you want to lead – one who proactively seeks customers to solve problems and create value, or one who sits back wishin’ and hopin’ for the phone to ring? Pushing out content that shows your experience through email, social media, and other publications allows you to create a position in the marketplace that reminds past prospects and customers of the problems you solve (or educates them about problems you solve that they didn鈥檛 know about in the first place).

It鈥檚 this content you can then use to share with your past prospects and clients. Segmenting these audiences into different industries, audiences, or job titles allows you to share content that speaks their language and resonates with their daily challenges.

From there, it鈥檚 about tracking and building a consistent outreach strategy. Here鈥檚 how it works:

1. Collect and build an email list of customers and prospects who haven鈥檛 interacted with your team or bought anything in the past 12 months
2. Upload that list, hopefully in segments, into an email marketing system
3. Write a series of emails, at least 4, that educate (no selling allowed!)
4. Build a landing page on your website for this audience and link to it in your emails
5. Install anonymous user tracking across your site that identifies what companies are visiting
6. Create notification systems that alert sales team members on how and when to follow up when prospects engage
7. Press 鈥淕o鈥� on the email and social sequence and watch the opportunities and engagement stream in

If this process feels overly simplified, then you鈥檙e right 鈥� it is. While the process is simple, it鈥檚 the execution that鈥檚 hard: collecting the data, writing the content, and building the assets for the campaign. Simple? Yes. Easy? No.

If you have prospects or customers you haven鈥檛 talked to in a while, what opportunities are you missing out on simply because you don鈥檛 have a system to engage these people?

Come join Brandon Dempsey at the Fall Convention and walk through a workshop on how to build these campaigns and unlock your goldmine. We鈥檒l walk through the technology needed, how to build your messaging, and even help you write the actual emails and content that drive responses.

Brandon Dempsey owns a marketing firm goBRANDgo!, He has been working with manufacturers and distributors for 18 years helping them grow through simple marketing campaigns that target their ideal prospects. Don’t miss Dempsey’s session at the Fall Convention on Thurs., Nov. 2. at 10:30 a.m.