Because inquirers are spending time on the Internet looking for information, you and your company must be there providing the information they seek, speaking the language and using the words that will attract them to you. Again, this is not the selling process itself. This is the lead generation activity that assists the buyer on their buying journey and gives you a share of their mind when they are ready to buy.
Attracting inquirers to your site and nurturing them by providing information, conversation, and instruction through the diversity of media available to even small businesses today requires a specific skill set and a professional commitment to the task.
Have you found salespeople who have the skills and the desire to learn how to conduct an on-going nurturing program with Internet-enabled tools, often called Sales 2.0? They are often ineffective and inefficient when they try to use these tools because they do not want to use them and they don't know how. This means they don't often carry the campaigns through to the end. When the campaigns fail to produce a significant number of qualified leads, salespeople and business owners conclude that those programs don't really work.
How does a salesperson become an expert in identifying and nurturing new, highly qualified leads? They must spend less time on selling and more time on finding new leads in a very difficult, noisy space. This is a recipe for failure.
Since inquirers are looking for information, conversation, answers to questions from disinterested parties, it is important to give your salespeople and company a presence in the conversation. You might consider how you will provide this to inquirers.
