Tom Nixon

Selling tip of the day: get more referrals

Everyone who sells knows that referrals are one of the best ways to generate new business. But don’t expect the referrals to come to you. You need to ask for them from your existing customers and other contacts.

My tip is this: When you ask for a referral, don’t say ‘Can you think of anyone who could benefit from our product/service?’ That question is too general, and won’t focus their mind. Invariably, you’ll get the answer ‘Not really, but I’ll be sure to pass on your details if anyone asks me.’

Instead, get them to focus on a specific subset of their contacts: co-workers; drinking buddies; whoever might be relevant for the thing that you’re trying to sell. You’ll find that be narrowing the choices down, you’ll actually get more referrals.

Give it a try.

Learn from your successes, not your mistakes

People always talk about the importance of ‘lost lead analysis’. That is, working out why you didn’t win a deal that fell through.

But a useful insight from Clive Woodward says that the time for analysis is when you WIN. Look back at the circumstances of the sale and what you did that made the deal come off.

We just performed that exercise on a list of the most valuable projects that we have won in recent times and came up with some useful additions to our sales process.

Maximum wage

Never in a million years did I think I would make someone a job offer after receiving a cheeky spam email, but I just did…

The spam

Hi, I’d like to offer you some free promotion.

I have just launched an original and exciting campaign to find employment – I have offered myself for auction to companies and organisations! You can find out more at http://www.15mins.org

So, what’s in it for you? Well, if you make a bid, it could be the best piece of free advertising you could get: you’re business/organisation will receive exposure and a link on the website.

The winning bid will also (along with gaining my services for 2 weeks!) receive press exposure and ongoing publicity from my blog.

The highest bid is currently £220, so get in quick, before the stakes get higher.

Thanks, Nick Feather

My reply

Hi Nick, what a stupid, funny, yet clever idea. We would like to offer you a job: Two weeks work, £300, to work with our team and clients to come up with great e-marketing ideas, just like the one you have come up with to promote yourself. What do you say?

Let’s see if the offer makes it onto his website

BMW Germany should have known better than to get banned by Google

Google has de-listed BMW Germany from its index for using so-called black hat techiques to increase their rankings on the search engine.

The article says:

The move is likely to send shockwaves through the Internet industry over fears that one company has such power and affect over a website’s access to the public.

But really that misses the point. Google’s guidelines about how to play fair are perfectly clear and well known by those of us who work in the industry. It’s unforgiveable that whoever heads up marketing at BMW Germany did not ensure that the people optimising their site for the search engines used acceptable techniques.

Keep up-to-date with search engine marketing

There’s a lot of rubbish and plain wrong advice out there about the latest SEM techniques. Here are three links to quality blogs where the real pros share their knowledge:

• SEOmoz This site also has a comprehensive beginners guide to SEO for the uninitiated.
• Jim Boykin’s blog Nice beard, Jim!
• David Naylor