Lead generating for small businesses is VITAL! Any small business owner will tell you that the most important part of STAYING in business is having new clients and servicing past clients – all of these are part of your pipeline.

Your pipline is the people who have (in order from low priority to high priority):

• Noticed you are in business but are not currently using your services
• Have indicated that they are interested in something you have to offer
• Have purchased from you in the past but are not currently using your services
• Have purchased from you in the past AND have referred other people to you!

The order may seem amazing to some of you – people who are interested in purchasing RIGHT NOW are less important than old clients? YES! Old clients have shown a willingness to spend their hard earned dollars with your company and should be cherished. You should be contacting them regularly and making sure that they know you value them!

THEN you should have a system set up to contact potential clients regularly until they are ready to buy. A database is a great tool for this as it will let you know regularly who you should be contacting, be it by email, phone or mail.

If you do not have a formal pipeline in place right now – get one. Start a list of EVERYONE you have ever done business with and make sure they are in your database. Then make a list of everyone who has expressed an interest in your services. Rank them according to their level of urgency AND have some sort of system for determining their probability of closing. A good system is 90% for people you have sold and are just waiting for payment, 50% is someone who might buy but who has finalized the decision and 10% for someone who has requested more info.

When you are getting ready for your day, you now know who to call! Start with the 90%-ers and work your way down. Send emails to remind the 10%-ers about your service. AND don’t forget to contact a couple of old customers with something relevant to your business – an email newsletter, an article you think they might enjoy or just a “hi, just thinking of you” email.

If you would like more information about lead generating sources join our FREE Marketing Newsletter For Entrepreneurs! This month’s article will be focusing on sources for leads for all small businesses.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How can hiring a virtual assistant help your small business? Well let me tell you about MY day:

• 3 Client Phone Calls – 1.5 Hours
• 2 Fun Phone Calls – 1 Hour
• 2 Calls to cancel services – 1 Hour
• Submitting Sites to RSS Feeds – 2 Hours
• Errands – 1.5 Hours
• Writing Blog Post – .5 Hour
• Emails to 2 Virtual Assistants to do what would take me 10 Hours (I am paying them $50 total) – 15 Minutes

Did you catch that last one? 15 Minutes and $50 to get 10 HOURS of my life back?!?!? Time to lead generate, consult with clients, talk with friends, ANYTHING BUT doing 10 hours of work!!!

If you are in real estate, I have a great post over on active rain with lots of VAs that are ready to help now (http://activerain.com/blogsview/958318/Real-Estate-Virtual-Assistants-Anyone-have-a-good-referral). If you are a small business owner with a great virtual assistant please let me know and I will be happy to post them here for everyone to know about!!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The single-most question I get is “How will social networking make me money?” I am SO not qualified to answer this BUT I can tell you how it has helped my business!

Social Networking Makes You More Approachable

I teach classes and am very aggressive about what I think people should do to grow their business (sometimes even when they don’t ask…:) I have great ideas BUT not everyone likes that IN YOUR FACE information. People who would like to have the info without all the grief can join my networks on www.Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com or Twitter.com and watch without the hype. (I am Taradactyl on all of these and would be your friend – just ask!)

Funny things sometimes happen too! On facebook, someone from my high school class posted our senior picture and I am on there dressed in black – I still dress in black and take a lot of grief for it BUT that makes me more accessible to people who don’t know me BUT who might want to buy my services.

Social Networking Lets You Help People

The other day my business friend Maggie Morris’ Iphone lost my number. She had a situation that was important and needed to reach me. Because she is my friend on facebook, she could send me a message that came to my email and I called her right back. How cool is that?!?!?!

People can watch what you are doing and can copy it. If I find a great new site that could help get me new business, more than likely I will be posting something about it online. If you are in my network, you will see it and be able to take advantage of that opportunity.

Social Networking Is, Well, Social AND Ranks Well On Search Engines

There are many things that you can add to your profile which will be found by humans AND by the search engines. I hear all the time that you need to have backlinks to your site to make it more google friendly. One of the easiest ways EVER to get backlinks to your site is to make them yourself. In your profile make sure to add your website!

Join some groups that you like! In class yesterday Frank was truly puzzled by why he should take the time to join a network. Well Frank sells real estate AND likes boating. People who like boating buy houses on the water. Houses on the water cost more than houses not on the water. Connect the dots!

Anyways….there are some reasons, if anyone out there has better, more comprehensible ideas please feel free to jump in…:)

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How to pick a database – the age-old marketing question. When you are setting up your online and offline small business marketing plans it is confusing to know what database you should use and if it will be able to accommodate your email marketing needs going forward.

I will start with my sad tale….

I have a great database that I really like (www.clpsuite.com) which has served me well for a couple of years. Lately I have had a burning desire to have online credit card ordering capabilities so I started using www.1shoppingcart.com for my credit card processing AND they offered email capabilities. I thought GREAT! I can have my database, my credit card processing AND my database all in one. NOPE. They do a great job at credit card processing but as a database not at all (it is almost impossible to get your people to “opt-in” which means you can no longer communicate with them – a REAL problem!).

So now I have a database with email capabilities and a online credit card processing system. Two is not bad. I guess. RATS!

So for everyone else, what are my database recommendations?

General Databases – You can put your clients in, send a reasonable amount of emails and set up auto-responders or activity plans

• Microsoft Outlook – already on most computers
• Act – I like the sales funnel reports you can get in Act
• Wise Agent – BEST Database for Realtors
• Top Producer – Widely Used Realtor Database

Email Marketing Programs – If you get over about 400 people in your database I highly recommend that you start having your people in a “real” email program. If I had it to do all over again, I would have started with this as I have about a thousand people and getting them all to opt-in has been a nightmare!

• Aweber – This is the one that I (and the internet business mastery guys recommend – see below). Aweber has great email and autoresponder capabilities!
• Constant Contact – This is a friendly email program that is great for beginners

I should have listened to the Internet Business Mastery Guys! They have a great podcast on iTunes and I belong to their Internet Business Mastery Academy which tells you start to finish what to do for each aspect of your internet business. They said that Aweber was for email and 1shoppingcart.com was for credit cards. Lesson learned – I will listen to their advice from now on!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

CRM for Small Businesses sounds very ominous. It could mean almost anything! What it actually is is Customer Relationship Management. According to Wikipedia’s definition of CRM, it is “a term applied to processes implemented by a company to handle its contact with its customers”. WOW does that sound dry and not fun!

What it means to the small business owner is the way you handle your customers and prospects from the time you learn about them until they become a clients and beyond. It is everything you send them via email, all the invoices you send, how you treat their questions and concerns and how often you contact them.

The most important part of my CRM is my database! It stores all my suspects, prospects and clients in a handy dandy place. I can categorize them according to their industry, where I found them, what products they have bought and notes about the last contact that I had with them. (if you need info on how to start your small business database please read “what is a small business database“).

For today we will just talk about how CRM affects our prospects (people who we know about BUT who have not used our services yet!)

In my business I always strive to have a database that people are excited to be a part of! I don’t spam them or sell their names. I make sure that every time I communicate with them it is something that will be valuable to them. Some things that we do are:

• Send monthly email newsletters with an article about a topic that would appeal to small business owners – this doubles as a marketing piece since it is branded with the Thrive look
• ALWAYS include something extra – I tend to find lots of free technology tools around the internet and include them in my technology tips section
• Don’t forget to send your newsletter to your current clients – boy was this a doozy on our part! We did not send out the newsletter to our current clients since it DOES have a lead generation function but one of them saw it anyways…:) She was so excited about the article that we realized it should go to EVERYONE, not just the people we were trying to sell our services to!
• Send postcards with the Thrive branding – this is more marketing based and just adds another layer of reinforcement that we believe in the service that we provide to our clients
• Auto-responders – we have a series of autoresponders that start as soon as we put a new prospect into our database. This tells about The Thrive Client Contact Program, provides testimonials AND gives them information about lead generation and followup techniques (DO NOT send a series of marketing pieces to your prospects without providing a value to them!)

If you pay attention, it is easy to find ways to contact your prospects in a fun and useful manner that will result in them becoming clients. Just because they are not ready to buy this instant doesn’t mean that you should ignore them – use the time to show a value and build trust so that when they are ready to purchase they are predisposed to working with you!

We would like to invite you to sign up for our Newsletter (and Thrive Followup Emails) – Just sign up to the right!!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

My name is Tara Jacobsen and I am going to help you take your real estate business to the next level! Yeah right, you have heard that before from about a million different people trying to sell you something!
Doing YouTube videos can seem overwhelming, but learning the ins and outs of doing these basic, high converting videos is SO worth your time. The campaign shows you how to set up a FSBO and Expired YouTube Campaign which can help move reluctant FSBOs or Expired from a no to a go! It has examples of an actual agent doing the videos, pre-written emails AND even a video that walks you through the technical bits of how to upload your videos to YouTube.

What Are Real Estate Marketing Tools?

Everything here is to help you increase your business and get you on track to make more commissions with less stress. That’s right, I KNOW how stressful it is to have clients who want you to perform miracles like finding that elusive “cash buyer” who will pay 10 percent over market value or to feel like there are never enough hours in the day to get to the clients you already have, let alone needing to find new ones!

All of the real estate marketing tools on this site are here to accomplish one of three things:

• Help you increase your commissions
• Help you work more effectively to save time and money
• Help you get more leads so you can cherry-pick the good ones and refer out the ones that you don’t CHOOSE to work with!

You may be thinking, this doesn’t sound like any “normal” real estate marketers I know, well you are right! I was a marketer before getting into real estate in 2005 and have been one ever since. For two years in between I was an active agent, racking up almost a hundred thousand dollars in GCI my second year, carrying 35 listings and ranking in the top 10% of our 180 agent office.

The best part was that the boom was over before I got in the game. Absorption rates for the Tampa Bay area where I worked were less than 10 percent for most of that time and houses were sitting on the market for months if not years. Oh, and I was a TERRIBLE Realtor (a good marketer, but a terrible Realtor). I HATED getting offers because that meant negotiating, ick. Problem solving to fix a falling apart deal, not my skill set either.

So how did I rake is so much dough? Having LOTS of opportunities! That is all marketing is, getting more opportunities to talk to sellers and buyers than the next guy or gal has. So….

How Can You Get Real Estate Marketing Help?

1. Submit a real estate marketing question by clicking the link.

I have a page on my website where you can ask me absolutely any marketing, listing, systems or time management question that you have. There is no charge for answers and I answer every question myself!

Even if you are not bold enough to as a question yourself, seeing the other answers might give you a really good idea you can use today. Plus, you’ll also have a chance to win one of my favorite marketing books. Every month I pick the best question and send a great marketing book out to the lucky winner for free.

2. Request a phone call with me by clicking here.

Most top agents, like yourself, do not have time to ask a question, then wait until I get around to answering it on the site. You might have a BUNCH of questions all at once, or need a comprehensive overview of what you should be doing to get maximum results.

What I have found works great if you need a boost, is to spend an hour talking about your past and current business, your marketing plan and goals and how your business is running right now. You might have a specific question about how to do one of the social media, may need to work on your listing presentation, may want to find out how to get more listings or any one of a million other things I talk with agents about every day.

Obviously I can’t do this for free, but I want everyone to be able to take advantage of this offer… so I’m letting everyone who’s part of my community have a full 1-hour phone consultation with me for only $97 (normally $247).

Give me a head’s up that you would like to get on calendar by clicking here. I schedule these on a first-come, first-serve basis and only do a few a week so get in there fast.

Only one $97 phone consultation allowed, per Realtor.

3. Apply for real estate coaching or consulting with me.

This option is for agents who don’t want to spend all of their time working ON their business, they would much rather be working with sellers and buyers than be messing around trying to figure out everything themselves. Most of the agents I coach with are already seeing some (or a lot of) success, but either their business is zoom EEK (LOTS of closings and then none for two months), or they just can’t get consistent traction to move to the next level (whether it be from $2,000,000 in sales to $10,000,00 or just wanting to get to that next level).

Avoid the painful uncertainty and costly mistakes most agents make trying every new marketing idea they hear without having a plan. You’ll get the results you want… because I won’t take you on as a client unless I believe you can actually succeed. That’s why you have to “apply.” Oh, and I won’t insult your intelligence by saying “the cost of this training is probably only a part of one commission and OF COURSE you will make that back in the next 30 days”. I still get steamed when I hear companies talking about “selling to Realtors” because they make big commissions. Our coaching will be based on YOUR goals and what YOU want to achieve, not on how much of your commissions I can finagle out of your pocket!

Real estate coaching will help to show you what you are doing right and what you are you are doing wrong. It will help keep you on track and give you clear and measurable goals so that you can have clear and measurable successes. I’ll show you systems, set up timelines, and hold you accountable (if that’s something you need), while having fun and taking over your marketplace like you never dreamed possible!

We’ll spend time together by phone, email, and/or face-to-face. This is not a one size fits all program – it is tailored to you and what you want to accomplish. As a busy Realtor, I KNOW you cannot drop everything and just work on your business, so we make sure that there is consistency but that it fits into your time, without driving you crazy!

We will start by taking inventory of where you are now and then move forward with what you need to do next, focusing on what you LIKE to do. Materials will include step by step checklists, template letters and emails, listing programs to keep sellers happy, sample listing presentations, the exact words to say to keep from cutting commissions, and MUCH MORE!

Consulting requires a significant investment (starting at $1,297) and I don’t take that lightly. If you have committed that kind of money to me, I promise that my commitment to you will be make sure you get the most out of it and are happy with the results. Having a real estate coach is often the difference between being successful as an agent, driving yourself and your family crazy running around after your clients or even having to leave the business.

If you’re interested in finding out more about real estate coaching, please give me a call 727-415-9165, we will schedule a free time to talk about what you are interested in and and what you are doing now. I’ll give you concrete action steps during your call that will help you immediately… but I will also take some extra time to tell you about my real estate coaching program (and we can see if we’re a good fit).

If you have questions about anything above, please contact me using the contact us page. I look forward to helping you grow your real estate business and take back your life!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.