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Internet Tools - ResourcesNews Alerts In many industries the company is the primary source for providing sales leads to its sales force. These leads arrive from numerous sources such as contacts purchased from commercial databases, call centers inquiries and website requests. However, depending on company policy, most salespeople should not limit leads to only company provided information. Instead, salespeople should seek new information sources including news aggregating sources found on the Internet. For starters, salespeople may want to look at the news services offered by Google and Yahoo. Both allow users to sign up for service that delivers news to an email account if the news contains keywords selected by the user. Another news collector and a newcomer to the news service game is Topix.net. Topix offers news from over 7,000 sources. Best of all for salespeople, Topix segments the news into more than 100 industries ranging from major industries, such as aerospace, to smaller but fast developing industries such as social networking. The site has a strong leaning toward local news as well with information provided from a large number of local publications. Like Google and Yahoo users can have news alerts emailed, though until Topix allows for better search options such news alerts may results in a huge number of emails. Virtual Tradeshows A highly successful form of lead generation is tradeshow selling. Tradeshows offer numerous advantages over individual selling efforts including the ability to reach a large number of targeted buyers in one location. Unfortunately, tradeshows are expensive to manage and attendance by potential buyers has declined sharply as corporations tighten travel budgets due to the recent economic downturn, concerns over terrorist attacks and even contagious disease threats such as SARS. Yet the value tradeshows possess for generating leads has persuaded many companies to explore other meeting options including online or virtual tradeshows. Virtual tradeshows employ web technologies such as video conferencing and push technology to satisfy potential buyers demand for information. Salespeople can answer questions in several ways including online chat session, Internet video or simply calling the customer. Operators of virtual show booths can also use push technology to send selected webpages to the web browser of tradeshow participants. Virtual tradeshows have been somewhat slow to develop and may never threaten in-person shows but for some salespeople it may be worth an exploratory look. Build a Website Finally, for more technically adventurous salespeople, a productive method for generating leads via the Internet is to build their own website. For those looking in this direction, check out one of the top hosting firms whose service offerings are both extensive and reasonably priced. Many hosting services offer excellent service plans for less than $10 per month. Good places to begin a search for a web host are HostSearch.com and HostIndex.com, which provide directories and reviews of hosting firms. If you choose to create a website, consider using a content management system to build your site (see KnowThis article Marketing With a Dynamic Website). A CMS makes it very easy to create a site and add new information. While there is a bit of a learning curve, the time spent mastering the CMS will translate into a better looking website and one that is more likely to yield more inquiries as a result of good search engine rankings. Another plus is that many of the top web hosting services include CMS within their service package. Internet Tools - Resources |
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