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This 80's Pinoy TV ad taught me embarrassing sales tactics

3/31/2015

Sing with me!

"I'm gonna knock on your door, ring on your bell, tap on your window too!"

If you grew up in 80's Philippines, you might also have a 25-year LSS (last song syndrome) from that TV ad featuring a borderline-stalker sales guy, perhaps in the commercial breaks of Voltes V.

And perhaps, like me, you had the wrong idea of what a sales person does because of those hypnotic lyrics.

This is an embarrassing confession, but when I started sales for Leadfunnel.ph, this is exactly what I did:

One more time!

"I'm gonna knock on your door, ring on your bell, tap on your window too!"

If you were one of the businesses I visited, please understand that I was just an engineer with a lot of hustle but with zero sales training and experience.

Fortunately, I was selling to heads of sales/marketing and CEOs of sales-driven corporations. After talking to hundreds of you, I wisened up a bit. I'm singing a new song now:

I'm gonna understand as much as I can about your business even before contacting you.
Then I'll politely introduce myself, and win your interest enough to spend some time talking more with me.
I will then understand what's important to you, as a business and as a professional.
If we could solve a problem or create value for you, I'll try to show you this. And perhaps even drop by your office, at your convenience.
If there is no fit, I will waste no more of your time, and be grateful for the opportunity you have given me. If I know someone who could solve your problems or help you succeed more, I'll connect you to each other.
I will talk in your language, explain our offering from your perspective, adjust to your purchasing process.
If you do give us a chance, I will make sure you are satisfied - ROI for your company and 1-ups for your career - month after month.

That's probably not going to be a hit song. But it surely worked better than...

Okay now, everyone, karaoke time!

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Web Technologies for Philippine Lead Generation, Nurturing and Sales

3/25/2015

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Here's my personal list, with examples for each type of tool (a few of these are suites of tools though). I have used most of these, some daily. Most can be used anywhere in the world, but there are some specific to the Philippines. Did I miss anything important?

Search Engine Advertising - AdWords, Bing
Display Advertising - Facebook, GDN, Linkedin
Retargeting - Perfect Audience, Adroll
Conversion Rate Optimization - Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer
Landing page builders - Unbounce, Leadpages, Kickoff Labs, Instapage
SEO / Content / Inbound Marketing - Hubspot, Moz
End-to-end Lead Gen Systems - Leadfunnel.ph (I might be a bit biased with this one, haha)
Marketplaces - Alibaba, OLX (formerly Sulit), Ayosdito
Good ol' business databases - BCI Asia, Hoovers Philippines
Marketing automation - Marketo, Net-Results, Pardot
Email marketing - Aweber, Mailchimp
Exit Intent - Picreel, Bounce Exchange
Social media management - Buffer, Hootsuite, Agorapulse
Website chat / survey - Olark, Qualaroo
Web analytics - Google Analytics, Kissmetrics
CRM - Salesforce, SugarCRM, Streak, Pipedrive
Sales acceleration - Close.io, Followup.cc, Clearside, Toutapp

I have also included tools normally used in developed counties but not in the Philippines. Lack of adoption is probably due to the low prospect base size and lead volume. For instance, most heads of sales or marketing I know cannot justify something like Marketo, which would cost around PhP0.5M/year, with just hundreds of leads coming in their pipeline per month. There are several things in the horizon that will change the playing field:

Increasing internet penetration (the Philippines is now at 30%-40% and rapidly growing)
ASEAN integration (prospect base size will suddenly multiply - as well as competition)
A low-cost alternative appears (eg, Picreel vs Bounce Exchange)

Exciting times ahead!

P.S. I asked this same question in Quora and the best answer shared this infographic from Chiefmartec:

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B2B Marketing in the Philippines Before the Internet and Now

3/16/2015

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Several of our clients at Leadfunnel.ph are Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing departments of sales-driven businesses. I got involved in B2B marketing through tech, so I've always been fascinated with lead generation before the era of the web. Here are some of those. People in the business say they're still quite effective for visibility, branding and lead generation.

Trade magazines - This is the pre-internet counterpart of Content Marketing or display advertising in websites that carry content specific to your field. As long as the right people read them, they are an opportunity to reach your audience.
Trade shows - My bias is lead generation, so whenever I can, I ask folks with booths in trade shows, conventions and conferences how many leads they get from their booths and their cost per lead (this is my segue to Leadfunnel.ph :-) The numbers vary, but I also hear about the importance of brand visibility and supporting the industry.
Directories - Before search engines, you let your fingers do the walking with the telephone directory. How things have changed. Even the Philippine Yellow Pages now sells Google ads to SMEs. But don't let tech bias blind you to opportunities. We have a client who still makes a few million pesos of revenue a year coming from leads via phone calls that came from the (hard copy) Yellow Pages.

What's different with B2B Marketing with the Internet?
In a previous post, I already shared my personal list web technologies for B2B marketing. In terms of the actual work of B2B marketers, the main differences I think are the following:

There are many more choices, but this makes choosing harder. Compare this to the old days when you just had a few options. But if you're up to the challenge, the opportunities abound.
More data is available, but you need to new skills to capture and make sense of them. Every year, I train undergrads for the a global student competition sponsored by Google. It's very clear that the students who will succeed in this new world of marketing are those who are comfortable with data - huge swathes of it.
It is easy to increase or decrease lead volume. I could not think of a downside to this.
It could be more cost-effective or more expensive. This really depends on how well you are doing it.

I think the main job of a B2B marketer is to test different channels, compare them (in terms of lead volume, lead quality, cost per lead and cost per customer acquisition), and invest more in the winners. This is easier to do with digital channels, but the classic ones should not be neglected.

Are you a B2B marketer in the Philippines? What are other classic ways of doing local B2B marketing? What digital channels have worked best for you? Have you tried out Leadfunnel.ph?

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This 80's Pinoy TV ad taught me embarrassing sales tactics

Web Technologies for Philippine Lead Generation, Nurturing and Sales

B2B Marketing in the Philippines Before the Internet and Now

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