I’ve recently celebrated my three month anniversary…with ReadyTalk. So far, we seem to make a good pair and I foresee a bright and promising future ahead of us. Hand in hand we are tackling the vast and expansive world of web and audio conferencing, specifically in the area of campaign planning for our web seminar series.

I digress. My role in this relationship that has developed over the last three months has been a learning process – as are most relationships, I’ve discovered. Luckily, I’ve been able to work along side some bright minds and creative gurus. They have attempted to teach me the multi-faceted process of project planning, coordination, campaign management and a plethora of other marketing strategies that I hadn’t even heard of up until now. (Sidenote: isn’t it amazing how much stuff they manage to skip over in college that would prove to be quite useful in the workforce…  ) It’s all about the experience. It’s not how many assignments or papers you’ve turned in; rather, it comes down to the daily process of practice, trial & error, and mirroring individuals that have done this for years who you’d be lost without. Thus far it appears as though the attempts of my mentors have been successful and I’m adding new insight daily to my ever-expanding warehouse of knowledge.

Next time I’ll cover the methodology that we are attempting to put together to give the series a larger pull and more value to the publics we are trying to reach. We are slowly but surely revamping our approach and I think the outcome will be a solid move towards our ultimate goal.

Brian Carroll has another great post about the value of current customers., At ReadyTalk, our business model is based on exceptional customer service and support with a streamlined product that is easy to use and extremely stable. Given our exceptional service model, we understand the value of our current customers.

Take a look at some of these statistics:

• For every customer who bothers to complain, there are 26 others who remain silent.
• The average “wronged” customer will tell 8 to 16 people.
• 91% of unhappy customers will never purchase services from you again.
• It costs about five times as much to attract a new customer as it costs to keep an old one.

With statistics like these it is amazing that more companies don’t put more energy into keeping their current customers. Remember this: The magazine that gives new subscribers gifts while ignoring subscribers that have been reading their magazine for years. Even as a child, upon hearing these offers, something felt wrong to me.

At ReadyTalk, we not only have lead nurturing programs but we also are working on implementing a customer nurturing program. The objectives of this program are to build loyalty among our current customers, promote stickiness through programs and get them to use more of our products and services.

I would love to hear from you if you have implemented such a program or are thinking about it.

Technorati Tags: customer retention, loyalty, Brian Carroll, customer nurturing

Ardath Albee has a great post today about the power of storytelling. Ardath’s post and e-book (which can be obtained from the link) is quite similar to a seminar we hosted by Andy Goodman entitled “Storytelling: Your Most Powerful Communications Tool”.

Ardath, like Andy, suggests that in order to capture and retain your prospects and customers attention you must tell a story that relates to them. As Ardath states in her e-book “when you enable people to step into your story and envision their future with you, their problem solved, you develop empathy. Empathy leads to trust….and [trust is] the prerequisite for engagement.”

The key is to tell the right story to the right person and this is where segmentation comes into play. At ReadyTalk, we track job function and title for all of our customers and prospects. This allows us to tell an accurate story to which the reader can relate.

I particularly like her suggestion that each piece of content you choose to develop should be based upon urgency. Specifically, each story you develop must play to the readers sense of urgency t ogain attention. As Ardath succinctly puts “Urgency means aligning the story’s plot with a priority of the buyer.”

I would love to hear some of the ways your marketing department creates compelling stories for your customers.

Technorati Tags: Ardath Albee, storytelling, segmentation

Again, another post by Brian has me thinking. Today, he links to Michael Stelzner who has a video about how he generated 60,000 qualified leads through free education. He did this against the advice of his business partners and decided to give away his trade secrets in a whitepaper in the hopes of establishing himself as a thought leader.

We do similar things here. We run a Web Seminar Series that is free and we book expert speakers on a variety of business topics. We even run seminars on how to conduct a successful webinar even though we have a events team that does just that - runs successful webinars.

As you can tell, I am in full agreement with Michael and his methods. Establishing yourself as a thought leader helps shorten the sales cycle and cuts down on truly cold leads. In a B2B world, most people want to hire someone that can do the job more efficiently and with better results. The majority of B2B purchasers, do not want to reverse engineer a solution. They simply want to choose the best solution for their business and let the experts take care of the rest.

It is not a surprise to me that Michael was so successful. However, what interests me the most is where Michael promoted this whitepaper to receive such an overwhelming response. Unfortunately, he does not share that secret with us. Was it paid advertising? Was it organic search? PPC? Forums? Blogs? I would be very interested in knowing.

Technorati Tags: whitepapers, Michael Stelzner, lead generation

I love these types of posts. Eran Livneh, over at the MarketCapture Blog, tells about how a webinar they conducted for one of their clients helped close some deals as well as bring new leads into the pipeline.

This is the power of the webinar in action. It is a great tool for any part of the sale process. As a lead generator, the webinar worked well for their client; over 30% of their attendees were new and qualified prospects. In the case of the salesperson who closed a deal as a result of the webinar, it was used as a nurturing piece that resulted in a sale.

Obviously, at ReadyTalk, we believe in webinars as critical sales and marketing tools. They are a cost efficient way to produce persistent content that your sales team will be able to use at any point in the sales process.

Check out all the ways our web conferencing service can help.

Technorati Tags: webinars, web seminars, web conferencing