Dating your customer before asking them to marry you is a lot more sensible. Most people avoid the better way of building a connection because it is hard work, takes thinking and costs something. Looking for something for nothing is a losing, desperate approach to selling.

Today, it is of utmost importance to avoid selling naked and to ensure you have a platform for selling. A platform precedes your selling process and sets you up for success.

Platforms Position You

In the old days, you had to spend a lot of money to build a platform. Getting on TV, radio or in the news was one way, though difficult and costly. Everything had to move through a distribution channel pre-established by other gatekeepers.

Today, the challenge is less about access and much more about paying a different price. The pieces have to be put together in a cohesive system that brings continuous and relevant value to your customers. Your message has to rise above the noise of the marketplace and connect personally.

A platform is a vital part of your buying process which sets up your selling process. Instead of having an approach which has a high probability of failure, your platform precedes you and positions you in the mind of the buyer. The selling should happen as part of a continuum rather than a disruptive event.

Putting clothes on your selling process means building the right processes and systems that augment how the buyer experiences your eventual sales conversation.

What would a more strategic approach to your selling mean for your business?

The Hoffman Group works with real estate investors and residential home buyers in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Their buyer can be those that are local or out of state. The Hoffman Group hired AscendWorks to help with inbound marketing strategy and marketing automation systems.

Our team walked through a project scoping and set up a new vision for how a buyer would experience the brand and process for moving from interest to becoming a lead. We outlined these strategies for a website that would function to provide ongoing value for new and repeat visitors.

The Hoffman Group was excited at the prospects. We went to work on the design elements, framework and web programming to bring the vision into reality. Furthermore, a special agent CRM system had to be customized and integrated into the website for any new inbound lead activity as well as to show any real estate represented by agent. This was carefully captured for the specific requirements.

Today, there are ongoing marketing campaigns, communications and nurturing systems at The Hoffman Group’s website. Our team provides weekly and quarterly metrics and reviews which help to improve the processes a new visitor experiences. The lead generation for The Hoffman Group has been dramatically higher than anything in the past as they are getting found via online search and social media channels which were previously closed. New homebuyers have enjoyed researching home and financing options as well as tools which our team at AscendWorks provides ongoing.

The Hoffman Group has assets which persist forever now and continues to build a compound interest effect with the content pieces AscendWorks has developed to nurture, educate and convert leads.

Inbound marketing works to help The Hoffman Group get found. Marketing automation systems nurture and convert leads in a ready pipeline.

You can have a zeroinbox! Move fast!

Many of our clients struggle to keep up. We want to share a quick productivity tip to help you move through your inbox quickly. If nothing else, take 5 minutes to improve the rest of your habits going forward for moving quickly through the daily email you experience by using these shortcut keys in your Gmail:

• # - This is delete emails. As you move through your email, hit this key much. Most of your email is junk.
• “s” - Star items you need to respond to, act on or review later but that would take too much time now. Then hit the next key:
• “e” - This archives any of email and removes it from your inbox

Learn these three keys. Every email has to have one of these shortcuts applied. If you don’t it’s because you did not make an executive decision.

Let us know how it works for you.

WANdisco provides software which is used by half of the world’s software developers. Their software enables groups to work on the same source code regardless of location. On a daily basis, their inbound marketing leads come from all over the world with thousands of visitors every month to their landing sites.

Our team was hired to work with the WANdisco team in San Ramon, CA and Sheffield, England. The inside sales team had too many leads to cull through and our focus was on creating lead scoring and lead nurturing campaigns which would qualify and surface the likeliest candidates for sales engagement.

We worked with two major systems – Loopfuse marketing automation and Salesforce.com – and started with strategy to develop the specific buying process. In our project work, we created the targeted buyer profiles which WANdisco sought and segmented various scoring criteria based on flow diagrams that captured how a lead would move through a qualification life cycle.

At certain decision points, lead nurturing would be used to provide valuable content to an unready buyer. As the lead nurturing content was consumed and the digital feedback from the recipients was measured, Salesforce.com triggered the inside sales team for follow up on the ready leads.

We customized Loopfuse with design elements, content and logic triggers for driving the strategy we worked with WANdisco management on. We tracked all the complexity in our project management system and delivered according the schedule and budget our teams agreed upon.

We continued in an advisory role with various lead nurturing strategies to augment the marketing automation campaigns that were geared towards specific demographics and campaigns.

Helping to simplify the complexity involved within the design and implementation of marketing automation and sales process was a large part of our work that helped WANdisco move their systems towards higher levels of success.

Marketing Automation system and contest which drives leads

David Stanley Ford is based in Oklahoma City, OK and is a regional Ford dealership. The typical dealership is caught in the relentless cycle of having to refresh its monthly pipeline of customers with traditional, interruption marketing tactics. AscendWorks helped David Stanley Ford with an inbound marketing strategy which helped their marketing dollars become much more effective for converting prospects into leads.

Customer Stories

David Stanley Ford’s customers were largely detached as the car buying experience was typically transactional in nature. AscendWorks created a new vision for capturing the stories, passions and fanfare of customers with stories based on marketing campaigns for contests and prizes. We built an exchange of value into the customer experience. Those leads that were unprepared to respond to the typical “buy now” marketing blasts of direct mail, tv, radio and billboards could now participate and get drawn into a more personal and social experience.

AscendWorks managed the social media communications as well as indexed content to drive inbound leads. Thousands of new leads were generated from the ensuing strategies. We provided metrics to help our team analyze buyer movements as well as inform the management team at David Stanley Ford of how the inbound marketing strategies were evolving.

With each iteration, specific steps in the buying process were tweaked and readjusted to drive lead conversion.

Sales Leads

Ready sales leads were segmented and funneled to the sales team. AscendWorks constructed sophisticated lead nurturing campaigns for leads based on their timeframe for their next purchase and their preference in automobile. Our team built dozens of communication pieces with specific high quality design elements to nurture the customer and create brand trust with the David Stanley Ford name.

The logic in the dealer marketing automation system helped to drive lead conversion which was measured and captured in the ongoing metrics reports with the customer. Over time, the return on investment could be seen along with a growing pipeline from a marketing funnel which nurtured leads over the next six months readying them for specific follow-up and sales.

David Stanley Ford aligned their other marketing campaigns from outbound marketing to the marketing automation site we developed to convert leads into ready buyers.

The rigorous ongoing work of delivering new creative pieces and campaigns which convert leads from marketing campaigns, social media and Google search keeps a growing funnel of leads for the David Stanley Ford sales team.

Meanwhile, they have a growing asset which helps them to get found and has created a viral effect among its customers. The stories continue to live on. The marketing automation system works 24/7 to identify, measure and convert leads based on their buying profile.

David Stanley Ford experienced a way for increasing their effectiveness with other marketing channels while having a more intimate relationship with their audience of future and past buyers.

Epigenetics is a highly specialized area of science which is continually changing. EpiGenie is a company that monitors and reports on the cutting edge technologies which drives epigenetics research. AscendWorks worked with EpiGenie on their marketing systems for servicing their customers to streamline the production process of content management and increase search engine optimization online via specific technologies and platforms for getting found.

Previously, EpiGenie had a cryptic and hard to use content management system which was not fully optimized. Furthermore, leads generated from their content marketing site required nurturing for ongoing purchasing decisions, education and funneling for sales engagement for their customers. It was cumbersome to get the work done, control the information easily and nurture the leads which were being produced.

AscendWorks provided marketing strategy and advised on specific processes that would capture and drive lead conversion. We worked extensively to migrate data from an outdated database into a current marketing content management platform which we customized and can be seen at epigenie.com. Our development team created many layers of automation and customization in addition to the design work specified by Epigenie.

The system allowed for greater control by users for publishing, optimizing and managing ongoing content.

Furthermore, we customized our Bullseye Marketing Automation system to create lead nurturing for 32 different technology vendors. Logic which supports education and nurturing helps to convert leads interested in learning about specific vendor products promoted on the site. Integrations with a CRM system that AscendWorks implemented along with various logic pieces makes for a cohesive and tightly managed buying process as new leads discover what they are seeking.

The EpiGenie team has a system which far surpassed their previous marketing systems from these standpoints:

• Control. The team can have various user accounts and manage the production of continuous content.
• Optimization. The new marketing system platform has programming for Google indexing and page ranking.
• Process. AscendWorks helped to design and implement more fluid lead capture and conversion processes.
• Technology. AscendWorks introduced technologies, educated and helped EpiGenie adopt usage in addition to discovering what is available.
• Automation. Gentle and easy lead nurturing via automated communications and tracking is now visible.
• Content Creation. Growing database information on products, vendors and research discoveries can be catalogued accordingly with new levels of controls.
• Design. AscendWorks advised and collaborated on design elements with the client and then implemented based on their desired requirements. A fresher look from the previous elements are part of the site design.
• Innovation. A framework for iterating and updating design elements and new future functionality has been established as new customer requirements come online.

The strategies, advice and execution can be seen from the many engineered processes under the hood at epigenie.com. Marketing automation which works to attract, nurture and convert leads has created an opportunity for winning new customers as well as servicing the current customers that work with Epigenie.

Inbound marketing system and video developed for Kavoo.

 Based in New York City, Kavoo provides a regional air limo service for business and personal travelers that want to avoid the inconvenience of commercial airlines. Kavoo hired AscendWorks to drive awareness and help getting found via a defined inbound marketing strategy. Our team worked to define the specific buyer profile and provided a marketing strategy roadmap. In this case, the buyer was geographically located in the Northeast and East coast with high disposable income.

We then created a set of project milestones for delivering design elements on a new optimized content management system embedded within the flykavoo.com domain. We started to drive inbound visitor traffic from indexed content which was relevant and carried authority for Google search. On a weekly basis, the metrics were presented to the Kavoo management team and showing marked increases for site traffic.

The design elements of the site enhanced much of the color scheme from the original site. Our team modernized the look and feel and created specific calls to action which appealed to site visitors. As leads were generated, the inbound marketing system fed these to the Kavoo sales team for follow-up.

AscendWorks developed a high fidelity video to help an initial visitor orient themselves to the quality and lifestyle Kavoo sought to communicate. This was an initial view on the new inbound marketing landing site and provided entree to the rest of the content which drove trust and connection with new site visitors.

AscendWorks inbound marketing team provided continual content highlighting regional destinations for travelers. The assets built over time created a compound interest effect for getting found as we continually optimized the buying process for those searching.

Furthermore, we managed the social media communications to drive interest towards the newly built content that we created.

Today, Kavoo has a growing asset which persists for helping new leads find them. Our service provided visibility on what was happening in real-time and how buyers were moving through the marketing automation funnel.

My experience in working with AscendWorks has been efficient, exciting, fun, and effective. They are not the type of company that will rest on their laurels. They are always looking for new and innovative ways to help generate more revenue for your company. Our business is growing and our customers are noticing the changes that we are making. It’s a really good feeling as a young entrepreneur to know that there are people out there that are genuinely concerned and really want to help you reach your objective. The advice I would give to someone who is considering using AscendWorks. If your afraid of work then don’t bother. If your looking for a shortcut or a short answer then don’t waste their time. They are professional. If you are passionate and you believe you have an answer and you want to share that answer with the rest of the world, you’d’ be hard pressed to find anyone better than AscendWorks. I can assure you that.” — Chad Brooks, President-CEO

Redwood Systems provides intelligent lighting solutions for businesses across the world. They provide cost savings to large businesses that want to control energy, temperature and lighting via their control panel platform.

Redwood Systems hired AscendWorks to advise them on managing their inbound leads and implementing marketing automation campaigns with lead scoring, lead nurturing and sales conversion. The technology selection process involved implementing Loopfuse for marketing automation. We provided the development support to integrate marketing automation into their website and program web forms for capturing new inbound leads.

A lead scoring strategy required process mapping of the various buyer profiles and how they move through the marketing funnel towards sales readiness. Our team then customized the marketing automation system to assign scores based on visitor behaviors on landing pages and their response to the multiple content pieces delivered via lead nurturing over time based on the buyer profile.

Data was recorded and mapped into Salesforce.com and sales management reports helped the team understand the marketing funnel and what pipeline activities were occurring for new leads to be converted.

AscendWorks provided the strategy, systems implementation, software development and design work within the context of converting leads via site visits and marketing campaigns.

We helped the Redwood Systems team understand their marketing metrics and adopt processes for driving sales engagement.

We don’t want to be sold.  It’s easy to block all the unwelcome old school techniques.  If you continue to interrupt, then your brand will be damaged.  The opportunity is lost.

However, every day, I am buying.  I am looking for solutions to problems I have today.  Are you able to be found?  If I can find you because you connect with my pain, then I’ll click.

Clicks To Sales

After the click, I am not going to buy immediately.  You may want it to happen, but it’s a low probability.  I am going to be looking for knowledge to see if I have my problem framed correctly.

So, the question is whether you can educate me and help me feel empowered.  This will help me to be an intelligible buyer that grows confidence and trust to engage with you.

If your brand and your systems allow me the freedom to self-service while I am buying, then as trust is built, I will take the step to connect for your full-service selling.  It will be on my time, my readiness and my initiative.  I am the buyer.  Sellers beware.

If you could not interrupt people, how would you propose to sell?

[it-rotate group="0"]