Look beyond Super Bowl ads
Just because companies shell out millions of dollars to advertise during the Super Bowl doesn’t mean you have to buy the products or services they hawk.
A Pepsi, okay.
But business owners should be doing their due diligence when it comes to deciding whether to plop down their hard-earned cash on something that’s going to cost more than a can of soda.
Take the
Salesgenie.com ads. I’m sure many small business owners out there had never heard of the sales lead Internet company until the firm’s slick ads appeared during the battle between the Giants and Patriots.
The ads probably got a lot of people surfing over to their site. How could they resist a cartoon panda?
The one ad was about the trial and tribulations of Ling Ling’s Bamboo Furniture shop.
It was funny I must admit, although I thought it might rub some Asians viewers the wrong way.
Is Salesgenie.com, a division of InfoUSA, worth it for small businesses?
I figured I’d ask some people who have used the service and find out if indeed they would be a good resource for sales leads.
I got a mixed bag of opinions:
“We’ve tried leads from Salesgenie.com and InfoUSA in the past and they just don’t work for our small business,” says Corey Donovan, vice president of marketing for
Vibrant Technologies , a reseller of IT hardware that employs 40 and is based in Minneapolis.
“The leads I’ve seen from SalesGenie.com are generally fairly generic and could use further qualification. If you’re a small-business owner that just wants to get a name and number of the C-level execs at a company, I’m sure it works great, but most small businesses like ours try to serve up more sophisticated lead info to our sales reps.
“We typically choose to buy targeted leads from companies such as
Harte Hanks , where more information is provided about the account such as IT infrastructure detail. The ideal leads provider can offer a wealth of contacts that don’t regularly get to use the corporate jet. Vibrant’s typical client is a decision-maker seated down the ranks from the C-level totem pole, such as an IT manager or IT buyer and Salesgenie.com does not deliver strong leads in that area.”
Robert Smith, owner of
Champion Media Worldwide , a search engine marketing firm in Rockton, IL., disagrees.
He pays $180 a month for a package from Salesgenie.com, after putting off signing up for two years. Once he increased the number of sales people at his firm and was in need of lots of sales leads, he signed up. And? “Sales Genie has paid off big time,” he says.
He bought leads on authors and speakers to promote his business, and ended up securing 10 clients in six month and made $63,000 as a result.
Another thing to think about is there are other services out there that are similar to Salesgenie.com
Keith Rosen , author of “The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cold Calling, Time Management for Sales Professionals” suggests taking a look at the following as well:
www.idexec.com www.goleads.com www.netprospex.com www.jigsaw.com www.hoovers.com www.dnb.com http://www.listengage.com/emarketing.asp www.maxprodata.com But he’s not recommending any of these sites, which all have their advantages and disadvantages. Your job is to figure out which ones work for your business.
If you want to do it the old fashioned way, actually finding your own leads, here are five strategies from Rosen: Become an expert voice; Prospect your prospects; Mine within existing accounts; Set up referral agreements with existing clients; and network and partner with other firms.
