Executive Spotlight: Dave Lee Shares Sales & Marketing Tricks!

Hola!  I’m Dave Lee, Vice President of Moneymaking.  I help Infusion Software make money through our marketing, sales, and business development efforts.  I love technology… and I love selling it even more.  More importantly though, I love helping our customers make more money too!  Just recently, I met with a group of a dozen or so customers for a special ½ day session to share ideas, see how everyone is using the CRM, and talk about the latest ‘must-use’ new features.  I left the session with some intense impressions: 

1. Our customers are AWESOME – extremely talented, driven, and successful
2. There are a bunch of money-making features in the software our customers are just starting to explore using- they can do even more with them!
3. We need to get together more often: virtually and in-person

Fortunately, we’ve already got some really cool things in the works to address items 2 & 3, but I don’t have enough space to elaborate.  What I can do is share with you some of the things we’ve done in sales & marketing to achieve over 900% growth during the past three years, both CRM and non-CRM related (I’m giving you permission to swipe these!):

1. We’re relentless about using the software for all forms of lead generation, capture, and conversion.  Once we have the lead, it enters one of many marketing sequences for automated and personalized follow-up, education, etc. We also chain together follow-up sequences so we’re always in front of the prospect until they “buy or dies.”  To give you an idea, our “Master Follow-up Campaign” includes 45 steps with e-mail, fax, live phone calls, voice broadcasts and direct mail pieces… and runs for 33 days.  Then the prospect gets added to our long-term follow-up campaign. 

2. One of the quickest ways we built our prospect list has been to partner with people who already have a list and then pay a commission or royalty for sales generated.  Just make sure you’re the one capturing those leads so you can build your list.  We use the affiliate module within the CRM to track affiliate and JV leads – so we can properly pay out commissions when a lead becomes a customer.

3. We don’t waste time on prospects that aren’t ready to buy yet.  We let the software manage the ‘hoops’ that prospects need to jump through before we assign out the lead to a sales rep for one-on-one follow-up (using the sales force automation and pipeline features in the CRM).

4. Copywriting is critical to successful promotions, campaigns, follow-up sequences, and sales letters.  If you haven’t found a good copywriter yet, keep looking – it’s the difference between mediocre sales and extraordinary results.  This has been proven to be true for us. 

5. We use the “Trackable Link Action Sequences” as much as possible for automated sub-listing, one-click registrations for tele-seminars & events, and even for product sales.  When using this feature, our event registration rate increased by 520% (actual attendance was up by 330%).

6. A solid, well-tested landing or squeeze page can bring in a LOT of leads.  We’ve been tweaking our landing pages for maximum results for a long time now. Recently, my Internet Marketing Manager discovered some additional short-cuts by attending a marketing teleseminar on landing pages.  We've implemented some of the ideas and are getting awesome results.  To see and/or study one of our landing pages, visit http://www.infusionsoft.com/landingpage.  The current layout, color, headline, required fields, and copy is converting 65.5% of clicks from a banner ad or ad text link.  That's a HUGE conversion rate!

7. We try to capture as much prospect information as possible.  We’ll start by maximizing opt-ins for our product tour, white paper, or free report by collecting just a name and e-mail.  On the success page, we’ll offer more information or a live demonstration if they also provide phone, fax, and company name.  We pre-fill the form on the success page with their name and e-mail from the previous form.  When a prospect sees their name and e-mail already filled-in and there are only three more boxes left, the human tendency to ‘complete things’ kicks in and we’re able to collect more contact info (over 85% go on to give us additional contact info).  This can continue until you’ve exchanged a set of valuable information for complete contact information on your prospect.

One final comment: The secret to my success has been to hire (and hold onto) extremely talented and passionate employees.  I have surrounded myself with people that are smarter and faster than me.  I set goals and measure results like crazy, but I leave the ‘execution details’ up to each employee.  This drives a huge amount of buy-in and empowerment, and frees them up to use their own creative minds to find successful solutions and nail their goals.  By the way, I used to hire education and experience… now I also look for passion and drive.
 

Email News - How fast are YOUR emails getting delivered?

We have more than doubled our email volume since the first of the year.  Not only are we sending more email than ever, we are sending it out faster than ever too!  Typically we have about 90% of all our email being delivered by our servers in less than 60 seconds. That is tens of millions of emails per week going out in under a minute. 

Here is our email volume year-to-date:

New Release Features

We are excited to tell you how busy we have been working on improving the CRM!
Remember, you may experience up to 2 hours of downtime on September 13th sometime between the hours of 9pm - 3am Pacific Time so that we can update the system. The next time you log into your CRM after the window of possible downtime, you will have access to the upgrades.

This release will include the following changes in your CRM:

Credit Card Details on Printed Invoices
Your customer invoices will now include additional credit card details so that you and your customers can see which card was charged.

In addition to this enhancement, we have also developed some exciting new features. If you would like to learn more about these features, click here. Here’s just a teaser on what some of these new features are:

Digital Product Delivery
Many of you have been waiting for a way to deliver your digital products through the CRM. Well, that time has come! Infusion CRM now gives you the ability to deliver products such as eBooks, audio files, and much more.

Campaign Merge Fields
Want a better way of managing event communications? This is one of the many ways that Campaign Merge Fields will simplify the way you are doing things.

With this release of Infusion CRM, we recommend you use one of the following Web browsers for the best user experience:

• Internet Explorer 7+
• Firefox 2+
  
  

Link Exchange

As you may know, Google uses its own PageRank as part of the algorithm in search engine results. PageRank is determined by the number of quality links to your site. Improve your PageRank by exchanging links with Infusion. Infusion Link Exchange: http://crm.infusionsoft.com/go/linx/house/sep07newsletter

Featured Customer Testimonials

We love hearing from our clients all the time, and even more so when you have good things to say about us!

“Infusion is the best thing since sliced bread! It makes segmenting and marketing my list so effortless, unlike the huge headaches I had before. I'm now able to ensure the right marketing message gets to the right person. The results have been hugely increased sales - Infusion has added an extra $23,000 to my bottom line in the 2 months since I signed up! Thanks a lot Infusion!”
~ Dan Bradbury, CoachingBusinessBuildingBootcamp.com

“Infusion blows away any other contact management system I have used (ACT, Goldmine).  It does the job of an entire department, and I am probably only using 25% of what it does. Well worth the investment; I could not hire someone for what this costs, and it works 100% of the time, unlike any employee.” 
~ Colin Meeks, Complete Money Management  

“The marketer's dream software! I am new to Infusion and am just getting things set-up and rolled out. So far, I have seen how much money I have been throwing out the window without this software.  It will make my life much easier with the automation tools in place - and I am constantly amazed with how much it can do.  I can see how this will easily add 50% (minimum) to my bottom line in the next 12 months.”  
~ Troy White, Responsive Direct Marketing, Inc

Infusion Blog

Join the discussion with our executive team on our company blog. Each member of the Infusion executive team regularly posts updates about the company, commentary on their field of expertise (see the “Riding the Trains” article recently written by Kelly Roy, our VP of Customer Loyalty, as featured in this newsletter), and other topics that will help you build and grow your business. Click here to read and comment.

Stay at the Ritz on Infusion!

If you're not yet an Affiliate, you're missing out on a seriously good opportunity.
Our Affiliate family continues to grow (and so do our commission payout's!).
We're talking commissions of up to $1,500 PER SALE! Learn about commission specifics here: http://infusionsoft.com/affiliate.

And have you heard about our Ritz Blitz Promotion. You guessed it - we're sending our winning Affiliates to the Ritz - ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD! We're also giving away a magnificent massage chair. Imagine yourself in one of those babies - working the knots out at work. Go here for details: http://infusionsoft.com/ritz.

There's never been a better time to become an Infusion Software Affiliate.
The newly formed Business Development Team is dedicated to your support & success.

And by the way, you still have 45 days to win a massage chair or that fabulous trip to the Ritz! Get started by signing up at http://infusionsoft.com/affiliate.

Questions? Contact Business Development at 1-800-827-6191 or
affiliates@infusionsoft.com.

We Asked & You Answered

Our August customer survey results are in and we are just so proud we had to let you know what you said about us!
 
Customer satisfaction rate – 85.4%
Customer loyalty rate – 78.1%
Product satisfaction rate – 87.8%

Your opinion means so much to us. It gives us the input and guidance we need, on a continual basis, to move forward in the RIGHT direction. When you get an email in you inbox asking for your feedback, please take a few minutes to let us know your thoughts.